Sam's Review: Glee - "Acafellas"

This week’s episode of Glee had a tough act to follow with the first two episodes of the series being pretty strong. Unfortunately it bended to that strong start and gave us something a bit weaker. That’s not to say it was a bad episode.
The episode picks up after the cheerleaders have joined up with the Glee kids and they are hard at work as per usual. As Will is giving them some pretty shitty dance moves to be working on, one of the kids points out how truly awful they are. The kids agree that Will is no choreographer and this offends him to his core. In an effort to get his groove back he throws together a boy band of sorts made up of some staff at school.

A rag tag group of guys including the gym teacher dating the future Mrs. Will Schuester (I think anyways) form the appropriately schmaltzy a capella group, the Acafellas. Cute.

This leads to some pretty strong reimagining of tunes from boy bands of yesteryear (‘I Wanna Sex You Up’ –that still means nothing). The Acafellas was fine and led to some sweet Josh Groban jokes. But what really stuck me at the heart of this episode was the appearance of Mercedes being an actual human being. It seems she’s developed a bit of a crush for Kurt, the boy that makes Sal from Mad Men look straight as an arrow.

Later in the episode, after hanging out with Kurt a couple of times, she asks him if they are dating. Sadly she is completely oblivious to what everyone else on the face of the earth knows. I feel bad for Mercedes but it allows us to have a nice moment with real characters for once as Kurt comes out to her (and apparently only her). I hope to have more character driven storlines in the future but I’m starting to just let the wackiness wash over me and not let me become consumed with how archetypical just about everyone is on this show. It’s clearly aware and they use it to their advantage.

Despite the great Mercedes/Kurt storyline, the episode did not deliver the funny as much as the previous to shows. Perhaps I’ve become spoiled but I didn’t find my self laughing out loud as I did before. Perhaps it’s because Jane Lynch played a much smaller role in this week’s show. Though when she was on the screen, she was fantastic. The music choices in this week’s show were fine but nothing to write home about. But I’m starting to cozy up to Glee and have a bit more faith, I think I’ll be in for the long haul with this one.

B

Notes:

-Once again Jordan was taking notes on some memorable lines so check his review for those.

-Thank god this episode took it easy with how much of the wife they used. The less of her I see the happier I am.