Sue asks for the glee club setlist. Schue agrees to give her a copy even though he thought she wasn’t interested in glee club anymore and I was pretty sure he already gave it to her anyway.
Schue suspects Sue is up to something. There’s not really anything from that one thing she just said to be suspicious of, but it’s Sue, so Schue is always suspicious.
You can’t tell from this screencap but Rachel is having a really hard time keeping up with the dancing. Everyone else is pretty good. But for someone who’s been been winning dance competitions since she was two, she sure is an awful dancer.
Anyway, Brittany is filming the rehearsal with her phone, or taking a picture of it, and when Schue asks what she’s doing, she says “Coach Sylvester didn’t tell me to do this.” Brittany’s dumb.
Then later, Sue asks Schue for the names of the schools they’re competing against and their zip codes because they don’t have Google in Ohio.
Schue suspects that Sue is leaking the set list to the other schools. So, I know this is for drama, and maybe it’s different for choir competitions, but when I was in band, typically the set list had to be submitted at least a month before competition. On top of that, there was a list of songs we were allowed to work from. And sometimes other bands would have a song in common with us, and that sucked, but it wasn’t the end of the world. And I mean, we usually went last or second-to-last because the bands perform in order of size from smallest to largest, so it was ALWAYS like “oh crap, the band RIGHT BEFORE US played one of the songs in our set, we have to do ours EXTREMELY WELL now.”
Schue heads to the other schools to talk to them. First up is Jane Addams Academy for Girls or whatever, which is all full of delinquent students. There are security guards and metal detectors at the front entrance! Haha that’s meant to show how dangerous and underprivileged the school is but a lot of schools have started doing that lately because, you know, school shootings.
The school’s principal (or the choir director?), played by rapper Eve, takes Schue’s words to mean he’s accusing them of cheating. She basically says they have too much honor for that, and also they’re so poor they don’t have costumes or an auditorium, and also she had spies at New Directions’ invitational thing and thinks her group can beat them anyway, even without cheating. Schue’s like “Okay, well you can use our auditorium to practice.”
If they’re too poor for costumes, what are those things they’re wearing now? I guess maybe those are all homebought things or something? New Directions has to use all the costumes that the school already head but fortunately everything is super stylish and manages to fit every member perfectly, so that’s nice.
Also I seem to remember someone complaining that this Jane Addams Academy was racist because it was all full of black girls. Looking at the screenshot, I see three black girls, and the rest of them appear to be white. So, yeah.
They sing Destiny Child’s “Bootylicious”. There’s a ot of slow-mo focused on the girls’ hair – particularly this one girl has a huge afro and it’s spectacular. The girl playing piano in the band has hair that goes down to her THIGHS for pete’s sake.
They all leave at the end of the song even though Schue had earlier said they were going to have a “scrimmage” which implies New Directions would also have performed.
Rachel dispenses some unwarranted advice to Schue. There’s no need to worry, she says. What those girls were doing was called “hairography”, which was not a thing until Glee invented it. She says it’s when a group uses the hair to glamorize people into not realizing how bad their performance was. Their vocals were nothing special and their dancing was subpar. Their dancing was a little off, but the singing was pretty good.
So Schue takes Rachel’s words to heart and decides not to let the Jane Addams girls’ fabulous tresses distract him from his own glee club’s talents.
I’m just kidding he buys wigs for all the boys in the the group so they can perform “Hair” from the musical “Hair.”
Puck looks fabulous.
Meanwhile, Quinn is having doubts about what she should do about the baby. I can see why she might want to keep now that she’s been kicked out of her home and is living in a small house with her boyfriend who is not the father and his poor (as in, not wealthy) single mother. That’s the PERFECT environment in which to raise a child that you’ve already agreed to give to someone else.
Well, Quinn goes on to say that she’s thinking maybe the problem isn’t that she didn’t want to keep the baby, it’s that she didn’t want to keep it with Finn. She wants to spend more time with Puck, the real father, but she knows Finn will freak out if he sees them spending time together. I don’t really know why since it’s not like he’s got fresh memories of being cheated on by Quinn who hooked up with Puck or anything. I mean, that’s what happened, but he doesn’t know that.
So Quinn asks Kurt to give Rachel a makeover so that Rachel will be attractive enough to properly distract Finn. Kurt hates Rachel, and knows it’ll be a challenge to make her look nice (“Rachel somehow manages to dress like a grandmother and a toddler at the same time”). Quinn convinces him by suggesting that the judges as Sectionals might see her and want to take her down a peg or two.
I don’t really get that – the judges will see a girl who dresses like a toddler and a grandmother at the same time and want to knock her down a peg? I’d give her sympathy points.
