Grading "Glee" -- Season 02, Episode 07

Worst episode of the season thus far, unless you happen to be a huge Gwyneth Paltrow fan. Guest stars are nice, but did she have to feature in every song (except for one)? She's performed more songs this season than some of the members of the actual cast! Like John Stamos, for example!

And not a single ironic Coldplay cover to be found ...

"Conjunction Junction". C+. I was thinking "here's her one-minute singing clip, to establish the zany-ness of the character and so we can all say that we saw Gwyneth Paltrow singing on 'Glee'." Little did I know ...

"Fuck You". B. Brilliant song, of course, and yeah, it is about time they did a chart-friendly, fun and contemporary song on "Glee" (no, Jason Mraz and the rest of the modern adult contemporary performances don't count). Gotta deduct points for the lyric change though. I know it's network TV -- pick a different song or be willing to pay the penalty.

"Make 'Em Laugh". B. Not sure what the point of this was, it was certainly an odd choice for a dream sequence. Mr. Schue the character fantasizes about doing show tunes with Mike Chang? You can't fault the effort involved -- it's an incredibly physically demanding number -- but the chemistry between the two wasn't there. We know that Mike Chang, the character, is more or less useless and exists only to spice up group performances by dancing while the others do their singing. Expecting him to carry 50% of the performance load isn't a worthwhile gamble. It worked a few weeks ago during the "Duets" episode because he had something to do, but here, he was just Matthew Morrison's lackey.

"Nowadays"/"Hot Honey Rag". C-. Didn't care for the movie, and didn't care for Lea Michele having to dumb it down so that Ms. Paltrow could keep up.

"Singing in the Rain"/"Umbrella". C. This was ... wet. They're splashing around on a wet stage and flinging umbrellas. We get it. And the mashup was a disaster. Maybe it would have had a chance if they'd centred it around the verses of "Singing in the Rain" with the chorus of "Umbrella".