Glee Does Original Songs, We Only Care About Kurt & Blaine's Duet

This week on Glee, New Directions performed original music for the first time. Of course, the songs the kids performed at Regionals were better than Rachel’s first effort, “My Headband,” but the numbers the other students came up with before the competition were more entertaining and featured better music.

Thankfully, the show did reference Santana declaring her love for Brittany in the last episode. When Brittany confronted Santana about why she stopped talking to her, she quipped that when she professed her love, “I honestly don’t know what I was thinking.” She also revealed she’s still with Sam, so “now I get the chance to write an awesome heterosexual song about Sam that we’re going to sing at regionals.” The song “Trouty Mouth” was very Santana: Sultry, funny, and filled with nasty lyrics like, “Guppie face, Trouty mouth. Is that how people look like where you come from in the South?”

Puck’s entry wasn’t as amusing. After noting that he offended Lauren Zises by singing “Fat Bottomed Girls,” he debuted his own song, “Big Ass Heart.” Why did Lauren love it when it consisted entirely of offensive lyrics about her size like, “When you shop for groceries, that heart gets its own damn cart?” Oh right, this show doesn’t make any sense.

In another disappointing scene, Quinn outlined her motivation for wanting to be Prom Queen. She says in a voice over:

I know what you’re thinking. Prom Queen? You’re smart and pretty, and relatively sane … for a girl. Does being prom queen really matter to you? Well it does! Prom Queens live on average five years longer than regular people. It’s probably because they smile a lot. And smiling has been proven to ward off diseases…

Ugh. For proof that Quinn is one of the most poorly-written characters on the show, look no further than her new Prom Queen storyline. While it seemed she’d learned a lesson about the fleeting nature of popularity after being ostracized while pregnant, now she’s back to being a cruel and shallow social climber.

The high point of the episode was the long-awaited Kurt/Blaine kiss. After Kurt memorialized the Warbler’s dead canary by singing “Blackbird,” Blaine realized that he has feelings for him. This led to Kurt’s first “real” kiss (he doesn’t count Brittany or the bully), and they performed the duet Candles by Hey Monday at Regionals, mainly so Rachel could stare longingly at Finn.

At Regionals, New Directions performed two songs the kids wrote. Mercedes’ “Hell To The No” was better than both (if you take out the “big girl loves to eat” references), but Schue decided to go with Rachel’s whiny solo “Get It Right” instead. The second song, “Loser Like Me” sounded like a forgotten ’90s one hit wonder and exists mainly so slushies and the show’s iconic “loser” hand sign could be incorporated into the performance.

Kathy Griffin’s appearance as judge Tammy Jean Albertson, who’s a Tea Partier and homeschooler, didn’t live up to the hype. While news of the appearance prompted Sarah Palin to preemptively attack Kathy, her lines about the Tea Party were all mild and lazy digs like, “Before we start, I would like to say “I’m not a witch,” but I think its fair to ask, do we have written proof that these kids were born in the United States of America?”

New Directions wound up winning the competition, because their performance of “Empire State Of Mind” earlier this season would be pretty pointless if they didn’t get to go to Nationals in New York. The episode concludes with Blaine comforting Kurt about their loss, saying, “You did win. So did I. We got each other out of all this.” Oh Blaine, that’s also why this wasn’t a total loss for us! Progress on the Kurt/Blaine front was pretty much the only redeeming part of this episode.