'Glee'-cap: "We Built This Glee Club"

Raina Deerwater ’16 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but it’s sectionals! Oh boy! That’s right, the big ol’ pre-regionals extravaganza. This year it’s the New Directions vs. Vocal Adrenaline vs. some weird school with birds vs. the patience of everyone still keeping up week to week. If good ol’ McKinley doesn’t win this, there will be no more Glee club. If you think the stakes are too much to handle, remember that win or lose: there will be no more Glee after next week. Now, let out that breath that you’ve been holding.
Spoiler alert: McKinley wins sectionals. It would have been a really great moment of glory if we actually cared at all about any actual members of glee club 3.0, or if the entire plot wasn’t sabotaged by the incredibly overused feud between Will (Matthew Morrison) and Sue (Jane Lynch). After the reveal that the home team won, Sue confesses to Will that she arranged it all this way and their victory was all part of Sue’s plot. There are many problems with this. First of all, she made everyone vomit the day prior so they could “lose a few pounds,” which is incredibly offensive. Secondly, revealing that it was all Sue’s plan took a lot away from the incredible performance of New Directions’. Thirdly, please bury this plot already.
This was possibly the first time this season where the music really stood out. Who knew that poor, sweet, characterless Roderick (Noah Guthrie) could really belt out Hozier’s “Take Me to Church” or that dumb, tone-deaf Spencer (Marshall Williams) would actually swing from a chandelier during Sia’s “Chandelier.” The not-actually-incest-twins also killed “Come Sail Away” with only minimal sexual tension. It made for a surprisingly great performance, and a deserved win. If only the plot didn’t have to bring everyone down. Also, don’t worry Vocal Adrenaline also did a rendition of “We Built this City” so the title of the episode wasn’t unjustified.

“We Built This Glee Club” was actually riddled with surprisingly delightful things. Jesse St. James (Jonathan Groff), who you know from Vocal Adrenaline, Broadway, and the good times of season one, is back in town to convince Rachel (Lea Michele) to follow her dreams. Also to make out with her a bit. The two of them doing a duet to “Listen to Your Heart” was everything Glee viewers have wanted for years. Two seconds of eye contact between Jesse and Rachel contains more sexual tension than the entire time Sam (Chord Overstreet) and Rachel sang on a moving piano. Hopefully the finale is leaning more toward Jesse then Sam. Or Rachel could just be happy on her own? Nah.
The episode concluded with the New Directions and Co. putting away their trophies and feeling sentimental. The three-second flashbacks just made everyone watching wish for a time when the characters were more, you know, characters. Yet, here we are: with the Glee Club winning sectionals, Rachel returning to New York, and everyone’s patience running thin. There is only one thing left to do— conclude this show. Shut the choir room door. Close the piano. Let the curtain fall. Leave the auditorium. Please, Ryan Murphy, release us from this six-year curse. Next week’s series finale will be a double episode, featuring flashbacks, flash forwards, and maybe the demise of humanity.
Overall Episode Grade: C+