Glee has been known to burn through what traditionally would be season-long plot lines in a single episode. So what made last night’s Stevie-Wonder-inspired hour so painful was that absolutely nothing happened.
"Wonder-full" continued Glee's tired habit of bringing back New Directions alums, which makes a certain kind of sense since this season’s new cast has been utterly devoid of interesting actors and characters. Glee coach Will Shuester retained his mantle of "Laziest Glee Coach in the Country" by outsourcing his job to alums Mercedes and Mike Chang. Fellow New Direction alum Kurt returned home from his fairytale Vogue internship to check up on his dad who is battling prostate cancer, and to introduce Glee’s latest ham-handed attempt to address a social taboo. This time it's OCD.
What is lost on everyone is why Glee would even bring back Mercedes and Mike Chang when the show had no idea what to do with them when they were students at McKinley High. Even though Glee completely marginalized Mercedes when she was a series regular as "The Diva Who Oversings," she did a serviceable job. With that, my "Song of the Week" goes to Mercedes and her duet of "Superstitious" with boring new cast mate Marly:
Bringing back Mercedes and Mike Chang to mouth platitudes about how important it is to be an individual and realize your potential and yada yada yada unfortunately means that two of my favorite characters were benched in this week's episode. My general rule for what makes a good Glee episode is how many dance numbers smokeshow Brittany twerks in.
Episodes are also judged on how many offensive one-liners I can learn from fellow smoke Santana.
But both were gone this week. A nation suffers.
Because Brittany and Santana were absent this week, I bestow my Glee "Smokeshow of the Week" Honor to ballet coach Cassie July:
