Grading "Glee" -- Season 02, Episode 15

I felt like I was watching "Glee" during the Celibacy Club, because those were the only times it seemed like well-established "Glee" personalities were being themselves. For the rest of the episode (including most of the musical performances), I was watching some other, as yet unnamed series where Santana is a bitch because she's secretly gay for Brittany and the only name in the opening credits is Gwyneth Paltrow's. Just about the only part of this episode that featured half-decent dialogue by believable characters was during the conversation between Kurt and his dad (he gave pretty good advice too!)

"Do You Wanna Touch Me". C-. Maybe this was supposed to be a PG-13 semi-racy performance, but watching the "Glee" cast rip open their shirts and jackets over and over and over again gave me the creeps. I had a befuddled look on my face not unlike the expressions that Quinn and Rachel had during the first half of the song, not because the overt sexuality was too much for my innocent little mind, but because I was too stunned to hide my eyes from the horror. I gave this a not horrible grade because the song is great, the vocal is easy and very difficult to ruin, and Brittany and Santana's dose of genuine sexiness.

"Animal". D+. You can more or less copy/paste my comments from the previous song and put them here. I knocked down the grade because of the complete lack of anything even resembling sexy. A dozen girls wearing school uniforms, and not a single sexy schoolgirl among them!

"Kiss". D-. "'Kiss' as a tango? That's awesome ... and ridiculous". If you can't handle the falsetto all the way through, then don't even attempt the song. Or re-work the song. While you're at it, learn the difference between "doing 'Kiss' as a tango" and "doing the tango while listening to 'Kiss'". And Gwyneth Paltrow and Matthew Morrison have zero chemistry together, dancing or otherwise.

"Landslide". C. I'm all for having more Stevie Nicks songs on "Glee", but by this point in the episode, I was completely disinterested in all the forced emotion surrounding the Brittany/Santana relationship. I mean, they've had two girls making out for the past two years and have been treating it as a joke all this time, and now suddenly we're supposed to take this seriously and empathize with the repressed feelings they're supposed to be having? And it's all because Gwyneth Paltrow shows up and is entrusted with the magical powers to make things better?

"Afternoon Delight". B. The polar opposite of everything else in this episode in so many ways. The song itself? Crap. But the performance? The outfits? The harmonies? Rachel singing as if it were a Broadway performance? Emma grinning over the pure joy of singing a song about a yummy "dessert"? Puck making raunchy faces like he was starring in a hair metal video? John Stamos playing drums on "Glee", finally? The giant PIE on the video screens in the background? Loved it. This could have earned a much higher grade if the performance had been more than a minute long.