Last week’s Madonna-fueled Glee episode was all about power: Owning every situation, having power over one’s body and gender equality. This week, Glee showed a softer side. Each and every character — and both of the show’s two larger groups (New Directions and the Cheerios!) — struggled with the idea of “home.” In this episode, the music took an appropriate sideline to the plot and returned to what Glee did when it captured everyone’s attention with the original pilot episode: Using songs with specifically-chosen lyrics to add emotional layers and nuance to the episode.
While some recaps will argue that the “Madonna” episode was the best of the season (and I’ll agree that if we’re talking straight-up choreography, glitz and costumes, it may very well be), “Home” will stand out as the episode that showed Glee‘s return to the form that won it an Emmy and a Golden Globe this year. Here’s why:
Finn: He may be the quarterback and erstwhile Mr. Popular, but no one will ever argue that Finn Hudson was first in line when intelligence was handed out. I always love episodes that focus on Cory Monteith’s character going through a process of self-discovery and personal growth since his character is so, well, dense, the transformation becomes such a growing moment on the screen — even if we have to watch it in the sometimes cheesy form of him singing to an urn or a sonogram — to that almost every viewer can relate.
This week, Finn struggled with the concept of “home” as something that is temporal, not situational, when the idea of home that he knew for the past 15 years was threatened. In the end, of course, it’s Kurt who puts his own feelings aside (and on the line) to help his crush realize that, “A chair is still a chair, even when there’s no one sitting there. But a chair is not a house, and a house is not a home.”
Finn realizes he’s been clinging to vestiges of the past, and the remnants of the father he lost over 15 years ago. “We don’t need anymore ghosts,” his mother tells him, “We need a family; a home.” Homes are created by people, not things. In the end, he symbolically moves the urn containing his father’s ashes off of his recliner to allow his mother’s new boyfriend to sit there. Oh, Glee, you do tug at our heart strings.
Quinn: We haven’t seen that much of Quinn this season, so there must be a Q-centered episode in the pipeline. The theme of this episode did have me wondering where she’s been living, though, because when the show left off on the Quinn-Finn plot line last season, she had moved in with him after her parents threw her out when she told them she was pregnant. After, Finn broke up with her once the whole “You are not the father” issue came into light; however, the writers never resolved the whole “Where’s Quinn been staying these days?” issue. But I digress…
Quinn played an unlikely source of comfort to an unlikely ally in this episode. After Mercedes ends up in the nurse’s office when she starves herself to meet Coach Sylvester’s ridiculous weight demands, Quinn kindly offers her a granola bar and this touching speech that will hopefully help teens watching the show think twice about any eating issues they may have:
“I was you; hating myself for eating a cookie. When you start eating for somebody else so that they can grow and be healthy, your relationship to food changes. I realized that if I’m so willing to eat right to take care of this baby, why am I not willing to do it to take care of myself?”
Mercedes: Last week, Kurt and Mercedes took control of their “careers” at McKinley High when they told Mr. Schuester they were unhappy with the amount of solos they’d been getting in glee club songs. This week, however, Coach Sylvester sent the normally happy and confident Mercedes into a crazy spiral of self-loathing and body dysmorphia when she told her to drop 10 pounds and wear a Cheerios! skirt or get cut from the squad. Desperate to fit in, she goes on the Brittany and Santana-recommended “Sue Sylvester Master Cleanse” (Sometimes, Brittany “adds sand.”) and then just stops eating entirely.
After Quinn helps Mercedes realize how she’s betrayed herself and her former self-confidence, Mercedes, too, offers up an inspiring speech at the pep rally Coach Sylvester organizes for the “Splits Magazine” reporter.
“Cheerios is about perfection, winning, looking hot and being popular. But I think that it should be about something different. How many of you at this school feel fat? How many of you feel like you’re not worth very much? That you’re ugly; that you have too many pimples and not enough friends? Well, I’ve felt all those things about myself at one time or another. Hell, I’ve felt all those things about myself today. And that just ain’t right!”
Then, Mercedes launches into a performance of Christina Aguilera‘s “Beautiful” and invites the entire school to come join her if they feel like it. Quinn is the first to join her.
Will and April: As promised, Kristin Chenoweth and her powerful pipes were back this week. After delivering some great one-liners (“Will Schuester, as I live and breathe, I just had a sex dream about you.”), we find out that April is also searching for a new home. What she’s really looking for, though, is a secure place in the world. She possesses loads of natural talent, but she’s never been comfortable with how to use it, which is why she turns to alcohol, affairs and has lost all ambition.
In this episode, she and Will come to each others’ aid. April offers to sublet his apartment and ends up providing Will with some temporary comfort in his empty home for the night, and Mr. Schuester finally sends April Rhodes off to Broadway to be the star she was always intended to be. The episode ends with April singing “Home” from The Wiz, which is the very show she’s off to stage on the Great White Way.
New Directions: As usual, it was Sue who set the glee club spiraling out of their usual orbit this week when she displaced them from their rehearsal “home” in the auditorium. They expressed their usual unhappiness with the situation, but Mr. Schuester fired back with his usual defense: “My hands are tied.” This time, however, they found an unlikely savior in April. After Will helped her find out where she would make her new home, she bought the glee club a permanent home (the auditorium), but in true April style, she jazzed up the name: the April Rhodes Civic Pavilion.
Sue: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Sue’s lucky, serendipitous, stars-aligning, “is there no such thing as karma?” plot line in this episode (seriously, I know she’s one of those characters you love to hate, but come on, surely she must get her comeuppance eventually!?) since it was basically the crux for most of the non-Kurt/Finn-related story arcs. Finally, a journalist came to investigate her lying, manipulative, perfectionist ways only to have Mercedes “Beautiful” performance make her come off to the reporter like the anti-Sue who gives people of all shapes and sizes a chance.
Next week: After this week’s trip to Serioustown, Glee picks up again next week when the school is hit with the “G-List.” That’s right, a ranking of the glee club members according to hotness. Olivia Newton-John guest stars (and “Get[s] Physical,” for sure) and the episode is called “Bad Reputation.” I’m going to save everyone some time: The answer is always Puck.
Photo courtesy of FOX.com.