The RBI Report: "Goodbye"

If you wanted to watch a satisfying, cohesive, touching finale to wrap up Glee's original high school conceit... well, you're shit out of luck.  The best possible way to achieve this is to watch the first five minutes of "Goodbye," give or take a minute or two, then fast-forward to "You Get What You Give."  Then, shut off the episode.  Just turn it off.  Because the majority of the scripted scenes were cobbled together with the blowhard intent to be what Glee was originally - which wouldn't be an issue, except it's done so with the methods that Glee operates with currently.  So what resulted was a top-heavy mess of an episode, with rushed and shallow dialogue that forced false resolution, created unnecessary conflict, and ultimately brushed off some characters and relationships, while glorifying others.

"Goodbye," written and directed by Brad Falchuk

It's not hard to figure out what makes for a satisfying finale.  Glee even seems to understand this to a basic degree, trying to stuff in as many moments as possible paying off original dynamics and focusing on the growth and changes these kids have made.  Each senior (well, almost each senior) had an individual narration and scenes doled out to them to either honor their past or open a question for their future.  In theory, this isn't so bad.  But with Glee, "honoring the past" comes out "patting ourselves on the back for something that never happened" because the fact of the matter is that "growth" is rarely present on this show.  "Growth" and "development" are actually "boomerang change that will be in constant and unpredictable flux until we need to stop telling the story."  So almost every hearkened moment in "Goodbye" was marred with some aspect of self-delusion, like the writers were stubbornly trying to tell us (literally, through dialogue) that this is how it was all along, with the frustrating conviction of a really bad magician trying to cover up his cheaper tricks.  So not only was it conceptually flimsy, but the execution was pretty shoddy as well.

As for the future, it really doesn't bode well to have to tell the audience exactly what every character's plans are in one episode alone.  There are eight graduating seniors, and that's assuming that the audience doesn't care at all about the juniors.  (Which is probably untrue.)  There's just not enough time, and Glee did itself no favors for these resolutions in a few areas.  For "Goodbye" itself, the focus on the future was far too unbalanced between the focus on the past as well as between the individual characters themselves.  Characters who were shown to have had no actual plot about their futures were abruptly dropping their reveals casually into conversation, while others suddenly had unnecessary and overworked twists in their plans.  Surprise!  Santana suddenly has money to go to college, but she might want to go to New York instead!  Surprise!  Finn's going to waffle on this last-minute life dream of acting because he doesn't think it will honor his dad!  Surprise!  Brittany's not graduating and there's nothing anyone can do about it!  (Okay, fine, that last one may have been unnecessary, but it sure as hell wasn't overworked.  "Brittany who?" ask the writers, as the audience weeps.)

All of this should have been introduced way, way sooner.  With no time on the clock and choices to make, it became blatantly obvious which characters the writers care to bother with, and this was perhaps the most disheartening thing about the finale.  Its choices revealed a clear and undeniable pecking order when it came to this show's ensemble, and by displaying it in full view, the writers didn't really do what any good finale should: pay homage to the shoulders the show sits on.  In the case of Glee, it's the notion that every kid has a home in the glee club.  Outcasts and misfits aren't cast out; they fit in.  Even despite all these kids' differences, they became family; that is the whole story of the show.  And yet, there were precious few moments dedicated to this concept of "the group."  Remember in my "Nationals" recap, where I said the competition episode was too group-centric, and lacked individual point of view?  "Goodbye" suffered the opposite problem, and I suspect the writers would have done better to switch their approaches between the two.

It turns out, by episode's end, that the most important entity in this universe is not the New Directions, but Rachel Berry.  I still can't believe that "Goodbye" didn't end with the glee club in a group number.  How could it not?  It's perhaps the easiest thing to check off a "series finale" to-do list.  But instead, in an astounding lack of clarity by the writers, everything wrapped up with Rachel Berry, who, having postponed her dreams, was literally forced on a train to pursue her future.  This is a show about misfits in Lima, and it ended in New York City with Rachel leading her own cliché musical number.  Since when was this show The Rachel Berry Show?  I love (some version of) Rachel, and I am 100% okay with considering her a main character - if not the main character.  She is an emotional focal point, and there is little to argue there.  However.  This whole show is not her story alone.  This story is about the New Directions.  Marginalizing everyone else so that Rachel could have her big moment in New York City is beyond insulting.  It's a slap in the face, really.

