Glee: "Heart" Review

Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow.

Some episodes of Glee feel too much like an after school special to be taken seriously. "Heart" was one of those episodes. The hour was stuffed with melodramatic romance issues-- from breakups, to gay love, to teenage lovemaking. None of it felt natural. None of it felt real. And unfortunately, even as an after school special, "Heart" failed to deliver anything earth shattering regarding the issues at hand (save for a fun moment or two).

One of the lighter bits of the episode was Artie and Rory competing to take Sugar to her very own Valentine's Day party. It was silly fun, especially the montage of one-upmanship soundtracked by the Glee rendition of Nat King Cole's "L-O-V-E." The tone here was what we expect from Glee, including the fact that Artie's and Rory's crushes on Sugar conveniently arrived in time for this episode.

Also conveniently arriving for the sake of one storyline in this episode was The God Squad. Correct me, please, but I don't remember this being a group in any previous season. And a quick Google search only yields results for this episode. The group existed in this episode for two reasons. The first was to give guest Samuel Larsen (one of the Glee Project co-winners) a place to sing without officially becoming a member of New Directions. The second was so a group of Christian students (really, just Larsen's character) could debate if The God Squad should sing love songs to a lesbian couple. No real surprise here. "Love is love" was the answer, as you would expect from Glee. So a group was created to debate a forced issue that we all knew would result in acceptance. Not much to engage in there.

One of the highlights from this bland episode was the introduction of Rachel's two dads played by Jeff Goldblum and Broadway vet Brian Stokes Mitchell. They were fantastic. Their reverse psychology stunt to get Rachel and Finn to reconsider their engagement was delightful, especially the way Goldblum's dad introduced the time for teenage lovemaking. The actually bits with Rachel and Finn had some decent moments as well (like they're fight), but it was the dad's that stole the show.

One small portion of the episode that hinted to bigger things was the return of Karofsky. After getting turned down by Kurt, the pair was confronted by a typical jock meathead that overheard Karofsky's gay secret. It's as if the series felt there wasn't enough gay bullying going on so they had to bring some of that back into the fold. My guess is it'll just be an episode or two before Karofsky gets bullied into thinking about suicide, if not actually taking his own life. The storyline hinted to here could lead to some very engaging material, or it could all the way of an after school special. With song.

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