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‘Glee’: The boy is mine

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Super Mario references? A Mercedes and Santana (vocal) showdown? Puck with normal hair?

Look, I gotta be honest with you guys, I could barely contain myself during the entire hour. I was like that loud drunk guy in the bar who won’t shut up. I’m so thankful I live alone because I’m certain I’d make any roommate loathe me on Tuesday nights.

When “Glee” is at its best, you get episodes like this week’s. There were no gimmicks, no over-the-top productions, no unnecessary stars (sorry Molly Shannon). It was just great storytelling and superb finger-snapping music.

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This week was all about the kids, and I was thrilled, to say the least – it gave me the space I need to miss Emma and Will’s drama, and also a much-needed breather from Sue who faced a small case of the “overexposies.” Sue needed to fall back for a week and thankfully she was still around to offer a zinger or two.

A diva has fallen
Rachel suspects that she is carrying the squad on her shoulders, well, pipes - hilarious given that as a diva you’d think she’d like to be front and center. But I underestimated Rachel. She’s a smart diva, which is why she hired the A/V club (I love that these oddballs are getting more shine) to bug the rehearsal room so she can expose them. Sure enough, she was right. However at this point it’s too late because she’s already started to lose her voice, resulting in a comical take on Miley Cyrus’ ‘The Climb.’ Sorry, Miley fans, but at first I thought maybe that’s what the song sounded like at the very beginning, and then I got the joke. Don’t kill me, I’ve only heard the song performed by the country version of Justin Bieber on ‘American Idol,’ and he sounded phenomenal.

Faced with the possibility of having to get her tonsils removed, and the thought of damaging her golden pipes, Rachel is consumed with fear. She panics, and like any good diva she lets herself go (instead of boozing it up, she turns to stuffing her face with cereal and comes to school in pajamas). Finn provides a much-needed reality check to Rachel of how worse it could be when he takes her to see a friend of his -- a football star who got paralyzed after a bad play. Though too-good-to-be-true cheesy, it was the wake-up call Rachel needed to get her confidence back. And while Jesse was away on spring break (with Vocal Adrenaline no less), Finn proved he’s smarter than we give him credit for. He spent the greater part of the episode proving he’s the better man for Rachel, and certainly the better match. His rendition of ‘Jessie’s Girl’ was so good you couldn’t write that off as coincidence. Well, OK, you can. I sense trouble may be back when Jesse returns, albeit more tanned and dreamier. Thankfully Rachel got over her sickness and if you didn’t tear up when she returned to Finn’s buddy to give him singing lessons to the tune of ‘One,’ you don’t have a working pulse in your body.

‘Get ready black girl from glee club whose name I can’t remember right now, the Puckster’s about to make you his.’

Puck finally receives a taste of his own medicine. After having to lose his signature mohawk, for medical reasons, of course, he has lost all of his mojo. Down the drain went his sexiness and street cred and into the dumpster he went. This leads him to want to raise his star power at school. If you’re not familiar with the standards and practices of high school, the quickest way to raise your profile is by dating the most popular girl -- which at McKinley High has become Ms. Rhythm & Blues herself, Mercedes. Puck, who clearly is Top 40, falls flat in his courtship -- ‘you got more curves than a Nissan’ is not how you score a date -- but offered his best performance since that dance (you know the one) in ‘I Wanna Sex You Up,’ when he took on Sammy Davis Jr.’s ‘The Lady is a Tramp.’ Davis is the epitome of cool, suave and debonair, so it was a nice added touch that Puck went the big band route. The song turned into an impromptu duet with a clearly seduced Mercedes. Bravo! Quinn, who is now living with Pucky, gives Mercedes his blessing -- though she offered a great deal of friendly advice. Am I the only one who loves this new-found friendship with Quinn and Mercedes? Quinn is actually, you know, that thing you are toward people you care about?

With Quinn out of the way, Mercedes had to overcome Santana, who doesn’t play with anybody taking her man. Full disclosure, to know me is to know I live for Brandy and when I heard Mercedes and Santana launch into the spoken intro of my favorite duet of all time (yes, all time), ‘The Boy Is Mine,’ I shrieked louder than a lone Powerball winner. It’s the ultimate duet, period. I will fight to the death with anyone who wants to argue otherwise! I love how the girls got into the cattiness of the song toward the end, all as Puck smugly looked on. Perfection. If you’ve never seen two girls fight over a man then you didn’t go to the right high school! Those are the best fights because the girls always have that ‘aha’ moment that the other isn’t the enemy. With Puck feeling like he’s back to bad boy numero uno, Mercedes decides to go back to the way things were and leaves the Cheerios for good. Though she hung up her red and white uniform, she’s still ‘a steaming mug of hot chocolate.’

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‘I thought you were a capital-G gay.’
The toughest story for me to watch this season hasn’t been Quinn’s pregnancy or Terri’s betrayal, it’s been Kurt’s complex relationship with his father. Though his father accepts him being gay (a major hurdle), he can’t help but have a sparked connection with Finn because of their mutual love of sports. Kurt even tried to adapt in the past by joining the football team -- though the only thing that spawned was another fabulous hand-flashing rendition of ‘Single Ladies.’

In an attempt to connect with his father he decides to butch up his image a bit, and goes all lumberjack on us. He wears flannel, bubble vests and grunts his way through a Mellencamp song, which is enough for Brittany to pounce and offer Kurt a chance to ‘hit this’ (the things she gets away with saying; I want to frame everything that spills out of her mouth). Again his father assures him that he’s OK with who he is, though naturally he’s still a bit confused. I hated seeing Kurt change himself, because next to Artie he seems to be the most comfortable with who he is. What is heart-wrenching about the two is how much they love each other, and it always shows. As opposed to showing them connect in other ways (sports is not the end of the world and the players wear stirrup pants), they battle over this primitive notion of sports being the only way a father and son can connect. Does Kurt’s father really like nothing else? Nothing? Kurt’s dad is supportive of him, but doesn’t know how to connect with him. It took Kurt’s heart-stopping take on ‘Rose’s Turn’ for him to finally get the cries for attention his son was sending him. Better late than never.

-- Gerrick D. Kennedy

twitter.com/GerrickKennedy

Photo: Kurt shares a moment with his father. Credit: Fox

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