(As an aside, does anyone remember the joke on 30 Rock spoofing young dreamers who burst into song when they arrive in New York City?  Rachel's Big Finish felt exactly like that... except no one was joking.  I must have a charcoal heart, because I think I would have paid actual money to see a homeless man yell at Rachel to shut up as soon as she started singing in Grand Central Station.  Honestly, I think Glee could have actually done something along these lines and pulled it off.  The show used to satirize situations like this, but then somewhere down the line they devolved into the very thing they were satirizing.  If a little such zing were introduced, it'd deflate some of the heavy emotion from the previous scene, and actually serve as a kickoff to next season instead of an overindulgent misfire at honoring the past.  Because I imagine S4 is going to [should?] deal with Rachel Berry negotiating her Dream New York with the Harsh Reality of New York.  If nothing else, having a vagrant shut her up would prepare her for potentially being around Santana more.  I'm not saying Homeless Man Yelling at Rachel would have been the #1 thing about "Goodbye" I'd change, it just amuses me and is somewhat defensible from certain angles.  Humor me; I need something to get me through writing this recap.) 

Rachel's decision to stomp off to New York and achieve her dreams wouldn't be so bad, if only it were her own.  This is a character who prized her own dreams above all else, and when finally having kicked open the door to achieving them, she made a conscious decision to close it again, absently hoping that it might stay unlocked.  Who is this person?  I'm all for embedding Rachel Berry in a friend group, and providing her with the social acceptance she did not have at series' begin.  However, every writerly decision made for Rachel in Season 3 has forced her into this development and made her pay the price for having friends.  It's been wedding, or dreams, and she's never been able to have both.  And she still doesn't!  

There are so many things wrong with this storyline.  First, I cannot even comprehend how quickly the writers were able to throw Rachel's resolve in reverse.  Her world fell apart in "Choke," when she blew her NYADA audition, and it's taken countless other characters hoisting up her self-esteem to get her back on track.  She pestered the hell of Carmen Thibodeaux, strong-armed a solo for Nationals so she could show off her chops, and finally this all resulted in what she wanted: an acceptance letter.  But as soon as she can't have her best friend and boyfriend at her side?  She won't take it.  It's as if the writers want us to be completely exhausted by how much screentime they devoted to Rachel's troubles, while simultaneously making her the biggest brat of all time for turning down something so many people - including herself! - fought so hard for.  If Carmen Thibodeaux knew about this, I guarantee she'd have a few choice words for Rachel Berry.   

The second thing that's disappointingly bad about Rachel's goodbye is that her decision was made for her.  Her one choice, all episode - to stay in Lima - was skipped by without any pause for consideration, which only weakened Rachel's current character.  We didn't see her make that choice; she just told us about it in narration.  It didn't help that she also told us she has everything she ever wanted out of high school, and that postponing her Broadway dream was like "coming to her senses."  Who is this person?  She is a stranger to me.  Then, when she's perfectly happy (so she says) to go get married, she's actually being hijacked and taken to the train station - where everyone is waiting for her, assumedly with explicit instruction from Finn to use force if necessary.  (A friend texted at this point and laughed at what Finn must have said to convince them to show up: "Come help drag Rachel on the train after I dump her in the car on the way there.  I'll buy pizza after.") 

The idea that choices are being made for Rachel "for her own good," is terrible writing. Glee went out of their way to force Rachel's story as The Most Important Story, given its place at episode's end, and yet, she is not the hero of her own story anymore.  That role belongs to Finn, her fiancé, who oh-so-nobly sacrifices their relationship and their epic love for one another so that she can pursue her dreams.  Now, I don't mind that they break up, and I don't mind that Finn might be more realistic about staying together than Rachel.  I don't even necessarily mind that he wants to "set her free."  However, this is something, that in order to be a good story, needs to be told in scenes where they discuss this.  It must come about organically, onscreen, with both parties contributing their opinions in order to reach a mutual decision.  And all characters' choices need to be their own.  There are no heroes here.  Foisting the sacrifice on Finn's shoulders and depriving Rachel of any choice is just bad storytelling.  And moments like Finn running after her departing train, which might, under different circumstances, actually be heartfelt, are instead just laughable and examples of Glee's hollow execution of High Cheeseball.

