Previously on Glee, Rachel landed the roll of Fannie Brice in the Broadway revival of Funny Girl; Santana landed a Yeast-i-Stat commercial (“I like yeast in my bagel, but not in my muffin.”), Elliot Starchild landed a spot in Kurt‘s band, Sam landed a meeting with Tyra Banks (“My junk is as big as a car.”), Blaine landed himself a gay fiance, and bisexual Santa Claus robbed Bushwick blind. It’s a new day in Times Square, but it’s the same old thing in the Spotlight Diner, where a tourist asks Santana in broken Spanish to please take her steaming eggs back to the kitchen and have them cooked even hotter to avoid salmonella poisoning. She is truly bamboozled when Santana explains that she can speak English on account of she’s from Ohio. The tourist had no idea there were Mexicans in Ohio. Rachel commends Santana for not murdering that lady with her bare hands and Santana confesses she only let her live because she’s too tired to wrap her hands around anybody’s neck today. Tired of ignorant people with their casual racism and homophobia. Tired of being the international poster child for yeast infections. Tired of watching Rachel’s success from the sidelines.
Rachel offers up a chance for Santana to be pampered. See, she landed a New York Magazine cover – hair, makeup, clothes, the whole deal – and she’s got enough clout now to bring Santana to the shoot as a backup model. Santana goes, “You are a great friend, and I mean that sincerely, and I love you, and I hope this gesture doesn’t end with us aggressively singing The Stalker’s Anthem at each other.” Rachel kisses Santana on the cheek, says, “Oh, it will!” and bebops off to wait more tables.
At the photo shoot, Santana and Rachel duet on Sara Bareilles‘ “Brave” and they look and sound like heaven together, of course, but you know it’s going to end in bloodshed because the whole time they’re singing Santana is fantasizing about being the New New Rachel. (I’m fantasizing about a different thing.)
Kurt calls up Blaine in the middle of the school day to lose his mind about Elliot Starchild. He’s convinced he’s a psychopath because, for starters, in his new interview with The Village Voice* he said he was excited about his band. His band. Also, not five minutes ago, he sent Kurt an all caps text about how they HAVE TO perform this new song he wrote. When Blaine says maybe Kurt is overreacting, Kurt scoffs and says, “If anything, I’m underreacting!” He decides to go full Cady Heron and infiltrate Starchild’s evilness from the ground floor. Next step: Foot lotion in his face cream!
(*No show will ever outdo Gossip Girl w/r/t teenagers achieving critical acclaim in iconic New York publications. I mean, when Dan Humphrey was like 16, he got a poem called “Sluts” published in The New Yorker. It was about how his girlfriend was a slut. But Glee is going to come in a close second, I can already tell.)
Blaine has to go because he’s at school and McKinley High takes academics very seriously. When Kurt hangs up, he reminds Santana and Rachel that Pamela Lansbury has practice tonight, but Rachel can’t come because she has to go to Funny Girl understudy auditions, and Santana can’t come because when someone is a diva within 100 yards of her, it activates the sleeper diva inside her.
Kurt invites Elliot over for some cucumber sandwiches and some mild interrogation about where he falls, personally, on the Destiny’s Child sliding scale of solo ambition. Elliot makes no apologies for being a Beyonce, nor should he. Jesus did not ask to be Jesus. One is either born a Messiah or one is not. When Elliot says he got his first taste of fame at age five, playing Schroeder in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Kurt slides closer and asks him to relay that story to him, how a boy goes from playing a bit part in an stage adaptation of a second rate animated film at his elementary school to looking and sounding and singing like sexual energy in human form, like, “No doubt it is a tale as fraught and bloody as the quest for the Iron Throne.” Elliot thinks maybe they should abandon the cucumber sandwiches and go guitar shopping instead.
At Funny Girl understudy auditions, Rachel explains to her director that she doesn’t even need an understudy because she’s never been sick for a single day in her life and when the show opens, she’s going to wear one of those air pollution masks around at all times always, so don’t even worry about it. But the union and the producer and common sense say she has to have one. Too bad all the people auditioning can’t carry a tune in a backpack. But then! Surprise! Santana shows up singing “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” No. Santana shows up crushing “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” It’s a dirty dig, but I won’t pretend it didn’t give me double goosebumps.
When the director finds out Santana and Rachel are from the same high school, he practically faints dead away.
At the guitar store, Kurt and Elliot duet on “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” and there’s shimmying and caressing and gyrating and flawless harmony, and it is awesome. I sometimes wish I could rock up to McKinley High in a time machine that first day we met Kurt with the dumpster and everything, and I wish I could be like, “Spoiler alert, man: I just came from your very near future where you were legit spinning around on a stripper pole in a music shop in Manhattan, dueting with Adam Lambert.”
