Glee season 1 episode 16 review

16. Home

After the power of Madonna hit the hallways of McKinley High, this week’s episode of Glee is less focused on the fun side of the show and more on the emotional.

First things first, let’s go through what happened.

When Splits magazine names Sue the best cheerleading coach of the past 2,000 years she throws a huge wobbly to make everything perfect, taking over the auditorium (thus leaving the Glee club with nowhere to rehearse) and demands that newest Cheerio Mercedes lose ten pounds. Although, sticking to healthy diet she fails to lose the weight and ends up starving herself to the point where she passes out in school.

Former head Cheerio (and currently pregnant) Quinn tells Mercedes that she should be glad she is happy in her own skin and shouldn’t let anybody make her change. With that in mind, at the big Cheerio event attended by the magazine, she changes the set and makes an even better impression than Sue could have hoped for.

Without a space to rehearse in, Will looks at alternative venues and runs into old friend April (the fantastic Kristin Chenoweth) who currently runs the local roller rink and is, in fac,t the mistress of its owner.

After catching up with everything that has happened to them both, Will lets slip he is looking to rent his current apartment out and move somewhere smaller, which is handy, as April is looking for a place to live.

The next day she shows up with an overnight bag to test the place out and the two end up sharing a bed. Will, upset that April is still only settling for second best again, tells her she is worth more than just being the other woman, which empowers her to break up with her lover, which then causes him to have a stroke.

Wanting to keep their affair secret, his wife pays April off with $2,000,000, which she uses to buy the auditorium for the Glee Club and finally heads off to the Broadway to produce the first all white version of The Wiz.

Meanwhile, Kurt has hatched a plan to get him closer to crush Finn by fixing up father Burt with Finn’s mother Carole. Things go well, but Finn soon gets upset when his mother begins to get rid of items that belonged to his father and when Finn becomes closer with Burt, Kurt begins to feel left out and tries to get Finn to help break them up.

When he realises how close the two have become he decides to leave things as they are and as Burt, Carole and Finn grow closer, Kurt feels like an outsider.

So then: after last week’s power house of hits from Madonna, Home really took a step back and went back to basics, focusing more on an emotional than spectacle-driven story. With the spotlight firmly on Kurt and his plan to get his father together with Finn’s mother, it really showed how he can be selfish, but at the same time how much he wants to be the sort of son his father wants, but never can be.

I love the relationship between Burt and Kurt and I hope as the season goes on we see more of it and the two can finally just be with each other.

Also this week I loved the return of April. Chenoweth is breath of fresh air in the show and watching her belt out a tune is truly amazing as she has a stunning voice. She also has pitch perfect comic timing and, although she is currently lighting up Broadway, I hope she comes back to the small screen soon.

The moral story running throughout the episode this week was being comfortable with who you are and not changing for anybody and, sadly, this was the most lacking part of the whole thing. Although the rendition of Beautiful was well staged, it felt like it could have been slotted into any episode, and didn’t feel particularly special at all.

It was going to take something to beat last week’s episode of Glee and it is probably for the best that they didn’t try to top themselves. And they didn’t. What we ended up with was a more than competent episode which mixed in hugely emotional scenes with a side of comedy. Not a bad mix, to be fair.

Next week, well, all I can say at the moment is it will include Sue Sylvester, Olivia Newton-John and a rendition of one of her most famous songs, Physical. That should comfortably up the ante once more…

Read our review of episode 15 here.