Funeral

Glee Episode Review

In which Sue loses her family. Glee tugs the heart-strings to good effect while serving of Snarky Jesse Goodness on the side.

What Happened

Will finds out that Sue dropped Becky from the Cheerios and blasts her as insensitive. Sue explains that Becky reminds her of her sister Jean - who died the night before. When the Glee Club hears about her loss, Kurt and Finn decide to organize the memorial service for Jean.

After Jean's funeral, Finn breaks up with Quinn, saying that he just can't let go of Rachel. But when he goes to find her, Rachel has already accepted Jesse's apology and Finn feels that he's lost his chance.

Jesse hires on as a Glee Club consultant and proposes that Will chose the club's best soloist and build the Nationals performance around them. Kurt, Mercedes, Santana and Rachel audition. After watching the kids, however - and despite Jesse's urging - Will decides that he won't feature a soloist. They'll perform as a team.

The Good

• Jesse deflating everyone's ego but his own.

The Better

• Mercedes solo. Wow.
• Rachel's solo. I'm not the biggest Barbra fan, but she sold the hell out that song.

The Best

• Sue and Will's scene in the lunchroom and her scene with Finn and Kurt in her office. Perfectly played by Jane Lynch to keep Sue hard, while still showing how much pain she was in.

What Did I Think?

And we've swung back to Sue as human vs. Sue as cartoon character. In the episodes I've seen (I missed a group in February/March), Sue has been getting more and more ridiculous.

It is nice to see her closer to the Sue of Season 1. As silly as interogating Artie was in "Prom Queen," it came out of the events of the episode instead of being tacked on scheming in the background. And it placed Sue in her role as an educator - something we haven't seen much of recently. Here, her story is sudden but heartfelt. The relationship with her sister and with Becky always softened Sue up - even when it came to Will. I'd like to see more of that balance to her character next season.

At this point, it was almost necessary to do something drastic with the character. My over-riding image of Sue from Season 2 is her as Grinch - a caricature in other words. Even when the plots made sense (like when she lost at Regionals because Brittany wouldn't get in the human cannon) the stories were not really followed up on and Sue seemed shuffled into the background.

The recent storyline with the Legion of Doom really didn't seem to go anywhere. Sue would show up, yell, vanish, then show up at the end and complained that her minions had failed. (Of course they failed. They're minions. That's what minions do.) It was just the cap on a season that seemed to find Sue constantly repeating herself and never getting anywhere.

Jean's funeral itself was sweet and touching. I liked how they pulled in Will, Finn and Kurt. They even used it as a way of moving Finn forward in his triangle with Quinn and Rachel while continuing his own personal theme of leadership.

Jesse was the other story going on. Like Sue, he has such a way around an insult. But I got the feeling Jesse really meant it when he said he felt bad about Rachel. I can almost picture him leading her down the path of narcissism, but I imagine Finn will win her back in the season finale and Jesse will have to waft off to future stardom elsewhere. Oh well.