Glee Mash-Up Review

Will sure likes his old school hip hop and R&B, doesn't he? This week's episode began with Will performing his "personal favorite song" – "Bust a Move." I have to hand it to Matthew Morrison for just going for it in these sequences. There is of course something completely dorky about seeing this guy perform these songs, but Morrison infuses Will with such enjoyment in what he's doing, he completely sells it. And yes, the guy can dance.

This episode dealt head on with what it is to be cool, or in the case of the Glee club, utterly uncool. Finn and Quinn were quite upset to realize they were suddenly on the low end of the social ladder at their school, marked by the ultimate symbol of being an outcast at McKinley – the slushie facial. Meanwhile, we saw the merciless insults Finn was facing from his football teammates over joining "Homo Explosion."

The "Mash-Up" of the title referred, among other things, to characters like Quinn, Finn and Puck who were mashing together two different worlds by joining Glee. And this continued as Puck romantically pursued Rachel. I loved how casually he asked her if she wanted to make out and how quickly she said, "Sure!" There was something both funny and oddly realistic (or at least, realistic feeling) about the random hook up between these two. What was even funnier was finding out that Puck set out on this course after his mom asked him to find a nice Jewish girl, and as he reasoned, "Rachel was a hot Jew and the good lord wanted me to get into her pants." Mark Salling was very good in this episode, including his first big musical performance on "Sweet Caroline."



Seeing Emma sing "I Could Have Danced All Night" was sweet, though was it just me (or my TV), or was the volume on her vocals a bit unusually loud? I also could have done without Will's line telling her she should sing to help her keep the beat as she danced – come on Glee, you're a musical. Embrace it and just let her sing.

Sue's relationship with anchorman Rod was fun but I kind of wish they hadn't ended it within this single episode – it would have been amusing to see happy, in love Sue a bit longer, before her inevitable return to evil. But kudos to the actor who played Rod, who was perfect as the ultimate cheese anchorman, who spoke in the same overly enthusiastic and enunciated voice on and off camera. He got one of the best lines of the week, after Sue caught him with another woman: "I can't be caged in, Sue. That's why I got my tiger tattoo."

The episode's big Glee-related tension was whether the football players would choose Glee or their team when Ken forced them to come to one or the other. It was actually a nice beat to have Finn be the only one of the team to not choose Glee, though inevitably he did return – after getting Ken to ease up on the one or the other thing.

Meanwhile, the newly enraged Sue threw Quinn off the team – leading to the unusual sight of Dianna Agron not wearing her cheerleader uniform anymore. I'm guessing Agron is happy for the change, though I'm thinking some of the viewers are already missing the uniform…