Of course, in their own way, the writers tried to set up Finn's all-encompassing decision by showing that he is, in fact, hesitant about his future.  Apparently now is as good a time as any to bring Finn's daddy issues back into the picture, and catch us all up on what he feels about the previously-pedastaled, now-tarnished image of his father.  Turns out Finn wants to honor his dad's legacy, which apparently doesn't translate into an acting career, and so he makes the offscreen decision to join the army, without discussing it with anybody.  (We assume.  It happened offscreen, so we can only guess.)  The break-up with Rachel was also specifically foreshadowed with another pointless wedding planning scene, where Finn felt a "weird vibe" from Rachel, like she might not be happy with her choice of husband.  (I think he may have just been sensing the pod person that has replaced Rachel since, oh, mid-season.)  I have absolutely no idea why this needed to be addressed, because it's not even really foreshadowing.  Finn broke up with Rachel so that he wouldn't hold her back in the wake of his rejection from New York, which is actually rather sweet, when completely lifted out of the bullshit that Glee wrote into the scenario.  It doesn't have to be such an inferiority complex, or established as an issue before the inciting incident (acceptance letters) even happened.  Mostly, I'm just annoyed that when Finn expressed insecurities, Rachel returned with a dubious, "you think I'm the one who's settling for you?"  Which is just gross.  Yes, writers, we know that Finn was a Cool Guy and Rachel is a Loser.  We thank him for being so charitable to lesser beings, and are glad that the lesser beings recognize their good fortune.

Actually, this concept ruined what would have been such a (rare) lovely moment in "Goodbye."  Will assigned the seniors to sing to the juniors, and the juniors to sing to the seniors - as a whole.  The seniors' performance, as a hand-off to the younger kids, was great!  The juniors' performance, however, was inexplicably written away from group inclusion, and instead penned as an specific homage to Finn Hudson himself.  I just... I don't understand.  This decision makes no sense, and only serves the greater obnoxiousness of "Goodbye" as an episode: some of these characters are more important than others, and everyone within the narrative seems to know it.  The same thing happened with Kurt's solo, which he dedicated to the "men in the room," because they were so noble and secure in their masculinity to not treat Kurt like an inferior for being gay.  Give all those boys awards, they weren't assholes!  Why was this written this way?  As far as I see it, Kurt hasn't interacted all that much with the boys, and in the beginning, they were distant and uncomfortable by his sexuality.  The only who hasn't been, in a scripted, storyline sense, is Sam.  And then they never interacted again.  But it doesn't matter, because straight people deserve a thank you for not being bigots.  Never mind Kurt's forgotten relationship with Mercedes, or the possibility of singing to his dad, or even having a bit more realistic scene dealing with the prospect of a long-distance relationship.

In fact, even though Kurt is probably #3 in order of importance, as deemed by "Goodbye," the episode didn't treat the character all that well.  The scene with Burt was nice in theory, although a bit misguided in execution.  I didn't love the idea that Burt basically said "I lost you when you started to become yourself," and while I love the idea that he would take a step into Kurt's world as a gesture to their symbiosis of differences, it was framed more as a "hey, remember when?" which really was there for the audience to benefit from.  I actually feel like Kurt would be scarred by watching his dad perform Beyoncé, and the gratuitous flashbacks to Kurt's performance were completely unfounded, and for the audience only.  (It's Kurt's POV!  Why would he flash back to watching himself perform "Single Ladies?"  It makes no sense.)  I would have much preferred Burt offering to sing with Kurt, in an embodiment of their "meeting in the middle" dynamic.  

The difficulty of Kurt's long-distance relationship with Blaine was also waved away quickly, perhaps because the writers knew he wasn't going to get into NYADA anyways.  And how awful that Kurt didn't have a single moment for the narrative to focus on his rejection letter?  He has been on the same path as Rachel this season, and while Finn and Rachel got their front-seat breakup to address Finn's future, Kurt is left completely unanswered.  It's not even that we don't know what he's going to do; I'm fine with a cliffhanger.  That's not the issue.  The issue is that we had no moment to mourn the death of Kurt's dream.  No, it didn't need to be a huge teary number like "Cry," but there needed to be at least a moment.  As it was, he got a rejection letter, then spiralled away from the narrative completely.  It wasn't even insinuated that he had any part in pushing Rachel into her future, when it seems, based on all characterization, that he would. 

Unanswered questions and ignored emotional reactions also plagued Santana's storyline, and, by extension, Brittany's.  Santana's future was decided for her (I'm sensing a theme) a few episodes ago, wherein Sue and Brittany got her a scholarship to the University of Kentucky.  Of course, we immediately wondered, "Santana?  Louisville?" - but Santana didn't second-guess it until "Goodbye."  She gives some consideration to ditching college and heading off to NYC, but wants advice from her mother.  Yes, we finally got to meet Mama Lopez!  Gloria Estefan was fantastic as Santana's mother, and I wish dearly that we were able to meet her sooner, and with more (read: better) content.  

