This week many of the New Directions members will be graduating.
Okay, first of all, could they not have trimmed a few seconds off Rachel’s endless solo at the end to give us a hint about what Kurt’s going to do now that he’s not going to NYADA? We know the plans of every other graduating senior, but there wasn’t one line about Kurt going to New York anyway, or joining his father in DC, or hanging around in Lima for another year waiting for Blaine to graduate. For a while it looked like they were building to an ending where most of the characters would decide/be forced to stay in Lima so they’d conveniently be around next season, so I’m glad they didn’t do that at least.
Other than that I thought this was a fairly good season finale (definitely better than last year’s), although it sometimes felt like the finale to a season other than the one we actually had. Aside from Kurt being left at loose ends this would have been a good series finale. I’m on the fence as to whether I should just pretend that this *was *the series finale, because 1) next year’s known New Directions members are mostly boring or underdeveloped characters who I don’t really care about and 2) it’s difficult to imagine what the show-within-a-show with Rachel, Finn, and Kurt could possibly be. Glee has often suffered from too many storylines, and if they’re going to cut from Lima to New York to Fort Benning and maybe even DC then they might as well just turn this into a sketch-based variety show.
Surprises:
[ul]
[li]Mr. Schuester confessed about framing Finn for marijuana possession, something I figured would never happen.[/li][li]The storyline about Finn’s dad is suddenly important again.[/li][li]Santana is apparently going to New York too. A spin-off or show-within-a-show about her and Rachel in the big city might actually be good.[/li][/ul]
Totally not surprising:
[ul]
[li]Brittany isn’t graduating.[/li][/ul]
I hate them. I hate them all.
:sniffle:
The ending dragged on for-freaking-ever.
Loved, loved, loved Kurt’s dad’s graduation present.
I seriously thought Rachel was going to throw her hat into the air in one of the NY shots.
I thought Rachel’s trip to NYC was going to end with her flinging her hat up in the air (The Mary Tyler Moore Show) or with some random person (preferably Marlo Thomas) pointing at Rachel and saying “…, That Girl!”.
I kept thinking that maybe Jeff Goldblum and Brian Stokes Mitchell were going to show up at the very end and that this would explain why the episode didn’t just end with Rachel’s arrival in NYC but went ON and ON with her walking around, but no.
Thinking of parents, I was hoping we’d see Mercedes’s parents at graduation. Hers weren’t the only ones not shown at the ceremony, but of the graduating seniors they were the only ones who have never appeared on the show.
I’m also kind of disappointed we never got to see Finn’s monologue. I imagine his performance involved a lot of pointing.
Elsewhere online I see a lot of fans are angry about Kurt not getting into NYADA. In and of itself that doesn’t really bother me, although IMHO the ending would have been more interesting and satisfying if Kurt had been accepted at NYADA and Rachel hadn’t, with Finn insisting that she didn’t need NYADA to be a star and that she go to New York anyway and pursue her dreams. But we’ve been told all along that NYADA is an extremely competitive school, so I can buy that Kurt didn’t make it even though it does bother me that this episode completely dropped that storyline as soon as he found out he was rejected. What bothers me more is that this is the third example of something that has really been getting on my nerves in these last few episodes. We’ve repeatedly seen Rachel put in situations very similar to those Kurt has been in, only things work out perfectly for her but badly for him for no clear moral or dramatic reason.
#1: Both went up against a junior for a coveted role in a major performance, and aside from being confident in their own talents both felt kind of entitled to these roles because they were seniors. Kurt did not get the lead in West Side Story, it went to Blaine. Rachel did get the big solo at Nationals, and Tina had to learn a Very Important Lesson about paying your dues before you get to be a star.
#2: Both were named the winner of a high school election after well-intentioned friends tampered with the votes. Kurt did not actually get to be class president though, despite being the only competent candidate after Rachel dropped out of the race. Rachel did get to be prom queen, despite never even having campaigned for it.
