Glee Recap: Who Needs A New Rachel?


Editor
09/14/12 01:56am
2 Comments

In the final scene, the glee club meets in the auditorium to rehearse “Chasing Pavements” by Adele. To make up for being meanies, they ask Marley to sing lead. Similar to what I said earlier about a Marley/Rachel duet maybe not being the smartest move right off the bat, having Marley sing Adele is the absolutely the wrong one. I’ve watched enough reality singing competitions to know that one should not cover Adele for their auditions. Or ever, really. Like I said earlier, Melissa Benoist has a lovely voice, but they shouldn’t have given her this to sing. It just doesn’t work. If the show really wants to make her The New Rachel, they need to work on their song choice. The number is inter-cut with a scene of Kurt and Rachel reuniting in New York. Those two are so wonderful together that they almost make up for the lack of emotion in the actual song.

Ultimately, I didn’t think the Ohio/New York split worked. I spent the first half of the episode only wanting to watch the New Directions and the second half more interested in NYADA. They feel like two completely different shows that just don’t work together yet. It might start to feel more natural in the coming weeks, but for now the back and forth was simply too jarring. There was also not enough time to spend on the ever-expanding cast of characters. Other than the Kate Hudson stuff, we didn’t really get much of a glimpse at NYADA.

Of the new characters, the only one that added much of anything to the story was Marley. Brody was mildly interesting, but he also may have just had the good fortune of being paired with Rachel. Maybe they’re going for the slow burn this time around, but previous introductions of characters like Sugar, Sam, and Blaine made an impact from the moment they stepped on screen. Kitty, Jake, and even Marley were just kind of there. None of the ex-glee clubbers except Kurt and Rachel even made it into the episode, so in the coming weeks when Santana, Finn and the rest come back there will be even less time to tell all of these stories. I missed Glee over the summer, and I enjoyed the episode overall but, just like Rachel’s having a tough time adjusting to college, the show is having a tough time adjusting to its new format.

What did you think of the episode? Did you like the split? The new characters? What was your favorite song? Let us know in the comments below!

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  • Chaya

    I really like Rachel. I think they probably should have just given Lea her own show. Or maybe a movie to tie up the end of her story and left it like that. Yeah, I like that idea. A Rachel goes to NYADA and gets onto Broadway movie with all the old Glee clubbers in it. Then we could have just moved on.

    That being said, It’s ridiculous that they are trying to put in a “new Rachel”. They have this great opportunity now with the Glee club to change its direction (pun intended) with a male lead or maybe a female lead who isn’t a brunette belter. We just got finished with watching three years of Lea (who ha an absolutely amazing voice) belt out a slew of hits, why not switch it up. Yes they need new members in the Glee club, but they should be looking for something different. Since they’ve always had a thing for Spring Awaking alums it would have been awesome to see a folky sultry singer like Lauren Pritchard come onto the scene.

    Overall, I found myself bored for most of the episode except for the stuff in NY that didn’t involve Kate Hudson. I mean Kate Hudson eeewww, eeeww, eeewww

    • http://twitter.com/SarahKHansen S.K.Hansen

      I actually loved how they used Kate Hudson. I totally bought her as an F’d up drunk dance teacher. They didn’t make the focus of the episode about her, like they did with Gwyneth Paltrow. This is a huge improvement. Glee is learning.