I guess I see your point about Sue, but in fairness, once we found out about her sister—and saw the way she took care of Becky—it became increasingly hard to buy her tedious "rivalry" with the New Directions.

1) Huh?  "Ryder just accepts that Not Katie knows who he is"

*Feel like this was going to be a "no chance in hell" episode for some critics.  Feel like there was no way "Glee" could do a school shooting without some people dismissing it as an exercise in exploitation.  So the F doesn't surprise me.

There are actors who, based on their track record of not drawing, don't deserve the casting they get from a business standpoint.  But because they do seem to have some talent and thus theoretical appeal, you can kind of understand why they keep getting booked (names like Kyle Bornheimer, Katie Cassidy and JoAnna…

Eh, as a New Yorker, I kind of scoffed at that line as well.

So I see the cast complaining about this.  I see the producer complaining about this.  Apparently, because this is "what Shain would have wanted," MTV should air the show.

Beyond the "challenge accepted," the whole bachelorette party storyline reminded me of the similar one in season two of How I Met Your Mother, right up to the old relative surprising with how loosely she can discuss a sexual topic.

@avclub-920530cb8744c679e3a2ece84f1d5ce4:disqus @avclub-dd1f2ad3a1bf536bc3d7ea8628152941:disqus I completely agree with you two as far as what the intent of the scene was.

I think season 5 is when a "split" emerged in terms of how critics reacted to the show.

As much as I liked Roger throughout this episode, that breakdown over the shoe shine kit didn't click for me at all.

Funny to see you talk about Sudeikis "nailing" the Blake Shelton line; his Blake Shelton impression was absolutely awful (though, in all honesty, that's par for the course with Sudeikis).  It's not like any of the impressions were good (even Jay Pharoah couldn't pull Usher off), but Sudeikis' was the worst.

Absolutely fantastic episode.  I've enjoyed much of the season, but this is one of the first times I found myself wowed by the specific narrative and not just the idea of the show and some of the characters/actors.

Deserves no less than a B+ for the physical sight of Gus with the long arms and the "all up in that Kool-Aid" line.

Again, I'm almost positive there was a storyline a while back in which Lamar tried to blackmail them with knowledge about Deacon fathering Maddie, but the twist was that Teddy already knew about it.

The scene with the kids singing "Ho Hey" was just awesome.  I also like that while it was a good performance, it wasn't by any means amazing or overly precocious.  It was just kids with a ton of potential having a ton of fun, and it worked.

Maybe I'm not understanding your post correctly, but it wouldn't really be a twist, would it?

The interview itself had some fun moments, but that Jay-Manny tour thing did nothing for me.  Jay actually envying the prep school kids did nothing for me, and the constant interruptions for talking heads were not only distracting but also unfunny.  Very few of those landed.

One of my favorite episodes to date.  All the action scenes succeeded, and I loved the Shakespearean element to the endings.

Yeah, I always kind of looked at him as like a "Jay from The Inbetweeners" character.  Talks a big game, but he rarely actually gets laid (hence why he was so caught up on a plain-looking assistant).  The fact that the flashbacks (and the voicemails) suggest he was a legitimate stud was weird.

Not sure what was used as source material for the Wikipedia, but I remember that it was way off from the actual pilot/official website as far as last names, etc (I even felt compelled to edit some of it).  I think, at one point, Mike Vogel's character was listed as being Sheriff Romero's brother.