Glee Review: Learning to Love Yourself, it is the Greatest Love of All.

This week, on an unnecessarily long episode of Glee:

Finn accidentally breaks Rachel’s schnoz, and Rachel subsequently contemplates taking the “rite of passage for Jewish girls,” i.e., a nose job. Rachel discusses it with Glee, suggesting that she might look better with Quinn’s nose.   Will then discusses Rachel’s nose issues while helping Emma polish grapes (I take it this, with Holly’s exit last week, means I’m stuck with Emma), and decides that Glee must learn a lesson about self-acceptance, which, of course, must be done through performance.  Thus, they have to sing songs individually about accepting yourself just the way you are, capped by a group performance of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” wearing t-shirts that showcase the thing s/he is the most ashamed of.  Rachel and Quinn perform a mash-up of TLC’s 1999 hit “Unpretty” and “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story, and it works pretty well, although I wish Lea Michele didn’t have to tone down her gorgeous voice to accommodate Dianna Agron’s decidedly weaker one. Finn performs Sammy Davis Jr.’s “I Gotta Be Me” while dancing, with very little sense of rhythm or style, with Mike Chang. He looks like me the one time I tried a step class.  Still, despite some admirable speeches trying to convince her otherwise, and Finn’s publicly proclaiming her “beautiful” (awwwwww), Rachel decides to get a nose job.

The race for Prom Queen is ON.  Along with Quinn, Santana and Lauren Zizes are in it.  Santana’s strategy is to get Karofsky to apologize to Kurt, which will somehow get the vote of both the jocks and the geeks in her favor, and get Britney back (don’t get how the last one figures, but I’ll go with it).  Between Karofsky’s violent episode last week, and his not-so-subtly checking out Sam’s ass this week, Santana’s gaydar goes off.  So she makes him an offer, after delivering the following speech: “You’re what we call a late in life gay.  You’re going to stay in the closet, get married, get drunk to have relations with your wife, have a couple of kids, maybe become a state senator, or a deacon, and then get caught in the men’s room tapping your foot with some page[.]”  But Santana needs him to be her beard, and he needs her for the same reason, like the Roosevelts.  So she blackmails him.

So Karofsky and Santana tell New Directions that they’ve decided to head up an anti-bullying task force at McKinley.  And they’ve fallen in love.  (Wait, did I miss something?  When did Santana and Sam break up?  Was the trouty mouth thing really that bad?)  New Directions make the appropriate vomiting noises, and then Kurt’s in Principal Figgin’s office with his dad, while Karofsky and Karofsky’s father try and convince them that things will be different.  But, when the two are alone, Kurt gets Karofsky to level with him, and Karofsky comes clean.  And so Kurt decides to come back to McKinley, to support the school’s new anti-bullying campaign, and to start a PFLAG chapter.

As a send-off, the Warblers give a farewell performance, Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know.”  Personally, I would’ve chosen something a little more fun and boy bandy for Darren* to sing, and then, to cap my disappointment, Kurt and Darren don’t even make out again.  Much more poignant is Kurt’s performance upon returning to McKinley, “As If We Never Said Good-bye” from Sunset Boulevard.   While I don’t really think it was necessary to the plot, and totally a reason the episode was 90 minutes instead of a better-paced 60, I don’t have the heart to complain, cause Chris Colfer really performed the crap out of it.

Back to Lauren’s prom queen mission. Quinn is not happy about Lauren’s desire for the crown, and threatens her, saying “You don’t know anything about me.”  But she does!  When Lauren plays, she plays dirty, and some investigative reporting reveals that Quinn Fabray was once Lucy Fabray, a heavy-set, brown-haired girl with zits and a big schnoz.  Lauren, in the meanest thing we’ve seen her do so far, exposes Quinn as a fraud, but it only results in transferring the sympathy vote from Lauren to Quinn.  So it looks like it’s going to be Santana v. Quinn.  Totally looking forward to that catfight.

But wait! What about that nose job?  Can’t happen in an episode about self-acceptance, so it doesn’t, because New Directions organize a flash mob-like performance in honor of the Queen of Self-Acceptance, Barbra Streisand (you thought I was gonna say Lady Gaga, didn’t you?).   Charming, but next time, more singing.

And so, the episode culminates in the aforementioned performance of “Born This Way.”  All perform except Santana, who, wearing her Britney-made “Lebanese” t-shirt, hasn’t quite arrived at self-acceptance yet.  I hope she gets there, cause she’ll be such a better bitch once she’s an honest one.

Oh, and in storylines I don’t really care about, Emma, at Will’s urging, decides to seek therapy for her OCD.

So what did you think?  Are you already missing the Warblers?  Has Glee exhausted the Gaga schtick?  And what was your favorite t-shirt, Britney’s “I’m with stoopid” with the arrow pointing at her head, or Puck’s “I’m with Stupid” with the arrow pointing at his penis?  Let me know below!

* Duckie said it best.

For another take on this week’s episode, check out Right on the Nose by Inisia Lewis.

Season 2, Episode 18: Born This Way (originally aired April 26, 2011)

Glee airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on Fox.

Images courtesy of Adam Rose and Fox.