Glee - Vitamin D, or The Terri Invasion

This week's Glee episode followed the tried and true high-school dramady format of the "very special episode". The topic: stimulant abuse. Unlike the classic scare tactics of Saved by the Bell, the message of this week's episode was more along the lines of, "eh, you'll sing really well, and your mentally delayed supplier might be thrown in jail." Not exactly a cautionary tale for the ages, but it's fine.

Will strove to inject some excitement into New Directions by orchestrating a friendly competition between the boys and the girls to see who would decide the opening number at sectionals. Meanwhile, Terri caught wind of Will and Emma's flirtation (care of the despicable and amazing Sue Sylvester) and decided to fill the newly vacated school nurse position. When Finn complained of fatigue, Terri's answer is pseudophedrine. Before we get into the havoc this causes, I want to take a small moment to fawn over the Glee writers for why Finn is so sleepy. Basically, he's stressed: pregnant girlfriend, crush on someone else, captain of the football team, "glee stud", and, to top it all off, school! On any other show, sure, these would all be cause for some serious adolescent stress, but Glee undermines Finn's complaints by having him monologue this whole diatribe over a long shot of Finn playing video games. In Finn's words, "My mom said I was stretched too thin, so I gave up homework, but that didn't help." Glee sharply mocks the common theme of "life is hard for teenagers!" by showing that really, if he wasn't such a layabout slacker, he would probably be fine.

ANYWAY, Terri gave Finn an upper, who then shared it with the other dudes in New Directions so they could perform an awesome mashup of "It's My Life" by Bon Jovi and "Confessions" by Usher. They were pretty great.

Rachel caught on that they were using performance enhancing substances, so got in on the game with a prescription by Nurse Terri, then performed a slightly less exciting mashup about sunshine. Vitamin D, get it! Like the name of the episode!

After the two performances, and Will being totally clueless as to why everyone was so energetic all of a sudden, the principal catches on to the prescription abuse (after poor Howard Bamboo gets taken down by the Feds), and fires Terri. That wouldn't be so bad, but the shocker is that he decides the whole thing was Will's fault for instilling too much competitive spirit into the glee clubbers! Principal's solution? Make the one and only Sue Sylvester co-chair of New Directions.

Basically, I felt like this episode was both an endearing send up of the "after school" special format, as well as a big build up to New Directions under the coaching of Sue. You can tell that Glee is really excited about Sue co-chairing the club, since Hulu interrupted the usually scheduled commercial to show me a "next week on" clip, which they have never done.

Oh, and Emma is going to marry Ken Tanaka, because Terri intimidated her and gave probably the most rational reasoning she's exhibited thus far. The talk boiled down to, "Hey, Will's married. To me. So lay off, and marry the dude who wants to marry you, rather than chasing my dude. Capiche?" Emma did, in fact, capiche, though there were some seriously meaningful glances between Emma and Will after the proposal was accepted.

I'm looking forward to the reign of Coach Sylvester next week!