As is, Señora Lopez appeared to want Santana to go to college, and that's when the bomb dropped.  And by "bomb," I mean "something dusted under the rug and used only once for another character's purposes and then forgotten about completely."  Brittany's not graduating!  This is just the final nail in the coffin on how terribly the writers treat this character.  (On any other comedy, Brittany would be the scene stealer.  For awhile, on Glee, she was.  Now she's basically a ghost.  A silent, one-dimensional ghost.)  The implications of Brittany's erasure as a member of the senior class (president, no less!) are nauseating.  I'm not just talking about how Puck got a multi-episode arc out of potentially failing, while Brittany's isn't a big deal.  It's more that Santana seems surprised that Brittany isn't graduating, which suggests that either Santana is not paying attention to her girlfriend, doesn't think her girlfriend has problems with her grades, or that the writers are just not on the ball.  I vote that last one.  It's half-assumed, by the characters in the narrative, that Brittany's too dumb to graduate and nothing can be done about it.  But the writers never fully incorporated this idea, which means they're operating on the assumption that as an audience, we too are just assuming that Brittany's too dumb to graduate.  Which means that the writers absolutely think that Brittany is too dumb to graduate, and never chose to address that as anything other than incontrovertible truth.  How insulting.

What's even worse about this is that even when Brittany's announcement is made, it's not manifested into any emotional depth for her character.  Santana is outraged, then it's simply presented as another option for her future - maybe she'll stay behind in Lima with Brittany.  What is actually a real character moment for Brittany is shrugged off in favor of Santana's precedence as a fixture on this show, as established since the middle of Season 2.  Santana ranks higher on the list than Brittany, so naturally, Brittany's story developments affect only Santana's incorporated narrative.  But even "Goodbye" swung the impact of Brittany's news away from Santana's emotions and kept it strictly as a reason to stay local next year.  The emotion of the scenario was never manifested onscreen in any way.  Singing to Brittany during "You Get What You Give" was cute, but not really in keeping with their supposed emotional state after learning Brittany's high school fate just a few scenes before.  Not only that, but I can't believe the complete and utter lack of focus on Brittany during "In My Life."  Here she is, sitting with kids a year younger than her, saying goodbye to someone she shouldn't have to say goodbye to, and yet, there's barely a close-up.  The performance is supposed to be about Finn Hudson, after all.  I can't help but think Santana would have walked out of that number for its Brittany-related implications alone.

Instead, Puck was given the furrowed brow and sullen stare, because he still had unfinished character business to wrap up.  Was he going to graduate, or not?  Somehow Puck's lack of class attendance and book smarts doesn't translate to the same doomed inevitability of Brittany's stupidity.  Truthfully, the payoff to Puck's storyline could have happened an episode sooner, and we wouldn't have had to slog through so much crap to learn his fate in "Goodbye."  But "Props" only gave him the chance to take his test again, and this episode had to see him through the sitting of it.  And, because the writers had nothing else to do with Quinn, they boomeranged her into Puck's storyline for the final conquest over European Geography, the high school diploma, and the show's own canonical history.

I don't know if you realized, but Quinn is in love with Puck.  She has no regrets whatsoever about sleeping with him even when she was dating someone else, and certainly no regrets about that transgression resulting in a baby that got her kicked out of her own home.  She slept with him because he had swagger, and not because she was feeling fat that day.  She would never give her virginity to someone so self-pitying and down on life as Puck seems to be right now.  The guy she fell in love with (remember, that happened) was a badass!  The guy she knew won football games and ate the contents of a pepper shaker on a dare!  No one deserves her love more.  Because yes, she loves him.

Now, here's the thing.  There was a lot of sarcasm in that last paragraph, and I apologize.  But before you yell at me, let me say this: I don't mind it in concept.  Quinn and Puck did have a baby together, and yes, that gives them a strange bond that they'll have forever.  I don't mind that Quinn would want to help Puck.  I don't mind that they talk about their relationship.  I don't mind that the writers want to give them a nod, considering they were set up as potential romantic interests early on.  I don't even mind the idea that after all this time without virtually any interaction, Quinn loves Puck.  In some way, she probably does.  However!  This was terribly written.  The execution on all of these concepts was absolutely atrocious.  

