Glee: Acafellas

Another fine episode of Glee kicks off with Terri serving hamburger casserole (she cautions everyone to watch out for bones) to Will’s visiting parents while Will cheerfully spills the beans about her (sham) pregnancy. Instead of coming clean, Terri commits herself to getting pregnant for real.

At Sue Sylvester’s behest, Quinn and the other mean cheerleaders begin sowing seeds of dissent within the glee club by encouraging Rachel to criticize Will’s awful routine choreography. Rachel urges the glee club to hire famed choreographer Dakota Stanley to come up with a slick new routine for Nationals. Will grows disheartened by this (he even refuses to be mollified by the special star-shaped sugar cookies Rachel baked for him) and starts skipping rehearsals. Finn loses his enthusiasm for the glee club as well and squabbles tediously with Rachel about their unresolved sexual tension. Huh. I like Finn. I like Rachel. They're a couple of cute, likeable kids. And yet their nascent romance bores the snot out of me.

After some impromptu harmonizing while singing “Happy Birthday” to the cold medicine-addicted shop teacher (who accidentally cut off both his thumbs in an antihistamine haze), Will forms an a cappella quartet with some of the other teachers, including Coach Tanaka, who is Emma’s current boyfriend. They toss around a few (awesome) prospective group names like Crescendudes and Testostertones, then settle on the (also awesome) name Acafellas. Impressed by Acafella’s rendition of Bell Biv Devoe’s “Poison”, the school principal invites them to perform at the next PTA meeting. Creepy former glee club coach Sandy (Stephen Tobolowsky) bribes his way into the group by promising to arrange to have singer-songwriter Josh Groban--who’s been looking for a new opening act--show up at the meeting. Two of the Acafellas drop out of the group and are swiftly replaced by Finn and Finn’s loathesome-yet-hot football teammate Puck. (Puck, by the way, was presumably introduced in the pilot that aired in the spring, but must have been largely/entirely MIA last episode, because I have no prior knowledge of Puck. This is a shame. I highly approve of Puck. He’s cute.)

Crazy talented glee club member Mercedes develops a crush on fellow crazy talented glee club member Kurt, who is: a) cute, b) totally flamboyant, and c) not at all receptive to Mercedes’s attentions. Sensing an opportunity to cause further chaos within the group, the cheerleaders encourage Mercedes to pursue Kurt. During a joint glee club-Cheerios car wash to raise money to hire Dakota, Kurt lets Mercedes think he’s romantically interested in Rachel. Mercedes responds by smashing his car window (bad, Mercedes, very bad) and singing a thematically-appropriate rendition of, yes, “Bust Your Windows.”

The glee club hires Dakota, who turns out to be tyrannical and evil. He distributes personalized meal plans to each member and insults and ridicules them. The glee club kids try to quit en masse, until Rachel rallies them with an anecdote about Barbra Streisand’s nose, then fires Dakota. Rachel is sort of a force to be reckoned with.

Acafella performs “I Wanna Sex You Up” at the PTA meeting. Josh Groban does indeed make an appearance, though only to slap creepy Sandy with a restraining order and make a pass on Will’s blowsy, drunken mom.

Sue bawls out the cheerleaders and revokes their tanning privileges for failing in their attempt to destroy the glee club, Quinn shows faint signs of growing a backbone and a soul, Kurt admits to Mercedes that he’s gay, and Will once again contributes his crappy choreography skills to the glee club. So all ends well.