When I heard the kids at McKinley were getting their groove on this week on Glee I flashed back to the “Like a Virgin” number from season one and wondered which Rihanna song they would use to vocally violate each other. The cynical me was assuming that somehow they would screw this up. Instead Team Glee treated us to a solid hour of television about teen sex that was neither gratuitous nor tawdry but still managed to upset one or two concernstipated conservative groups. Well done Glee for taking something that could have been a mess of bad porn dialogue and clumsy foreplay montages and turning out something respectable and downright sweet.

The hormonal pot at McKinley is stirred when Artie suggests that Rachel “Put A Berry on Top” Berry (Lea Michele) and Blaine “Sex on a Stick” Anderson cannot possibly convey the emotions required to play Maria and Tony in West Side Story if they haven’t had sex. I could totally buy into Rachel’s untarnished chastity but Blaine can fornicate with a glance and the poor boy just can’t help it. The fact that he seems so clueless about it just makes him sexier and demonstrates what a talent Darren Criss is.

Faced with this new information about how she can improve her performance Rachel leaps into action and directly onto lanky and clumsy Finn (Cory Monteith) whom she plans to violate before opening night. Blaine seems a bit more perplexed by the situation until he meets resident rogue and sexual predator Sebastian Smythe (Grant Gustin) who is the newest Warbler and wears the navy blue blazer well. Sebastian is a bit of a cad and reminds me a lot of another famous Sebastian of the Manhattan Valmonts who was also devastatingly attractive and morally loose. Sebastian makes a play for Blaine and invites him out to the local gay bar Scandals.

Oh Scandals. Kudos to Glee for getting the small town gay bar so very very right. Atlanta is not really a small town but we have bars exactly like that, ones I used to hang out in quite a bit back in the 90s (Buddies I’m looking at YOU). It was nice to see a gay bar portrayed as something other than a bath house for Abercrombie models with coke addictions for a change. I do wish Kurt had struck up a conversation with the Cher drag queen though. Oh missed opportunities.

Back to the sex. Typically on Glee when fornication is involved things go horribly wrong so when Rachel reveals she decided to give Finn her precious flower to help her acting it was no shock that he responded badly. A drunk Blaine doesn’t fair much better after a night of dancing at Scandals. Poor Sebastian’s plan backfired a bit and sent Blaine running into Kurt’s pants at the end of the night, but when Blaine tries to manhandle Kurt in the car he gets rebuffed and storms off. All this drama was juxtaposed with thoughtfully performed songs from West Side Story, a musical I’ve never really cared for and am not afraid to admit it. Revoke my Gay Card if you must. The interest rate is too high anyway.

The kids weren’t the only ones getting lucky this week though. In one of the weirder subplots we’ve seen on Glee Artie (Kevin McHale) counsels Coach Bieste on her love life and after a pep talk with the hunky coach Cooter from Ohio State he manages to get the two out on a date. I love that Coach Bieste (Dot Marie Jones) is getting some hunky love but the scenario with Artie was just a bit too weird for me. I enjoyed his insecurity about directing to be more compelling by far and his speech about being in a wheelchair was very touching.

Opening night comes and goes with everyone still a virgin, but it isn’t long before the fire in their loins erupts and our favorite McKinley virgins take that very after-school-special next step toward adulthood complete with soft lighting and creative camera angles. When Rachel and Blaine take to the stage for their post-coital performance they are positively glowing with sexual awareness. This pivotal episode stumbled a bit here and there but overall it was good stuff and there was plenty of drama. I really felt for Finn when he had his meltdown after being told his football career was ending in high school. Cory Monteith did a fine job conveying Finn’s sense of hopelessness knowing that Rachel is destined for a bright career on Broadway and he feels his options are gone. Her response that his “dreams are not dead, he just outgrew them” was perfect. And I enjoyed the closure that came with Kurt’s encounter with his former nemesis and newly hatched bear cub Dave Karofsky at Scandals. I hope that isn’t the last we see of Max Adler. The confrontation between Mike Chang (Harry Shum Jr) and his father before opening night seemed a bit out of place though. I get that they needed to explain his Dad’s reaction but it felt a bit like a scene they couldn’t find a place for.

