Glee Review: A New Direction?

This episode was directed by Eric Stoltz, of Some Kind of Wonderful fame.  I miss ’80s movies.

The members of our favorite glee club are back, and contemplating their futures.  Kurt and Rachel are still resolved to go to NYC following graduation, while Santana plans to model her fierceness after Paula Abdul.  Also, Mercedes is no longer with Sam, but with a husky McKinley athlete with whom she can have cocoa babies.  Meanwhile, poor Finn doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life.  Finn’s scenes suggest that his anxiety about his future will be a future plot point, although with this show’s general disinterest with plot continuity, I’m not counting on it.

Will and Emma are together, but not doin’ it, and that’s all I really want to say about them, hopefully forever. Will is determined to get New Directions to Nationals this year.  First order of business: replace the three members they’ve lost — Sam, Quinn, and Zizes.  His grand plan to attract new members?  Purple pianos.  It’s as genius as it sounds. Rachel’s idea to attract people to choir is to perform in front of the McKinley student body during lunch hour.  They sing “We Got the Beat” and it’s highly entertaining.  I thought Puck’s push-ups on the cafeteria table were particularly impressive, but, as usual, the McKinley students are unimpressed.  Instead of inspiring applause, the performance inspires a food fight.  However, the performance does inspire Sugar Motta, a student with self-diagnosed Asperger’s (so she can say whatever she wants) to try out.  She is very impressed with herself, but is pretty awful, causing Will to struggle with the decision to let her join, since he’s got a philosophy that clubs shouldn’t exclude people.   However, a student with self-diagnosed Asperger’s is too good a character to pass up, so I hope to be seeing her again soon.  Besides, Mike Chang can’t sing, and he’s in New Directions, so I don’t really understand where the club gets off turning down Sugar.

Luckily for us all, Sue still plans on destroying Glee.  This time, it’s part of her anti-arts campaign in a special election for a seat in the Ohio Congress.  She forces Santana to choose loyalties between the Cheerios and New Directions, and enlists her help in destroying the purple pianos.  Santana agrees.  However, Will had decided that he cannot stand this divided loyalty any longer, and kicks Santana out of glee club.  It seemed a bit harsh, honestly, and uncharacteristic of Will, especially in the same episode where Will says that anyone who wants to be a member of the club should be able to join.

Meanwhile, Rachel and Kurt are planning to audition for the New York Academy for the Dramatic Arts (or NYADA, a totally made up college), and decide to go to a meeting of applicants being held at the local Doubletree Inn (an actual hotel).  Kurt and Rachel prepare for their meeting at the Doubletree, and perform “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead.”  It’s an odd song choice — the song barely has emotional heft when sung in the musical, so it seems a particularly bad choice to perform in front of people you want to impress.  When Rachel and Kurt get to the meeting for NYADA applicants, they find a group of students as accomplished and talented as themselves, and are humbled by the experience.  It’s a total reality check, and deservedly so.  The other applicants perform a mash-up of “Anything Goes” and “Anything You Can Do” and it feels lifted directly from a Broadway stage somewhere.  Color me impressed — I actually watched it three times.  Nonetheless, Rachel and Kurt vow to not give up on their dream to get to NYADA.

Also, Kurt’s boyfriend Blaine (in honor of Darren Criss’ adorableness, and the fact that he really is a part of Glee now, I shall declare Blaine a real name [although still not one that normal people should give their children, ever]) has decided to leave the Warblers and join New Directions.  However, he has not joined Kurt and Rachel in their NYC plan, which I find odd.  Darren’s debut McKinley performance is “It’s Not Unusual” out on McKinley’s stairs.  The Cheerios make awesome back-up dancers to his performance, with Santana in particular enjoying herself.  Then Quinn flicks a cigarette and the purple piano goes up in flames.  Personally, I thought it was a great finale, but apparently it was not planned and glee club is taken aback.

Also, Quinn quit glee club, and has adopted a Hayley Williams look over the summer, although I highly doubt that Hayley has a Ryan Seacrest tattoo.  She has left New Directions and the Cheerios for a group of highly stylized social misfits known as the “skanks” and says she won’t look back, so I predict that she’ll be back in both by Episode 4.  The thing is, the longer she’s not in New Directions, the more I realize I don’t miss her.  Really, she’s kind of a useless character.

And that’s pretty much it.  The show closes with “You Can’t Stop the Beat,” which I enjoyed.  Still, nothing in this episode convinces me that Glee‘s third season will be much better than its second.  I’m actually looking forward to these kids graduating — Glee‘s new blood can’t come early enough.

So what did you think?  This episode was heavy on Broadway; did you like that, or do you miss all the Katy Perry?  And will anyone else miss seeing Blaine in his Warblers’ uniform?

For another opinion on this episode, check out You Can’t Stop the Glee by Inisia Lewis.

Season 3, Episode 1: The Purple Piano Project (originally aired September 20, 2011)

Glee airs Tuesdays at 8 ET/PT on Fox.

Images courtesy of Adam Rose and Fox.