Glee Ballad Review

Alas, for the first time, Sue Sylvester was completely absent from an episode of Glee. But guess what? The show proved it can still deliver a pretty solid episode, even sans Sue.

The main focus of this episode was Rachel's new crush – on Schue. This began when the two performed "Endless Love" together in the opening scene, which very amusingly proved this show is not precious about its songs. In fact, we barely heard the song, as instead we began to hear the characters thoughts (a gimmick that continued throughout the episode), and learned how just like that, Rachel was seeing Will in a new light. There was some very funny stuff here, as Will realized what the look on Rachel's face meant, and began to literally flee from her as the song continued. I loved hearing him bluntly think, "She looks crazy right now!"

The rest of the episode involved Will doing what he could to stop this crush, including somewhat foolishly involving Emma, the other person at the school infatuated with him. Jayma Mays and Lea Michele were really fun to watch as they both sat beaming at Will, as he sang a mash-up meant to tell Rachel to back off. Though Will, using "Don't Stand So Close to Me"? I don't know, even though you skipped some of the lyrics, the teacher in that song seems to be really struggling with his own feelings about the schoolgirl with a crush, so I'm thinking that's not the best choice.

On a more dramatic note, a lot of this episode dealt with Quinn and Finn, and her attempts to keep her pregnancy a secret from her parents. Finn singing "I'll Stand By You" to the unborn baby he thinks is his was very sweet – while we watched Kurt, still harboring his own huge crush on Finn, doing a lot of projecting.



But what was up with Mercedes? Puck blurted out he was the real dad to her and her response was bizarre and fairly cruel to both Puck and Finn, as she stated that Quinn had chosen who the baby's dad was and that was that. Really? She doesn't think Finn should know he's not really the dad? She doesn't think Puck should be involved, given he actually is the dad? It was a really strange response, and given Mercedes is not generally written to be an unlikable, manipulative person (That's Terri!), I'm not sure how the writers thought this was a justified viewpoint for her.

Things got decidedly heavy near the end of the hour, after Finn revealed to Quinn's parents that she was pregnant – via song of course. We've had plenty of dramatic scenes on Glee so far, but this was definitely the grimmest, with Quinn's father saying some truly hurtful things that left Quinn in tears – all well played by both Dianna Agron as Quinn and the always great Gregg Henry as her father.

The resolution of Rachel's crush involved a nice twist on expectations – we had learned earlier in the episode about Suzie Pepper, the first student to develop obvious feelings for Schue, and throughout the episode, we saw her lurking about, watching Rachel. But rather than go with the obvious, "Stay away from him, he's mine!" take on the material, Pepper instead approached Rachel with the attitude of, "Stay away from him, you'll only end up hurting yourself," in a much more sympathetic way, warning Rachel, "Trust me, I'm a cautionary tale."

I thought we might get some more direct acknowledgement of Kurt's oh-so-obvious crush on Finn by the end of the episode – but then again, Finn's not the quickest guy. The heartfelt conclusion, as everyone sang "Lean on Me" to Finn and Quinn included a funny moment of Kurt miming "Call me" to Finn, during that portion of the song, juxtaposed with Puck earnestly singing the same words towards Quinn in a more straightforward manner – if you'll excuse the term. Though we're obviously far from done dealing with how Kurt is, unfortunately for him, barking up the wrong tree when it comes to who he has a crush on just as much as Rachel was in this episode.

SOURCE: http://tv.ign.com/articles/104/1046748p1.html