#3: Both applied to NYADA and made it to the audition round. Kurt was praised after his performance. Rachel choked and totally blew hers, then proceeded to pester Whoopi Goldberg for weeks about giving her another chance. Kurt does not get into NYADA. Rachel does.
For both #1 and #3 Rachel arguably won out because she’s a better singer than Tina or Kurt, but the show seems unwilling to come out and say this. Instead things just seem to magically work out for Rachel, even though we are apparently still supposed to believe she’s some sort of underdog. Everyone who goes up against Rachel has to learn one of these Very Important Lessons about not getting what you want all the time.
Kurt does come out ahead in one way, though. His boyfriend still wants to be with him long term, while Rachel’s is joining the army just to get away from her. :eek:
I liked how they wrote the Finn/Rachel story. It’s in character for Finn to be selfless, and he’s right that he shouldn’t be holding Rachel back and she wouldn’t really be happy putting off New York for a year. It was nice for the Glee club underclassmen to dedicate their goodbye song to Finn.
I agree it’s strange that they didn’t follow up more on Kurt’s plans now that NYADA is out for him.
I still didn’t really care much about Puck’s graduation drama. It’s funny that the show made such a production out of Puck possibly not graduating, and then when they reveal that Brittany isn’t graduating it’s no big deal.
I really liked how they began the episode with a callback to the “Sit down you’re rockin’ the boat” number from the beginning of the series.
Burt’s “Single Ladies” performance was awesome! There were so many great moments, from the genuinely-surprising reveal of Will’s framing of Finn (which Finn was fine with!) to Finn and Rachel saying goodbye. I was surprised that Finn decided to join the Army, but that had always seemed like a plausible path for him that the show didn’t really consider.
I’m curious as to what will happen now between Sam and Mercedes and Tina and Mike. Are they going to break up because they’ll be so far apart? It wasn’t really addressed, since the writers decided to make this episode a love letter to Rachel instead of, you know, giving some closure to the characters we’re supposed to care about.
I think I’m calling it quits on this show. I watched this season mostly out of obligation/having nothing better to do on Tuesday night, but it lost its sense of fun a long time ago. I’ll still read episode recaps, though.
Yeah, that was a nice touch. I just watched the pilot and the first bit of the second episode, and at the beginning of the second episode, you see Rachel pulling her pink suitcase in the school parking lot. The same pink suitcase that Finn has in the car when he drops her at the train station. For a show that often played extremely fast and loose with continuity and consistency, that was kind of neat.
After re-watching the pilot, I’m still not clear how a sophomore could be top dog on the football team or captain of the national championship cheer squad, or why no older students ever joined the glee club over the past three years … but at least they kept continuity with the suitcase. Good work, Ryan Murphy.
You can try. But it won’t work. You can’t escape Glee’s clutches. We’ve all tried, and we come back.
Dammit.
What is Puck doing?
I assume that was intentional, to be a cliffhanger, although with Santana going to New York, you would think they would need Kurt there as well for the “show within a show.”
Speaking of SWAS, if Puck does go to Los Angeles, he and Mercedes can be the “third act in the trilogy”; it doesn’t make that much sense to send Mercedes to LA otherwise (unless Amber Riley has better things to do and they’re just writing her out of the show).
As for DC, I hope somebody remembers that Burt has to be re-elected if he wants to stay in Washington past January 3, 2013.
I heard that it was more of an homage to Funny Girl, in which case, a shot of Rachel at the stern of the Staten Island Ferry (IIRC) would have been more appropriate.
I’ll believe Finn is in the Army when I see him in uniform. It could be just a giant tease. Then again, there’s an Army base in Brooklyn.
Ever watch Friday Night Lights? A sophomore (or was he a freshman?) became the starting quarterback in the show’s first season.
Speaking of championships, was the finale the only time they mentioned that McKinley won the (or at least “an” - most states have multiple divisions of championships) Ohio state football championship? (I’m pretty sure the game played in the post-Super Bowl episode was for a league championship, especially as they had lost the previous game so it couldn’t have been part of a tournament.)