Terri and Schue are going to bed even though it’s clearly still daytime outside – which is especially weird because I’d have assumed this was an interior set and not an actual house so there SHOULDN’T be daylight coming through the window.
Schue touches Terri, who freaks out. Schue just wants to be intimate with his wife. Terri says “No, you’re trying to have sex!” Terri can’t have sex with Schue, remember, because she’s wearing a fake baby bump and Schue would probably notice that if they were naked together. Terri tells him if he really wanted to be intimate, then he’d ask her how she felt about being pregnant. Schue says she’s right, and apologizes.
Terri has a voiceover monologue, and it’s one that really makes me wonder how anyone can dislike Terri or think she’s evil. She feels awful for lying to Will, see? She really does want to start a family with him, and the only reason she started lying to begin with was to give them a chance. If you’ll recall, she did actually think she was pregnant at one point, and part of why she’s been lying and super crazy is because she thinks Will is drifting off from her, getting distracted by that doe-eyed guidance counselor – which he is.
Terri just needs to buy herself some time for some reason (she doesn’t explain what the time is for – is it just so she can get him to leave her stomach alone until the baby’s born?), so she decides to find a proper distraction for Will. What she needs to do is give Rachel a makeover and – oh no, wait.
Rachel asks Kurt why he volunteered to give her a makeover. Kurt, who appears to be wearing a pseudo-bolo tie, says it’s to distract from her horrible personality.
Somehow they get talking about boys, and Rachel reveals she likes Finn. Kurt likes Finn as well, so this is unacceptable. He tells Rachel that Finn is super attracted to loose women, so he’s going to make her over to look like Sandy at the end of Grease.
Meanwhile, Terri bought an old car off eBay. It’s the same model as the car Schue owned when he was in high school, and it’s super beat up, so it’s a nice project to distract Schue from wanting to sex up his wife.
Kendra and Quinn show up and have to hide really quick before Schue notices. Terri sends Schue to get frozen yogurt and asks what the heck Quinn is doing there unannounced.
Turns out Quinn is keeping the baby. I think it kind of looks like Quinn is Terri’s daughter in that screenshot, and Kendra is the crazy aunt, and like someone off-screen just revealed that Quinn was the one who cheated on the test or something, and so Terri and Kendra are looking at her like “A-bwuhhh??”
Speaking of “a-bwuhhh???”
The director for the deaf school’s show choir is angry at Schue for only inviting the Jane Addams girls to have a scrimmage at McKinley. The director is deaf in one ear so he can’t understand a lot of what Schue is saying. Also the director is played by one of the glee writers, who has the distinction of having written some of the worst episodes in the entire show.
But Schue agrees to let the Haberbrook or Haverbrook choir kids perform at McKinley.
What the heck, the tops of everyone’s heads are cut off.
Rachel, whose clothing is definitely not dress code-appropriate, asks Finn if he wants to rehearse for the Hair number. Finn is like “duhhhhhhhh boobs” or something, but he agrees. Kurt says it’s on to phase 2 of their makeover mission.
Schue confronts Sue for her leaking the setlist or whatever. And she says she’s going to cut “Hair” if it’s on the list.
Finn is over at Rachel’s house to practice that hairography stuff. They decide to practice to “You’re the One That I Want” from Grease, like they performed several episodes ago. Rachel looks like a sad clown hooker, which is literally what Finn says and the term I use to refer to Rachel’s season 4 makeover.
Rachel says she thought he’d like it, and Finn mentions it’s funny because Kurt was just asking him the week before what kind of girl he likes. Finn said basically the opposite of Rachel’s sad clown hooker look. I knew that Kurt was up to something!
Later or meanwhile, Puck and Quinn are babysitting Kendra’s three demon ginger children. This is Kendra’s doing, as a means to convince Quinn that children are awful and she doesn’t want to keep hers.
Quinn and Puck perform “Papa Don’t Preach” and the kids totally calm down.
Not only that, but they manage to get the kids to take a bath and go to bed early.
Kendra’s husband asks Schue what he’s going to do when the baby comes since his new car won’t fit a carseat. And Quinn just barely wonders about Puck texting someone the whole night. Yaay, scene.
Rachel confronts Kurt about setting her up to be a fool. Kurt’s just like “Well what’s the big deal, we all know you’re just a second choice.” Rachel points out that no matter which place she’s in, she’d still be ahead of Kurt because she’s a girl. Kurt then says it doesn’t matter because Finn only has eyes for Quinn. Except if Rachel had stayed dressed in that cleavage-popping dress from earlier she probably could’ve gotten Finn to rob a bank for her.
