REVIEW: Glee “Hold On To Sixteen”

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It is Sectionals time on Glee! Again! And once again New Directions is woefully unprepared thanks to Rachel’s political shenanigans which landed her with a suspension. Never fear because Finn (Cory Monteith) has the answer and it begins with an S and rhymes with BAM! Thanks to Facebook Finn has tracked Trouty Mouth down to rural Kentucky where he’s working as a male stripper named White Chocolate and rescues him from predatory cougars. Sam (Chord Overstreet) is welcomed back into the fold with open arms and immediately ruins it by singing a horrible horrible Toby Keith song called Red Solo Cup. Why oh why didn’t he sing “Jack and Diane” instead which would have made so much sense given the title of this episode and been much less embarassing? Oh well. Blaine (Darren Criss) isn’t as thrilled with Sam’s attempts to sex up the New Directions and has a mini meltdown in front of everyone. Finn finds him playing Fight Club and they make peace finally.

Quinn (Dianna Agron) still thinks winning Glee club competitions is the answer to all of life’s problems and will help her get the daughter she didn’t want back from that evil Shelby (Idina Menzel). Armed with the knowledge that Puck (Mark Salling) is currently “cleaning her pool” Quinn intends to tell Principal Figgins and have her fired before sectionals. Rachel (Lea Michele) of all people is the one who talks her down with a speech about how doing the wrong thing doesn’t feel that great. Then Shelby tells her a sad story about growing old and suddenly psychotic Quinn is gone and we have old Quinn back, and praise the baby Jesus cause that shit was getting old.

Kurt (Chris Colfer) and Blaine find themselves ambushed by supreme douche bag Sebastian Warbler at the local coffee house and war is declared over the love and affection of Blaine. I hate Sebastian and not just because he threatens to break up televisions most adorable couple. Sebastian exists only because the writers don’t have the sense to let Kurt release the Kraken on this loser and instead force him to be nice to this guy for no good reason. Whose feelings is he trying to spare here? Blaine couldn’t give two shits about this Warbler and is too naive to see that the guy is about to get all up in his business. I hardly believe that a guy who lost his shit because Sam introduced sexy-time body rolls to the New Directions dance repertoire would be easily coerced into meaningless sex with a troll like Sebastian, and if he were then well it would surely be the End of Days. And can we talk about Kurt’s wardrobe for a moment? This week wasn’t so bad but that wool cape he wore last week looked like something Joan Crawford wore in Mildred Pierce. Seriously!

The After School Special portion of the hour concerned the ongoing battle of dreams between Mike Chang (Harry Shum Jr) and his father. This week Tina intervened and managed to get Mr. Chang to rethink his old Asian ways a bit. Mike just wants to dance after all! And who cares if the life of a dance is full of rejection and heartache? Mr. Chang eventually comes around but it’s too late for Mike to apply to the best dance schools. Or is it? Tina to the rescue!

Oh right. Sectionals. I’m about to make some enemies here because with very few exceptions this season of Glee has really disappointed me with the music. A quick look at my iTunes illustrates this point very well. During season one I downloaded 120 tracks of pure glee awesomeness. Season two only provided 64 songs I cared to relive and so far out of 44 tracks released for season 3 I can only bear to relive 12 of them. And it’s not that the music is bad, it’s just gotten so flat and uninspired and this episode didn’t help. “Man in the Mirror” was great, and “Buenos Aires” was agreeable enough but the rest was just bleh. “I Will Survive”? Really? The mash up with “Survivor” might have helped if the whole thing hadn’t been so…I dunno….tame. The problem seemed to mostly be with the musical arrangement and not with the vocals so don’t think I’m dissing Santana or Mercedes singing here. It was just boring. I did enjoy “ABC” a lot but “Control” sent me to the kitchen looking for snacks. I had never heard “We Are Young” before so I can’t really compare, but I wasn’t rushing to ITunes looking for it after either. The best part of it was seeing the group together again. What does this mean for Shelby? Will the Trouble Tones continue without their powerhouse leads or will she vanish into the subplots like poor Emma Pillsbury? Also does anything think it’s weird that the fact Shelby is Rachel’s mother has completely been dropped? I mean she slept with Puck who ALSO diddled around with Rachel and that is fodder for at least one or two angst filled moments. And where are Rachel’s gay dads? Talk about a missed opportunity!

New Directions seemed destined to win sectionals this year if for no other reason than they got three full length performances instead of just the one song for the other two teams. Unitards? No better names lying around huh? Anyway, after the ego trip that begat the Trouble Tones to begin with I was happy to see their attitudes checked in a big way. And boring music aside I did enjoy the episode even if the general message seemed to be that stripping, while emotionally unfulfilling, is a bang up way to earn some extra cash in this crappy economy. Next week is the inevitable Christmas episode and I’ll go ahead and warn you now…I despise Christmas music. The preview looks promising though.