Recap: "Vitamin D"

The kids are “sleepwalking” through their rehearsals, even though sectionals are just a few bars away. What’s gotten into the team, and how will Mr. Schue get them back in the zone? Meanwhile, Sue plots to destroy Will by stirring up the Will-Terri-Emma-Ken love rectangle… (spoilers after the jump).

Turns out that New Directions is in an easy-sounding bracket for sectionals – the team only has to beat the Dayton School for the Deaf and Jane Adams Academy, a “halfway house for girls just getting out of juvie,” to make it to regionals. (This is the show’s second unkind potshot at deaf teens, although if this is the same fictional school that humiliated McKinley High’s football team, then maybe our heroes shouldn’t celebrate just yet.) Emma and Will decide to hold a guys vs. girls contest to keep the kids motivated, with the winning team choosing the club’s opening number. Finn’s overextended, though, and Quinn’s low on energy what with being preggers and all. Luckily, though, Sue plants marital suspicions in Terri’s mind and convinces her to become the school nurse to spy on Will and Emma, so now the kids have an unlicensed practitioner to help out. It’s okay, though – “it’s a public school.” Her solution for the entire club: Vitamin D! Pseudoephedrine. Suddenly the kids are on top of school and enthusiastic about their extracurriculars. Finn even wants to build a house with Habitat for Humanity. Omg, hooray: it’s like Harvard!

Meanwhile, Quinn is increasingly ostracized for her pregnancy, and Rachel reaches out to her, despite, um, Quinn’s history of drawing porn of Rachel in the bathroom (wtfuck?). Terri decides to neutralize Emma by goading Ken into proposing to the “doe-eyed little harlot.” Emma calls Terri out on her monstrosity (“He deserves a lot better than you.”) and Mrs. Schue fires back (“You’re so innocent that you would steal a man away from his pregnant wife.”) in a verbal catfight that might best last week’s. Terri continues her rampage, finally getting Quinn to agree to giving up her baby but quashing the cheerleader’s extortion attempt. Ken proposes, and it’s a genuinely sweet moment. We’d feel sorry for him … except that Emma says yes.

Eventually, the kids do the right thing, and both teams withdraw from the intraclub competition and confess to their drug usage. Unfortunately, poor Howard, Terri’s stooge and supplier, gets arrested on crystal meth suspicions, and Principal Figgins loses faith in Will and Terri, firing Terri and assigning Sue as glee's new co-chair. Delicious.

Musical Numbers

Mashup: “It’s My Life” by Bon Jovi and “Confessions Part II” by Usher

Well, now we know why Finn seemed so bubbly in the previews. Despite the excess enthusiasm, the number works. The mashup is clever, and the songs resonate with Finn’s need to reclaim control of his life. One of FlyBy’s ongoing concerns is Cory Monteith’s limited vocal range, but he sounds great here. We hope more of his future parts focus on vocal power rather than acrobatics. It’s nice to hear Artie featured again, too, and the energetic choreography makes the smoothest incorporation of the wheelchair we’ve seen so far. All around, a good number.

B+

Mashup: “Halo” by Beyoncé and “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves.

Rachel comes off a little too fierce rather than sunshine-y, and the songs don’t mesh quite as well as in the other mashup, but FlyBy loves the fun sundresses and the bounciness of it. The number skirts the line of being too cute, though. A little more and it could be a Target commercial. And what was up with that last note?

B …but as Rachel points out, maybe my gender makes me biased.

Missing Plotlines

Sue’s Corner

We’re v. happy we got more than a full dose of Sue this week, as we learned that she likes kicking children off her team at random, beef bone smoothies, and hovercrafts. We’re also enjoying the running joke about Will’s alleged perm, although we were shocked at Sue's violence toward a senior citizen. Also, we’re tickled that Sue was born in the Panama Canal Zone and still ran for office twice. Admirable.

Best line of the week: Sue’s description of Emma as “a real floozy and a man eater,” a “mentally-ill ginger pygmy with eyes like a bush baby.”

The Short Version

We realize that the episodes are always about different characters, so we were due for a story focusing on the adults, but they’re just not as fun as the kids. And as usual, way too much happens in one episode, but at least this week it felt like the characters had a little room to breathe. Rachel, Quinn, and Ken all got fleshed out more sympathetically.

Overall: B. Not every episode can be a showstopper, but if Glee settles into having episodes like this one as its baseline (instead of episodes like “Acafellas”), we are so on board.