GLEE 1.7 - "Throwdown"

WRITER & DIRECTOR: Ryan Murphy
GUEST CAST: Iqbal Theba, Amy Hill, Jennifer Aspen, Heather Morris, Harry Shum Jr., Kenneth Choi, Josh Sussman & Jennifer Jean Snyder

[SPOILERS] If there was any doubt Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch), the monstrous P.E teacher with a foppish man's haircut and tracksuits in every colour, was Glee's secret weapon... "Throwdown" will put those to rest. Above all, Ryan Murphy's script gave Sue some fantastic poisonous putdowns (to Will: "I don't trust a man with curly hair. I can't help picturing small birds laying sulfurous eggs in there, and I find it disgusting") and her icy charisma kept this episode on-target...

Sue is now co-director of glee club alongside Will (Matthew Morrison), which has resulted in a predictably fraught working relationship, as we open with the pair arguing like two Japanese monsters in grimacing slow-motion. Of course, while in front of the Principal (Iqbal Theba) they fake bonhomie, but the brewing trouble at glee is exacerbated when Sue splits the club in half to work on separate performances for sectionals, and insists on picking six of the club's minority members ("Wheels! Gay Kid! Asian! Other Asian! Aretha! Shaft!") to make Will's half-dozen leftovers look elitist.

Elsewhere, Rachel (Lea Michele) is being harassed by a geeky Art Garfunkel look-alike, who's threatening to blog about Quinn's (Dianna Agron) pregnancy unless she provide him with a pair of her used panties(!)-- a deal she agrees to, mainly to stop people guessing that the father of Quinn's child is her would-be boyfriend Finn (Corey Monteith). Also, Terri's (Jessalyn Gilsig) hysterical pregnancy overcame its first major hurdle, when Will insisted he accompany her for an ultrasound, forcing Terri to threaten her obstetrician and make him complicit in her deception (while adjusting the reported sex of her baby now Quinn's has been revealed as a girl.)

You really have to just roll with Glee's peculiarities, as reality is taking a firmer backseat the deeper we stroll into the season. The Quinn/Terri baby deception has been an utterly preposterous idea from the start, but I guess it'll be fun to see how the writers struggle to keep some semblance of plausibility to it. I mean, a lot of it hinges on Will never seeing his wife's stomach for nine months. Is it perhaps so ridiculous it's genius; a satire of tacky soap storylines?

The songs were quite hit-and-miss this week, I thought, but I appreciated a scene when both factions of the glee club got together in secret to sing Nelly's "Ride Wit' Me" -- mainly because it was the first time Glee let its actors sing live without overlaying a studio-produced track. I'd like to see more of that realism, as it gives the club's stage performances more of a kick if the rehearsals are heard to be less polished. The best song was definitely Jordin Sparks' "No Air", which was even performed twice (with typically infectious passion from knee-socked Michele), but the episode dealt us something of a dud in the badly shoehorned in "You Keep Me Hangin' On" by The Supremes, which was also turned into a bizarre cheerleader-orientated dance sequence with Agron on lead vocals. I just don't think Glee's occasional "fantasy sequences" work all that well -- it feels like a step too far and doesn't always sit comfortably.

Overall, "Throwdown" did a neat job of pushing the Rachel/Finn/Quinn triangle onwards (the latter growing less happy about Rachel's feelings for the boy she's lying to, the former now having guessed Quinn's a "mole"), but this was really an episode stolen by Sue -- with everything that spilled out of her mouth being comedy gold. It could be argued that the show overstepped the line at times with her politically incorrect dialogue, but it's all treated with such tongue-in-cheek lightness that you can't really be offended.

15 FEBRUARY 2010: E4 (HD), 9PM