What about the music? I’ve said before West Side Story isn’t one of my favorites but there are some decent songs from it. Blaine and Rachel’s “Tonight” is decent enough given it was performed before their sexual awakening. The Warblers had some fun with Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” but without Blaine on lead it lacked something. The choreography was tight though. The real treat this week was Santana who made “A Boy Like That” and “America” her bitches. Rachel and Blaine rounded out the hour with “One Hand, One Heart” over the foreplay montage.

It is very annoying that this episode is treated as something so controversial and polarizing when teens are having sex on TV all the time in other shows that no one seems to get upset about. I suspect the fact that Glee does pull in a bit younger demographic than they really intended to has something to do with it, but I think the larger issue with concernstipated conservatives is not so much that teens are having sex on Glee but that gay teens are. No one seems at all upset that Puck routinely sleeps with older women while cleaning their pools.

Next week it appears Glee is diving headlong into the rival glee club drama and Puck is making his move on Shelby.

I have to wonder after seeing this most recent episode of Glee if executive producers Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk are too busy with American Horror Story to pay any attention to their singing cash cow. “Pot O Gold” was written by Ali Adler who is new to the Glee team and the ex-girlfriend of Sarah Gilbert and it was a big mess.

The dilemma this week, as with most weeks, is that Sue is still on her tired and at this point ridiculous campaign to cut funding for the arts in school all because she hates Will Schuster’s hair. Some weeks Sue is funny but this was not one of those weeks. Each season she seems to evolve just a little only to be reset back to default settings. I really thought we had broken through a wall with the death of her sister and her seemingly genuine appreciation for what the New Directions did for her, but that is all gone and I am getting bored with her fast.

Also boring but in a different way is the manic schizophrenic bi-polar-esque breakdown of Quinn Fabray. She started out this year as a pink haired skank channeling Betty Rizzo and now she’s back to wearing sweaters and pretending to want to sing while she plots the reacquisition of the baby she gave up for adoption back in season one. Quinn has acknowledged since day one that she doesn’t believe there is any future for her outside of Lima, Ohio but I don’t understand why she wants the baby back so badly and so suddenly. For someone so down on herself she seems strangely confident that she’d be an amazing mother despite having no discernable income to speak of and the only prospects for a man to help out being Puck who only wants to clean pools and doesn’t seem all that into her anyway. But she’s only 17 and teens are stupid! Maybe so, but I don’t buy it. Further adding to this mess is her plan to have Shelby declared unfit. Puck quickly realizes this plan is cray cray and sabotages the plot before it gets out of hand. Oh and he spent half the episode with his shirt off so YAY PUCK!

Speaking of cray cray, Brittany took her special blend of nutty to a whole new level this by believing her new live-in exchange student Roy Flanagan is a leprechaun. I feel bad for Damian McGinty that his introduction to the show after winning The Glee Project was so silly and contrived. The gag was old before the first commercial break and they drug it out for the entire hour! He did get two good songs in though, and the boy can sing. The good news though is that Brittany and Santana are officially dating and I think “officially” means “secretly” in this case. And Santana uses her power over Brittany to lure her into joining Shelby’s all girl show choir The Troubletones. With New Directions splintered Roy gets his chance to shine despite being shoved around the halls of McKinley by jocks with inexplicably epic mullets.

With so little to like about this episode I must give mad props to Burt Hummel. His decision (with some prodding from Will) to run for Congress against Sue was the one plot development to come out of this week that I really enjoyed. I have a good feeling he’ll win which will open up the door for the Hummel’s to leave the show when Kurt graduates at the end of this year. The seed was planted for Finn to take over running the auto shop should Burt head off to Washington which gives Finn a future to grab onto that doesn’t involve going to New York and the basis for some friction with Rachel. Sue in Congress just doesn’t make sense and suffering a landslide defeat to Burt would send her spiraling into another level of madness that could actually be funny.

Now what about the music? Roy’s “Being Green” was a bit sappy for my taste and seemed a little forced, but I’ll cut the kid some slack since he’s new. He really showed his range on “Take Care Of Yourself” even if the song was a bit weird. Blaine’s “Last Friday Night” was fun but crammed into the plot with a shoehorn. I did enjoy Puck’s “Waiting For A Girl Like You” but it wasn’t clear if he was singing to Beth or to Shelby. It could be both I guess. The highlight of the hour was “Candyman” by The Troubletones. Brittany, Santana and Mercedes together are a force of nature and that is just a great song.

Glee returns next week with lots of sex and more boys kissing!