Speaking of football, another nice callback to “the only game McKinley won in Finn’s sophomore season” - the one where Kurt kicked the winning extra point.
This was a decent seasons finale, but I was annoyed that they pretty much made it Rachel’s story. Especially since their nationals victory was also essentially Rachel’s story.
I found it hard to buy Quinn’s emotion at saying goodbye to Sue. I hate to harp on how badly Sue treated Quinn in season one, but it was pretty badly. She used her to spy on the glee club, and eventually kicked her out of the Cheerios for being pregnant. Sue also attempted to use Quinn as a pawn in her election campaign in early season three.
When Roz suggested to Sue that they should team up and take down Figgins, I wondered why Sue didn’t mention that she already did that in season two. Sue was principal of the school for a couple of episodes and eventually stepped down voluntarily. So… I really hope they don’t revisit that.
My hope for next year was always that Murphy et al would keep the remaining McKinley students and run the show into the ground, while Rachel and Kurt would move to NYC and they’d give the show to actual honest to Og writers and it could be a lighthearted but with serious moments show about two overly ambitious teenagers moving to a NYC drama school (aka FAME: The College Years). But, tis not to be; which is to say, nobody’s getting into the lifeboats.
I was glad that the whole “Rachel and Finn are getting married!” storyline (which I have hated all along) finally worked out in a reasonable manner.
They did lampshade this by having Brittany point out that it should be no surprise she didn’t get the grades needed to graduate. And while there was not previously any explicit indication that Brittany wouldn’t graduate, I believe she was the only one of the seniors who never said anything about expecting to graduate.
It was kind of touching how much more grown up Kurt and to some extent Mercedes look now. I think Rachel and Artie look basically the same, but the difference in Kurt’s appearance now vs. then seemed realistic for a boy the age of his character. Chris Colfer was the youngest in the original cast, but he was nearly 19 when the pilot was shot; he just happened to have a late growth spurt.
Yeah, prior to the finale I think the show had devoted at least as much time to discussion of Blaine’s hair/use of styling products as it had to Finn’s consideration of a military career and his discovery of the truth about his father’s death. I agree that the military makes sense for Finn (certainly more sense than studying acting at Pace University), although it seems like a horrible thing to spring on his mother.
I don’t know how much credit he deserves for that, it may have been the work of the props/wardrobe people. Whatever else may be said about the show, I think the people responsible for the set decoration and costuming have always done a good job of creating this very detailed, colorful, consistent, and slightly surreal world for the characters.
Fair enough, but even a brief scene of Kurt saying he didn’t know what to do now that he wasn’t going to NYADA (maybe with his dad, Finn, or Blaine responding with an encouraging “You’ll figure something out”) would have been better than dropping the Kurt storyline the moment he found out he was rejected from NYADA.
It occurs to me that Miss Pillsbury probably did Kurt and Rachel more harm than good when she told them about NYADA. Not that you’d know it from the way they’ve been carrying on this season about how all their dreams are pinned on their acceptance at NYADA, but neither of them had even heard of the school prior to this fall. Perhaps Emma could have pushed them towards a less insanely competitive program, one that accepts more than 20 students a year. She could at least have explained the concept of a safety school.
Last night I read this interview with Ryan Murphy in which he indicates that all the graduating seniors may be returning next season:
While this sounds awfully warm and fuzzy, I cannot help thinking that when he said “like a family” he meant a family like the Corleones, and that he’s made Dianna Agron, Amber Riley, et al. an offer they can’t refuse.
However, the most ominous bit of the interview actually came immediately before the passage I quoted above. In describing his plans for season four, Murphy said “We’re doing a great tribute right off the bat, another Britney Spears episode.”
shudder
Glee has an amazing capacity to surprise me, but it’s hard to imagine season four ending up as anything other than a trainwreck, based on what I’ve heard about it.
But, at least they’re not stagnating. If they’re going to go out, they’re going to go out doing something really odd and probably ill-advised.
Pretty good episode for a change, up until they opened those envelopes and it turned into the Rachel show, anyway.