Hummelpezberry loft. Rachel goes absolutely ham on Kurt about how dare Santana show up at her show, singing her song, wooing her director, looking like the personification of one hundred billion dollars and sounding like that too. Kurt tries to talk her off the ledge, but she will not be consoled! Especially after Santana busts in there talking smack about how this is just Old Rachel flipping out that Old Santana has proven herself an equal, despite not having any classical training or gay parents. Santana is powered by talking shit the way Superman is powered by the sun, so it definitely escalates to the point where Rachel slaps Santana right in the face – and then Santana gets the call that she got the part.
They take their ruckus to their first rehearsal, where Santana is using Rachel’s solo mirror to put on her makeup, which is apparently some kind of monstrous Broadway faux pas. Understudies put on their makeup in the communal bathroom! Which Santana would know if she wasn’t a neanderthal! Some words that come out of Santana’s mouth are: “I would love for this to get physical,” which: Do with that what you will. No, seriously. Do some fan fiction with that. Send it to me. And then they sing The Police’s “Every Breath You Take,” which is such a neat-sounding song if it wasn’t so fucking creepy.
Over at the loft, Elliot tells Kurt he knows he’s been trying to Mean Girls him all day, but that he can dial it back because they’re actually friends and he actually likes hanging out with him and his Lima crew – and anyway, Rachel Berry is the Beyonce of Pamela Lansbury, so how about let’s hug it out? They take a platonic smoochie selfie.
Rachel and Santana come home and caterwaul some more. It ends with Rachel moving out into the street singing “Breakaway” while Santana scowls and Kurt makes his saddest sadface. Before she bounces for good, Rachel rips up a photo of her and Santana into a zillion tiny pieces. Unnecessary! I would have taken that off your hands and put it on my refrigerator!
Despite their differences and general love/hate relationship with one another, Artie and Tina apparently have a standing lunch date on Tuesdays in the auditorium. They’re feeling especially nostalgic about it today because the school year that will not end is finally, mercifully coming to an end. Over sandwiches and salads, Tina confesses that she got wait-listed at Brown and didn’t really apply to any other schools because she was under the impression that if you just sing hard enough about your dreams, they’ll come true. Artie says that’s not a real thing, but that he can sing happiness into her heart. They perform “Whenever I Call You Friend” with New Directions and feel so much love for each other … until Becky summons them to a meeting in Sue‘s office.
It turns out they’re tied for valedictorian. They have identical GPAs, extracurriculars, attendance records. Sue, hilariously, goes: “Now, unlike some members of the Glee club who come and go for months at a time with no explanation, you two losers are always in that choir room, even if for an entire week the only thing you have to do is say something inconsequential like, ‘Kitty’s right’ or ‘Blaine, are you serious?'” Isn’t it fun when Glee does self-deprecating meta commentary instead of audience-chastising meta commentary, the way Tina Fey taught us? Sue decides they’ll have a speech competition to see who is the true valedictorian. Is it fair? No, but neither is having to put up with Will Schuester’s bullshit for five years.
Sue’s one stipulation is that if they break out into song and dance during their speeches, she’ll make sure literally every beverage they drink for the rest of their lives has her pee in it. They know she’s telling the truth.
Tina and Artie take it to the hall and have a Santana/Rachel-sized squabble about who deserves to be on top and why the other one should drop out of the race. They yell about who’s suffered the most at the hands of these writers and blah blah: “You’re a Slytherin.” “No, you’re a Slytherin.” (They’re both Slytherins. No shame.) Their argument follows them into the choir room where Will says Blaine gets one of the solos for Nationals and they’ll have a sing-off for who gets the second one. Artie and Tina go at it with “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It” so aggressively that Tina knocks Artie out of his chair. She feels immediately awful about it, unlike the time she rubbed down Blaine in his sleep and had to have it explained in eleven different ways why it was inappropriate and why she should feel awful.
During their valedictorian speeches – which are being judged by a blue ribbon panel of Will, Beiste, Figgins, and Sue – both Tina and Artie wave American flags and release bald eagles and explain that the other one is a True American Hero. The more they talk, the more everyone cries, except for Sue who is mystified that they’re pulling this shit. So she decides to make them co-salutatorians and make Blaine Warbler the actual valedictorian. He’s honored, really, to be chosen and, honestly, he feels like sometimes things just get handed to him. Like solos and the tightest pants in the known universes and an iPad with an Instagram photo of Kurt silly-smoochin’ Starchild. Becky delights in this new development. Blaine does not.
For his graduation speech, Blaine wants to sing with Tina and Artie. They warm up with “Breakaway,” which is a much nicer song when it doesn’t end with Rachel being homeless.
Next week: With one week left until Nationals, Mr. Schue figures New Directions still has all the time in the world to work out their set list, so he takes the week off to try to impregnate Emma. Santana admits that becoming Rachel’s understudy was just an elaborate way to tell her she wants to get under her. Kurt installs a stripper pole in his bedroom, which he reveals to Blaine during a midnight Skype session. And Demi Lovato shows up to sway in the background.
