Glee

Sigh.

Glee.

Look.

Dot Marie Jones turned in an absolutely beautiful performance as Beiste deals with her abusive husband. I even like the fact there wasn't some easy solution to what is a very difficult and dangerous situation that - despite numerous country songs to the contrary - doesn't lend itself to simple feel-good answers delivered in rhyme.

But it doesn't change the fact that we haven't seen either Beiste or Cooter in months. Months!

How? Am I supposed to invest in characters that vanish like that? Is there a dartboard in the writers' room and they just give it a toss to see who gets to be on the show this week?

I'm not going to get so melodramatic as to claim that Glee is like an abusive relationship. Where it lures me in with promises to reform and then shatters my hopes and dreams in a violent burst of sequins. (I have some sense of the absurd.)

But I'm obviously not getting what I want out of this show.

I want a dense, multi-layered, tightly woven, serialized story that effortlessly mixes humor and drama while building slowly to a perfectly timed end of the season pay-off.

Glee wants to throw things at the screen and see what sticks.

Hell. I can get that from Ringer.

While we do all share an appreciation for the shiny, I'm going to need a little more than Chris Colfer dancing manically on top of a piano in a pair of gold pants as Whoopi Goldberg glowers on from beneath her turban.

I think... I think we're coming to a good stopping point.

The end of the season makes three years and that's long enough. The first group of characters will have graduated, so it's a clean break - despite what I could criticize as unwise attempts to keep them around - no. Not my problem.

Someone else can watch season four. Lots of someones if the ratings are any indication.

I'll just sit here. Alone. In the dark. Thinking to myself that the turtleneck really should have been a warning sign that Cooter was up to no good.

Spanish Teacher

Do they even have tenure positions at the high school level? I suppose I always assumed that was a university thing.

Yeah. Cuz that's what's important here.

What's important here is that Ricky Martin has really nice arms and in all the attention being paid to his teeth and hips no one pointed out what really nice arms he has. So it falls to me: Ricky Martin has really nice arms.

I liked this episode because Martin brought a lot of fun to it. Kind of like Gwyneth Paltrow's first couple of guest turns. They both just looked like they were enjoying themselves and I responded to that by enjoying their performances.

The actual song selection was a bit of a mixed bag, but I loved the Gloria Estefan / Enrique Eglasias numbers that Mercedes and Sam were singing. And La Isla Bonita was a hit.

Will's Matador Elvis was wrong in all the right ways. I mean it is wrong in "OMG He is not really wearing that?" kind of way. And I love that Santana's arguments were so very good and knocked the well-meaning not-thought-out wind right out Will. (I like it when he's not the source of all wisdom; he's more human.)

Santana's right. Teaching is the thing Will does so that he can do glee club, but that doesn't mean he should neglect his responsibilities. And in that sense, "A Little Less Conversation" was exactly right. It was a glee club performance - which is what Will is good at.

Finally, I am eternally grateful to Coach Bieste for introducing the term "jiggles and bits" into my vocabulary.

Yes/No

Just about everything in this episode would have worked better if the series didn't have the habit of dropping storylines for months on end.

It was a sweet story for Will and Emma. They drag out everything they can do make us think that Emma might say 'no' and I wasn't sure because she could have always pulled out the "What you said to convince yourself convinced me and now you're sure and I'm not" routine. But then every one of his students might have drowned themselves and that would have been messy so I'm glad she accepted the proposal.

Finn and Rachel. Finn's issues have always had to do with his leadership and his drive to prove himself. I have to admit that when Finn announced that he was joining the army, all I could think was that I'd only support that move if he and Rachel got to sing "Do It for Your Country" from Grease 2.

As it was, the moment with Finn's mother was really powerful. That totally rocked the poor boy. I don't think that the answer is to get married straight out of high school, but I can see where Finn thinks he's coming from.

Of course, Rachel isn't likely to say 'yes'. At least, I hope she doesn't say yes. I can't imagine her thinking she can get married and have her Broadway dreams. She's smarter than that, right? But maybe she's feeling low after missing out on the college she wanted. But to buy into that I  have to believe that Rachel didn't have a backup college.

It's a common - yet very annoying - TV story angle to only let characters apply to one college because then you can have such drama when they get rejected. Gossip Girl pulled out the same thing with Blair Waldorf. Like there aren't two hundred schools in New York. Or Rachel and Kurt couldn't pick one school as freshmen and then transfer somewhere else a year later. Or just hit the audition circuit like everyone else on the planet.

In this case, it's necessary to explain why Rachel and Kurt don't go to New York like they've been talking about for years because they have to still be in Ohio next year. So that one school doesn't get back to them and their dreams are crushed and the actors stay on contract. I kind of wish they'd just graduate and then move on to the next generation.

I know everyone's got their favorites (I'm going to be bummed if Blaine ever leaves) but clinging to the stars beyond the natural end of their characters' story isn't a solution. They just wind up over-staying their welcome and making everyone thoroughly sick and tired of seeing their too old for high school faces hanging around. And they already have a problem with cast bloat on this series. Let people go and refocus on the more neglected characters coming up behind them.

But that's a big picture thing. I did like this episode for what it was. I liked Will and Emma. I liked the song choices. Becky insulted Puck's hair and Sue was relatively restrained yet still mocked Artie's driving gloves. It's the little things that make me happy.

And there's this: "I bet you had to overcome a lot with those crooked nipples."

Which will never not be funny.