It wouldn't be as bad if the dialogue weren't so on-the-nose.  The suggestion that Puck needs his mojo back and a kiss could give him confidence isn't terrible - when it's a construct that manifests in a storyline that shows me, and doesn't yap at me about it.  None of Quinn's dialogue felt at all like someone talking about their own feelings so much as the writers funneling in all the support they could muster for a Quinn/Puck kiss at scene's end.  Do they not understand that Quinn and Puck having a complicated relationship is actually really interesting?   I actually like the idea that they have an unspoken bond, even if they didn't interact at all during Season 2, and only in the first act of Season 3.  But instead of speaking to the fact that there might always be mixed feelings for what transpired between them, Quinn had words shoved in her mouth that basically rewrote history.  I never felt like Quinn ever liked Puck because of his swagger.  She only started to like him when he treated her kindly, and then in a bout of writer irresponsibility, he was actually quite a jerk to her and the relationship dissolved.  The only connection they've reliably shared was Beth, and that's fine.  A baby is a huge connection, and will always have some relevance to their lives.  However, a baby does not equate romantic love.  And just because Quinn says she has no regrets about Beth and losing her virginity, does not mean that she always has, and I wish she had been given dialogue that addressed that nuance.  We saw firsthand how the Puck-Beth situation obliterated Quinn's established existence, and even if it was for the better, we saw her miserable for quite some time.  Ignoring that is insulting to Quinn, and Puck, and their relationship.  

So no, I don't mind what the writers were attempting to achieve in concept.  It's actually kind of a neat genderswapped Sleeping Beauty angle, you could argue, and I like the idea of having a kiss or meaningful interaction that doesn't appear to launch into a dating relationship.  There's a lot of subtle, complex emotions to play with between Quinn and Puck, but the writing razed them all to one oversimplified and misguided expression of love.  Honestly, this could have all been saved if there was some indication that Quinn was purposefully behaving that way because she knew it would work.  I don't mean to say that she "tricked" him, per sé, but it's the easiest fix for making sense of her sudden emotional expression.  In the end, I would have rather had a meaningful heart-to-heart that fleshed out the complications in Puck and Quinn's dynamic and given them a nuanced payoff to their stop-and-start but always-there relationship.  Alas, there was neither.

Unfortunately, this same cloud loomed over Quinn's other "Goodbye" scenes - with Rachel, and with Sue.  They did fare slightly better than Puck's simply because the writers weren't trying so hard, but they were still marked by some sticky moments.  With Rachel, Quinn basically surrendered to the constant struggle of Rachel trying to be her friend for three years, and manifested that friendship in the most healthy (read: least Quinn Fabray) way - she bought Rachel a train pass to get from NYC to New Haven.  This is actually an exceptionally sweet gesture, especially considering that Rachel hadn't even gotten into NYADA yet.  But the action was shuffled under by bad dialogue that basically amounted to "so glad we're friends now!!!" and washed away completely with Quinn telling Rachel that indeed, she and Finn are "meant to be."  Ugh, gross.  Look, I'm fine if Quinn's at peace with Rachel dating Finn now - for all intents and purposes, she really should be.  But her character arc is about so much more than letting her ex date a girl she once hated.  Looking at it that way entrenches the entire narrative in Rachel's point of view, and thus this inclusion was so clunky, because it's the Glee writers forcing their characters to talk in a way that only people watching the show would.  Quinn Fabray has no concept of "endgame," or "who should be with whom," because she is a character in this nutty world.  The idea that Glee is using its own characters to flat-out address other relationships as "meant to be" is weak - and cheap - writing.  And it's even more insulting that Rachel hopped on board, and told Quinn she always thought that about her and Puck.  Hark, is that even more heavyhanded setup to the Quinn-Puck kiss?  Why, it is!

The Sue scene fared similarly to the Rachel scene, in that it was conceptually strong, but suffered bad dialogue.  Sue telling Quinn she's retiring Quinn's old uniform is another great gesture, and I quite like the idea that Sue confesses admiration for Quinn, and pride over her perseverance in high school.  Quinn went through a lot, and I like when other characters recognize that.  (Partly because it's a rarity.)  But at the same time, Sue also dropped the phrase "You're better than me... you're slightly less evil," and there Glee goes again giving characters dialogue that would only be expressed by people watching the show.  Look, villains don't think they're evil.  Quinn doesn't think she's evil, and if Sue does, it's simply because she's Sue Sylvester and a comic villain.  I'm so sick and tired of the "villains" on this show talking about how "bad" they are.  Everyone is the hero of their own narrative, and the idea that Glee forces their own story constructs into the mouths of their characters is beyond insulting.

