Glee: The Role You Were Born to Play (#4.5)

Mike and Mercedes!!!!!!  That was the first "glee"-ful moment of the episode, after my beloved Blaine showed up and broke my heart with my favorite Grease song.  And while the treasured (and wildly overexposed) 1978 musical has never been my cup-of-tea, I'm just so psyched to have Glee back in my life, I will take what I can get.

And what I can get is, after some moping from Finn (seriously, dude, figure it out-we all have setbacks in life-suck it up and figure out what your next step is), the episode started out right, with Blaine inexplicably dropping out of the lead of the musical, and instead wanting a smaller part, or none at all.  I should point out right now that, while this aired two days ago, I'm still doing a live blog of sorts, writing as the episode goes on, a first for me.  I figured it would be something fun to try, and since my computer is in the living room due to the election (a write-up of which will hit this weekend, along with a Skyfall review and probably an American Horror Story recap, if I can figure out why my TiVo didn't record it this week), I thought there was no time like the present.  If I like what turns out, I will try it again sometime (maybe with AHS), and if it sucks, well, we'll be back to the old format before one of those couples reunite.

So, after we briefly had a look at Mercedes and Mike (and, since I'm writing as I go, I will point out right now that I had better see more of them and learn more about what they've been up to later in the episode), we got perhaps the best moment from Marley and Unique so far this season-I am a HUGE fan of Pink, and I think this may be the first time the show has covered her (correct me in the comments if I'm wrong), and I love the energy here.

Finn suddenly found some random hot dude (who looks like a young, shaggy-haired Aaron Tveit).  And naturally, he's able to sing, and before they even meet, you just can tell that he's going to be the third leg in the Marley-Jake inevitable love triangle (yes, after two scenes, I'm realizing he's going to come back in a future episode, and I will have to learn his name).  Quick google search-Ryder Lynn (a moniker you could only find on television).

The show continued its jukebox of this past summer's biggest hits with Neon Trees' "Everybody Talks," which was the first time that Kitty sang on the show, and she's not bad (clearly, everyone on this show has to do a vocal audition, so you knew this was coming).  It was beyond stupid for Jake to do the audition with her, since clearly that was going to make Marley jealous and drive her to Ryder (come on Ryan Murphy, let's not go with the completely predictable).  From there we segway into the casting decisions, where the wonderfully missed additions of Mike and Mercedes made for some brilliant banter (gotta love the Julie Taymor shout-out), and the inevitable Sue-Finn showdown, where Finn, after taking the progressive high ground on casting Unique as Rizzo, called Sue's baby "retarded," a moment that rings hollow for two reasons: 1) Finn, after the coming-of-age Season 1, has never been politically incorrect and the slur seemed wildly out-of-character and 2) while the word he used was indefensible, Sue is the biggest of hypocrites if she gets mad about this (and she will, which means this is really just lazy writing), as she has spent the past four seasons espousing every bigoted trope in the book.  But, off the rant-Mike and Tina are onscreen together for the first time this season!

Okay, that was a little disappointing-are we ever going to figure out what caused that breakup?  Please tell me I'll know by the end of this recap (on edit: I didn't find this out)!  The "Hand Jive' sequence was one of those suspend belief sort of situations for Glee-I'll buy that Kitty, head Cheerio, can do those moves without much practice, and I suppose they CYA'd with Ryder's end zone dances, but Marley and Jake were magically born to pull off backflips and do perfect choreography in their first attempt at the song?  I don't think so.  And while I suspect that Ryder and Marley will get the Danny and Sandy parts, Kitty's interlocking cartwheel (or whatever that was) with Ryder was crazy awesome.  She may be insufferable, but that girl has moves.

And I was right, and Kitty as Patty Simcox actually makes a lot of sense now that I think about it.  I sometimes wonder whether the writer's room likes writing Sue's rants or Kitty's rants more, but I have to say, since it's the story line I'm largely skipping over (like how I used to fast forward through the Dawson-Joey scenes on the Creek to get to the Jack-and-Jen parts), that my favorite would be the nonsensical metaphors of Coach Beiste.  I have no idea what half of them mean, but damn if Dot-Marie Jones can't sell them all.

I will mention that the whole Emma-Will drifting apart plot seems to be a lazy way to cope with a contract dispute, but couldn't they have made it a more believable quick cut separation rather than drawing it out?

All right, that's about it for me (Finn replacing Will seemed to be coming the second the episode started).  So, what'd you think of the episode (and this recap)?  What are your thoughts on Kitty and Ryder, the newest additions to the Glee club (they haven't joined, but you can feel it coming)?  And what do you think really happened between Mike and Tina?