Glee Review: Worth Staying Up For?

I personally dislike post-Super Bowl very special episodes. The temptation to match the hyped up, grand scale, once-a-year event of the football championship itself – in a word, to make it SUPER – tends to lead to over-stuffed, over-hyped plotlines that seldom feel consistent with the tone of the show.  (For me, the only time a post-super bowl show has ever really worked was Alias, in 2003).  So I’m kinda dreading this episode, especially since we’re talking about Ryan Murphy here, who already has a tendency to pull stunts for easy ratings grabs, e.g. the Britney and Madonna episodes.

So, Sue Sylvester is bored.  Not even Cheerios with flaming boobs dancing to “California Gurls” can cheer her up.  Only one thing can: Brittany shot out of cannon for the Regional cheerleading competition.  Brittany might be mortally wounded (and as she put it “I don’t want to die yet. At least not until One Tree Hill get canceled”), but that’s not important, cause did I mention that Sue is bored? When Principal Figgins puts the kibosh on the plan, Sue goes absolutely nuts, for a good 45 seconds of air time.  After throwing things around, or the things she was strong enough to pick up anyway, she acts out by getting the Regionals moved to the same day as the McKinley High’s championship football game.  This forces Santana, Brittany, and Quinn to choose Cheerios. . .or New Directions.

Meanwhile, McKinley’s actual football team, the Titans, aren’t doing so well.  They are falling apart because half the team’s in New Directions and the other half are crazy-ass bullies.  Then there’s Karofsky, the homophobic homosexual who harassed Kurt right out of McKinley and into Dalton Academy and who just can’t stop being an asshole.

So Will hatches a plan — have the football team join Glee.   It’s a foolhardy, crazy plan. . .but just crazy enough to work, right?

Rachel and Puck show the team how it’s done with the Lady Antebellum song, “Need You Now,” and it’s good enough to get the football team misty, although they don’t show it on the outside, of course.  But when they learn that Will wants them to perform a “Thriller”/”Heads Will Roll” mash-up during the halftime of the championship game in a Cheerios replacement performance, they are not exactly, um, cheering. Bieste has to put her foot down, saying do it or else, and they fall in line, and it turns out Karofsky even has a knack for it.  (Cause he’s GAY!  Okay, they don’t say that, but they might as well.)  The team even does a warm-up performance of “She’s Not There” which they nail, and so walk tall down the McKinley halls, head held high, at least until the asshole hockey team throw slushies in their faces.  So they quit New Directions, and, as a consequence, the Titans, too.

Then there’s this awesome rendition of “Bills Bills Bills” by The Warblers.  It serves no purpose, plot-wise, but there’s no way you can have a post-Super Bowl episode and not showcase Darren Criss, is there? Darren Criss totally makes my inner-tween’s heart go pitter-pat.  This number is easily the most entertaining 2 minutes of the episode. Seriously, Dalton Academy deserves its own spin-off.

With half the team off the team, and no self-respecting male McKinley student wanting to be in Glee, the Titans are totally screwed.  So the girls of New Directions decide to join the team.  They shall “play” by lying down on the ground during instead of actually, y’know, playing, so as not to get hurt.  So the Titans?  Still screwed.  They totally lose the championship game.

As if.  Of course they don’t lose.  This is the Glee post-Super Bowl XLV episode, and happy endings are a must (well, unless you’re a Steelers fan).  The non-New Directions football team get a stern pep talk from Puck, and the missing Cheerios get an even sterner one from Finn.  Ultimately, of course, everyone comes around to the awesomeness of Glee, and there’s the much-hyped, spoiled-for-me-by-a-Poptimal-competitor’s-website-three-weeks-ago performance of “Thriller/Heads Will Roll” which was okay, I suppose, but certainly no “Bills Bills Bills.”  So, the Titans win, Karofsky and the boys now respect – or at least get along with -  New Directions, and Quinn, Brittany and Santana choose happiness over popularity; everyone wins, right?

Not so fast.  Because of the Cheerio defection, Sue failed to win her seventh consecutive national cheerleading title.  I’m thinking her anger is going to be a major plot point in upcoming episodes; do you agree?

So, was this episode post-Super Bowl worthy?  Or was it over-hyped nonsense?  (And is there a difference?) After that Dalton Academy number, are you totally ready to pay Darren Criss’s bills?  And how the hell is One Tree Hill still on the air, anyway? Sound off below!

For another take on this episode of Glee, check out Inisia Lewis’s review here.

Season 2, Episode 11: The Sue Sylvester Shuffle (originally aired February 6, 2011)

Tuesdays at 8pm on Fox

Photographs courtesy of Fox and IMDb Pro.