Of course, I'm making my way down the list of Important Characters (as Deemed by "Goodbye") and finally arriving at what is perhaps the most insulting material.  Mercedes Jones and Mike Chang were completely deprived of any narration or individual treatment whatsoever.  The writers instead forced their future plans into a rapidfire conversation, where we learned that Mercedes got a recording contract in LA, that fell in her lap thanks to Sam's "Disco Inferno" video, and Mike is going to school in Chicago?  I don't know; it went by so fast and transitioned so quickly to Santana that I got whiplash-induced memory loss.  We didn't even get any real moments addressing what Sam and Mercedes, and Mike and Tina are going to do with one half of their couples graduating off and moving away.  What, they're not "meant to be" like Puck and Quinn or Finn and Rachel?  They're not even going to have a brief and Nicholas-Sparks-inspired conversation about it, like Kurt and Blaine?  There's not even a random suggestion that one of them might try and stay behind, like Santana and Brittany?

Basically, this sucks, and is an easy summary of what went wrong in "Goodbye."  Mercedes and Mike are characters on this show, graduates in the senior class, and valued members of the New Directions.  The idea that they were shuffled so quickly aside to showcase other characters and their stories (which weren't even that good to begin with) just shows how frustratingly hypocritical Glee is about their theme of inclusion.  This trickled down even from story construction into the tiniest of scene choices: the graduating order was deprived any ounce of logic (aka, not alphabetized) and instead, the seniors crossed the stage in almost exact reverse order of determined importance: Mike, Quinn, Mercedes, Puck, Santana, Kurt, Finn, and Rachel.  Logic deprived?  Characters ignored while others were glorified, and group dynamics ultimately shuffled aside?  These were the hallmarks of "Goodbye," and it's especially frustrating to know that this is what we're given for the end of the show's original conceit.

 

Yes, technically, Glee is renewed for Season 4 and allegedly has some sort of "revolutionary" new framework up its figurative sleeve, with all the same characters.  But the first three seasons of this show were about these kids coming together, so their parting ways is indeed the end of an era, and deserved to be marked as such.  There's plenty of emotion to be found there, and yet Glee ignored most of it.  Truthfully, they knew where to find it, as there were two moments in "Goodbye" that felt emotionally authentic and well-written.  Actually, the writers got there so quickly that I thought perhaps the whole episode would be rife with this sort of happy nostalgic pain that goes along with closing a chapter.  "Goodbye" began with Will walking through the hallway towards his glee classroom, as the sound of "Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat" drifted towards him.  The number was the first performed by the original New Directions, pre-Finn, and the same fivesome were performing it again as a last hurrah, just for fun.  If this were not enough to get the emotions stirring, they actually cut back and forth between the two performances, as though Will were seeing his kids all grown-up and feeling like their first steps were just yesterday.  This was surprisingly fantastic, and one of the few believable and appropriate moments honoring Will's relationship with the kids - perhaps because it suggested Will as a father figure more than a best buddy. 

Unfortunately, this quality didn't last.  The only other emotionally resonant moment in “Goodbye” was the performance of “You Get What You Give,” wherein all the seniors got a chance to be adorable and teary-eyed as they said goodbye to the juniors as a group.  There was even a bit of clever choreography!  The seniors began the song standing, then got the juniors up and dancing with them, only to be left standing in the seniors’ place as the older kids sat back down.  A simple, strong action, right?  It communicated, through dance, what was happening in story.  Combined with all the permutations of endearing individual interactions, I couldn’t help but feel my heart swell at this.  If only the whole episode was just fun musical numbers where the cast cried and smooshed all their faces together.

So while Glee did carve out a few successful moments devoted to giving a curtain call to these characters and relationships that we've loved for three years, the episode ultimately failed to hit the emotional beats it needed to satisfyingly close the book on the original gang.  Fettered with shallow and expository dialogue, it forced false resolution, drummed up unnecessary conflict, and ultimately revealed a nasty hierarchy of individual characters' importance that trumped any suggestion that these kids are a family.  In short, it completely knocked its legs out from underneath it, in a stunning display of clueless self-sabotage and smug self-congratulation of the show's true purpose, meaning, and story told.

The RBI Report Card...
Musical Numbers: B

Dance Numbers: A

Dialogue: F

Plot: D

Characterization: C

Episode MVP: Brittany Pierce, because the writers don't care about her.

Poll: Will you watch Glee next season?