The New Directions – which sounds like “Nude Erections” when Schue introduces them – perform a mashup of “Hair” and Beyonce’s “Crazy In Love”, which is relevant right now because of its use in the 50 Shades of Grey trailer, which is the CREEPIEST freaking trailer I’ve ever seen. Worse than any horror movie. For real.
The deaf kids are unimpressed by this performance.
The deaf choir performs John Lennon’s “Imagine”. They all sign the song, with only one kid actually singing – since, you know, they’re deaf.
Then Mercedes starts singing “Imagine” with them, and the other kids join in and go up to sing and sign with the deaf choir, which pretends to be a really sweet and touching moment but is actually incredibly rude if you think about it.
I think it would’ve been sweeter if New Directions hadn’t sung at all but just went up to learn how to sign the song and left the one kid to sing by himself. But I guess that wouldn’t have made for a very marketable song.
But Schue, Brad the pianist, and the deaf choir director guy are all moved.
I love how the sign for “applause” is the same thing as jazz hands.
By the way, I can’t speak the whole choir, but at least some of those kids were definitely deaf or hearing impaired. You could see a few of them had hearing aids. I guess it probably was easier to hire a bunch of hearing impaired people who already knew sign language than to just hire any extras they could and go through the trouble of teaching sign language to all of them. Plus I guess it’s nice to have actual deaf and hearing impaired people playing deaf and hearing impaired students.
Also it turns out Puck was sexting Santana during the babysitting… during the babysit. Quinn is furious, but Puck is all “I’m a man! I have needs!”
So Quinn decides to give the baby to Terri. The baby needs a good father, and she thinks Schue will be a good father.
Schue comes home unexpectedly early. Terri explains Quinn’s presence by claiming they’re exchanging pregnancy war stories. Schue has a surprise, but before he can show it to Terri, Quinn hugs him.
And the surprise is that Schue sold the car and bought a minivan. Aw, man. Schue.
Later, Finn confesses to Quinn that he spent time at Rachel’s house when Quinn was babysitting. Quinn is obviously hurt, even though her whole plan from the beginning was to distract Finn with Rachel. But she forgives Finn, possibly because she remembered her whole plan from the beginning was… yeah.
They walk off, arm in arm. Rachel and Kurt see them and are sad.
Kurt, surprisingly, waves at Rachel, perhaps feeling united by their shared pain.
Schue hands over the new setlist to Sue. It’s got Proud Mary, Don’t Stop Believin, and a new song, because sectionals is in two weeks so it’s the PERFECT time to add a new song to the setlist. Sue, unsurprisingly, tells Eve and the deaf choir about Schue’s setlist, and says she’s going to pull strings and make sure New Directions goes last so it looks like they stole the songs from the other groups! That’s so dumb. I mean, obviously if everyone does Proud Mary in wheelchairs that’ll look weird, but I wouldn’t assume that a group stole a setlist from another group just because they’re going last. And actually, like I was saying before, that would be a great opportunity if used right. They’d just have to make sure they do way better than the other schools.
The third song is True Colors, which they sing on stools to get away from the hairography nonsense. Tina actually is the lead solo on this song, and even more surprisingly, there wasn’t a scene where Rachel complained endlessly about Schue always giving everyone else the breaks but she’s totally a team player even though she always complains when anyone else gets a solo.
Also didn’t they already decide to have Defying Gravity and Last Name and like 3 other songs on their setlist in addition to Don’t Stop Believin and Proud Mary?
OH well.
Song count: 58 total performances / 44 full-length performances
Best: Pfff, well… I guess Papa Don’t Preach. It was simple – just Quinn’s voice and Puck’s guitar – and it fit with Dianna Aggron’s voice really well.
Worst: Oh god, umm… Hair/Crazy In Love. All the hair tossing was dumb, and those songs don’t really mashup all that well. The thing is, that was the point. Apparently they intentionally made the mashup bad. But according to the guy who does the music arrangements for this show, well, obviously the mashup couldn’t be ear-splittingly bad, but he said however awful you thought that mashup was, that was actually the best one they made. They made some other Hair/Crazy In Love mashups that were somehow even worse than that.
Notes: Apparently this episode was supposed to include Mercedes singing “Don’t Make Me Over”. There were a few instrumental cues of the song, but no one actually sang it. But they DID release the full vocal cover on the “Glee: The Music, Volume 2″ set. It’s a pretty good cover, as most Amber Riley/Mercedes covers are. BUT since there were NO vocals of it featured in this episode, it’s not in the song count. But you can listen to it here unless a bot takes the video down:
