This will focus on the Finn and Rachel of it all because frankly, the rest of it doesn’t interest me that much.
While I like some of the newbies - especially Ryder - and have some attachment to the other cast - Tina and Sam for the most part - I just can’t get into the other storylines that much and even though I thought Blake and Melissa did quite well with their part of YTOTIW, it was clear who the stars were when Cory and Lea came into the song (more on that later). They radiate a natural charisma and star power the other two just don’t have at this point.
I’ve said many times that Glee is a show which is frustrating because you can see the potential, but very rarely does it live up to that potential.
When Glee hits the mark it soars, when it gets it wrong, it really gets it wrong.
It’s also, as Nic has pointed out many times, a very formulaic show, and this week was a classic example of that where they retread storylines from previous seasons with a slightly different twist.
Here we have Silly Love Songs 2.0 with the positions reversed between Finn and Rachel.
Like I have said before I am Switzerland, I am not taking sides, because they are both hurting, they are both struggling and that is effecting how both of them behave, just as happened in SLS, so it disappoints me when I see people willing to forgive one character their flaws but not the other.
Neither Finn or Rachel are perfect, neither of them are blameless, they both had a role to play in the breakup two episodes ago and all of the events we have seen take place over the last six episodes were put in play by Finn’s decision to put Rachel on that train and not get married.
Now I believe that was the correct decision for both of them at that point but there were ramifications to that decision, and Finn has to face the consequences of that decision, and his decision not to contact Rachel for four months, even if his heart was in the right place when he made that original decision.
Rachel herself said it showed his love for him, but it was the decisions he made after that - not contacting her for four months, sneaking off in the middle of the night - that she had a problem with.
Finn “set her free” and Rachel resisted for four months, despite being lonely, despite being chased by another boy, she resisted until she got to a point where her loneliness overwhelmed her and she made some foolish decisions and allowed herself to be influenced by people who didn’t have her best interest at heart (Brody, other students, Cassandra) and others who should have known better (Kurt).
Rachel too has to live with the ramifications of giving in to her loneliness and kissing Brody just as Finn reappeared in her life. This - along with Finn’s feelings of inadequacy in New York - led to Finn disappearing from the apartment and going back to Lima without saying goodbye.
Now I have said previously that I have issues with some of how Rachel has behaved and allowed herself to be led in recent months (and I have major issues with how this storyline is being written, for example the way they have thrown Rachel automatically into another triangle situation when they could have allowed her to be single for a while), even if I understand what led to this, just as I have issues with Finn not contacting Rachel for four months and just expecting her to have put her life on hold and just be there when he decided to come back, when he had told her to surrender, but I totally understand where his confusion and behaviour came from as well.
This is not black and white. These are two people who clearly still love each other but are struggling with being apart, struggling - in Rachel’s case - in being in a new environment and not sure how to get how she wants but remain herself and in Finn’s case, struggling being back in Lima when he never wanted to be back there and feeling like there is nothing of worth in his life.
However, since the breakup they both have tried to find a way alone in their new life. Rachel has thrown herself into her work at NYADA and has got herself an audition for her first off-Broadway play. Finn has started to enjoy directing the musical and feeling like he has found something he can do.
They have both established lives as individuals outside of each other which is good for both of them because they need to be strong as individuals with their individual dreams if they are going to effectively come back together as adults.
However, this was bound to lead to awkwardness when they met up again for the first time. They aren’t the same people they were the day Finn put Rachel on the train and told her to surrender. They aren’t the same people they were the day Rachel finally did what Finn asked and surrendered and broke up with him because she knew it was best for both of them right then. They are living in different cities, surrounded by different people, living different lives right now and there is a natural distance between them that was never there before because they have barely interacted in six months. That’s a long time to be out of someone’s life who you still love, but who you feel you can’t be with right now.
So this is where we stand when the episode begins.
Rachel is shown to be focused on her work and what she went to New York to be, and what Finn put her on the train to be - a Broadway star.
She excitedly talks to Brody about it, not because she’s in love with him, not because they are in a relationship - they aren’t - but because he is her only friend at NYADA and therefore her go to person to discuss these thing with and ask for help with her audition because there is nobody else. Kurt is not at NYADA, he’s off doing his own thing right now, Brody is it for her there.
It’s not dissimilar to how for a long time Finn was her only go to person at McKinley because nobody liked her and he was her one and only friend.
I am not for a moment saying Brody is Finn (I think anybody who follows this blog knows how I feel about Brody and the actor who plays him), what I am saying is that it is harsh to judge Rachel for talking to and interacting with the only person who is her friend at NYADA.
He still continues to pursue her but she still is not taking it any further than friendship. I mean heck they say they haven’t really spoken in weeks. That’s not a girl rushing into a new relationship. Note again that he just calls her hot, not beautiful, and there is the ego boost that becomes crucial later. It’s not about Rachel having feelings for Brody, it’s that right now, he is the only person in her life - other than her gay best friend - who is coming close to making her feel good about herself because the guy who used to make her feel like the most special girl in the world isn’t around.
Well she broke up with him I hear you say. Yes, she did, but only after being made to feel like she had no choice with Finn’s lack of communication and his clear confusion about what he wanted to do with his life and his telling her in no uncertain terms in their walk in the park that he didn’t feel like he fit in in New York.
There comes a point when you have to let someone find themselves, you have to let them go - even though you love them - so they don’t feel the pressure of the relationship while they work out their individual dream. That is what Rachel did.
Was it purely unselfish? No. Rachel did it partly for herself because she didn’t feel like she could continue to try and boost Finn and make him feel good about himself when she was trying to pursue her own dreams but she also knew that if she continued the relationship at this point they would end up tearing each other apart and it was better to “surrender” at this point then get to the point where they could never mend things.
Like I said, it’s complicated and it’s unfair to blame either one of them.
So we have Rachel focusing on her work, being friendly with Brody, something which Cassandra notices. Then we have the moment - that is so very Rachel - when she puts her foot in it and sets herself up for the heartbreak that comes at the end of the episode.
She suggests that Cassandra audition for the part of the older woman to get back in the game. Rachel’s first mistake was even daring to suggest to a teacher that she audition for a role. Her second mistake was telling her to audition for the role of the mother, not good for anybody’s ego and her third mistake was to talk about her getting back in the game, a reminder of her past failures. None for three with Cassandra there Rachel.
This sets in play Cassandra’s desire to make Rachel pay. What’s the best way to do that in Cassandra’s mind? Sleep with the guy that Cassandra believes Rachel is chasing after, completely misunderstanding the dynamic of Rachel’s relationship with Brody from Rachel’s perspective. I’m not saying Rachel hasn’t been a bit flirty with Brody, she has been, again it’s about the ego boost because of her loneliness, but she certainly hasn’t fallen for the guy in the way Cassandra believes she has.
If she had, Rachel would not be showing any sort of reluctance to go back to Lima. If Rachel has the closure she was so quick to assure Cassandra she has, she would have no problem going back to Lima, and she would have no problem jumping into a relationship with Brody and telling Finn about it.
The fact that she doesn’t want to go home shows that she is afraid that if she goes home not only could it be awkward - which it is - but that all her feelings for Finn that she has been trying to squash down to focus on NYADA, will come back to the surface and make her even more confused than she is now, so she tries to let herself - as well as Kurt, Brody, Cassandra and most importantly Finn - believe that she has moved on.
However after Cassandra’s supposedly nice offer of her frequent flyer miles (but really only set up to get her away from Brody) and Kurt’s insistence that he wants to see Blaine to get closure, she agrees to go.
Then we come to Finn. He initially faces resistance from the students and that’s honestly not surprising, especially from those who he knows since most recently he was one of them and now they are supposed to accept him as their teacher. It’s not personal against Finn as a person, but it is difficult at first for them to accept him as an authority figure.
Finn isn’t helped by Sue’s ongoing campaign against him because of the thoroughly out of character comment they had him say last week and Sue has reverted to old Sue ways, except four years later it is getting a little stale.
However, despite Sue’s moves to block his musical, Finn finds a way around her by bringing the boys to the tyre shop to get them ready for the Greased Lightening number.
I thought this was a great moment for Finn, and showed his interest and ability in directing as he talked the boys through the process of bringing together a musical number. Arty was right last week. Finn is a creative person and he needs an outlet for that and even though he is very new at this, there is a lot that he has picked up over the years in Glee club, and by working with Will and Rachel, that lead him to this point of having the beginnings of the skill set he needs to direct this production.
Finn says to Rachel later that all the time he was thinking “What Would Rachel Do?” As a West Wing fan this made me think back to a wonderful scene near the end of the series when CJ Cregg, who had been the second Chief of Staff to Jed Bartlet , said to Josh Lyman, who was going to be the Chief of Staff for Matt Santos, the new President, that she had a post it note on her desk always with “WWLD?” ie What Would Leo Do? being the late Leo McGarry, the original Chief of Staff for the Bartlet Administration.
That moment was all about the man who inspired them and whose opinion they respected and so it is for Finn. Rachel has always been the person who inspired him with regard to music and he has always respected her opinion. If it wasn’t for Rachel and her belief that he was really talented, and that he could do whatever he put his mind to, he wouldn’t be at the point where he was starting to believe he could do this (although Arty played a very big part last week).
I can imagine all those times he watched Rachel perform, and heard her rattling on about stagecraft etc, as well as everything he learned performing himself, were in his mind as he put this all together.
However on top of that was Finn’s own innate talent that Rachel and Will had believed in but he had never really believed in himself.
By the time the production has ended, and Finn is thanking Arty for getting him involved , Finn is finally starting to believe in his abilities the way Rachel always has and it was really wonderful to see.
That moment when they return to McKinley is quite well played. Nice touch of old Rachel and Kurt and the autograph comment and the nostalgia that comes when you return to your old school, and coming across Mercedes. That was quite well played because you could feel an obvious distance between the three of them caused by six months of no contact and it felt very much like when I caught up with people that I knew at school and hadn’t seen in ages. It’s not the same as it was when you are at school.
Then the very awkward moment when the two couples see each other again, which again is very well played. Finn is very surprised to see them and is thrown by it but he congratulates Rachel on her audition and talks up his production of Grease.
It’s in this moment that you can see the distance that has started to develop between Finn and Rachel in the six months since Finn put Rachel on that train, and especially since Rachel walked away from the auditorium six weeks ago.
Rachel has a life in New York. Finn has a life in Lima and those two lives just aren’t connecting right now and that leads to the misunderstanding that comes later.
Then we come to the production itself. Finn has done a great job and he’s standing on the sidelines proudly watching. Rachel however is sitting in the audience and really, really struggling.
She sees the current group performing You’re The One That I Want, and immediately she is nostalgic for the first time she sang this song with Finn, the first time they ever performed together.
Like I said yesterday, Rachel said to Finn in The Break Up that when it came to him, she would always be that moon eyed girl who freaked him out on their first Glee rehearsal.
The first time Rachel sees Finn again after the break up what does she do?
She fantasises about that moment when she was that moon eyed girl freaking him out at their first Glee rehearsal.
That is not a girl who has moved on. Not even close.
I loved seeing Finn and Rachel performing together, and I loved the insertion of the flashback as Rachel becomes increasingly disturbed by her hallucination/fantasy (and Lea played the moment really well, her shocked look as in her mind Finn suddenly appeared on stage) until she has to run out of the auditorium because she is starting to fall apart.
However, I have several issues with the way the number was shot. There were too many extreme closeups, when the only ones should have been that moment just before they morph into the flashback as Finn and Rachel reflect the closeups from that earlier scene.
I would have liked to see more of the performance from front on from Rachel’s perspective in the audience, partly for reasons of it staying in her fantasy, but also because everytime things really started to heat up with them in the number, they cut away!!
Apart from that, there was too much focus on the other couples in that latter part of the number and that annoyed me because that was clearly all about pandering to other ships to give them their “happy” moment.
That moment should have been all about what was going on in Rachel’s head and you can bet your life Rachel wasn’t thinking “oh how cute I’m dreaming that Kurt and Blaine, Santana and Brittany, Mike and Tina are all happy too, and look there’s Arty and Mercedes too!!!”
Give me a break. This was about Rachel’s momentary mental breakdown because she was consumed with her feelings for Finn and how things used to be for them, how it was so much more simple when they could connect through song (I’ll come back to that) and in that moment she just couldn’t handle it all anymore and had to get out of there.
In that moment, she can’t be in denial anymore. She has realised all those feelings are still there and she can’t cope with that because she has built this wall up around her heart saying she can’t think about Finn because she has to just get on with her life and let him do his thing without getting in the way.
If you can see this, if you can see that from this moment on her walls are going back up again, that she is distraught and not wanting herself to have these feelings for FInn, and that she is in total denial about her feelings, then you will not only understand the two scenes to come, but you can maybe find it a bit easier to cut Rachel a break.
Think back to season 2 after the breakup when Finn started behaving out of character and it was frustrating and confusing for all of us but that was Finn’s way of protecting his heart after Rachel broke it. He was in denial, so he decided that getting back with Quinn was the best way to deal with Rachel because he made himself believe that if he had not broken up with Quinn and given that a real chance, Rachel couldn’t have broken his heart. He was lost and confused and did some really foolish things.
I didn’t hate Finn then. I didn’t blame FInn then. I understood his confusion, and I am doing the same for Rachel now. I might have wanted to give her a good talking to, just like I did Finn in season two, as I am frustrated with her as I was with Finn, but I don’t blame or hate either of them for their actions.
She wasn’t calling Brody because she had feelings for him, she called him because all those feelings for Finn she had tried to squash for the last six weeks were rising to the surface and making her have hallucinations/dreams of her and Finn performing on stage together as she sat in the audience. So what did she do? Call the person who right now is her distraction - just like Finn used Quinn as his distraction in season 2 - as an attempt to run away from her feelings for Finn.
She felt that by calling Brody she could make herself feel better, and escape back into her world of denial, just as Finn erected a kissing booth, played the big man on campus and kissed Quinn while she was with Sam to make himself feel better while he was in denial about his feelings for Rachel after the break up.
So Rachel calls Brody expecting to make herself feel better, and instead she gets a horrible shock when she finds out that Brody has slept with Cassandra.
Let there be no doubt that he slept with her. Not only did her kiss her at the dance studio, made the first move towards his dance instructor despite his supposed feelings for Rachel, he then went to her apartment and slept with her. His watch and phone were by her bed, and you could hear him in the shower while Cassandra was talking to Rachel.
This was not some lie by Cassandra. It happened and I don’t see how we can ever take Brochel seriously after this if they were to go there (and “reconnecting” in 4.08 may just be as friends, not as something more, and it would be awful writing for Rachel if it was more) because it’s been made crystal clear that just like Jesse did, Brody will put his career - and in this case too his hormones - before Rachel.
On Rachel’s side of things, her being shocked and upset isn’t about her having feelings for Brody, it’s not about her crying over Brody himself, but that, yet again, she has been humiliated by somebody she thought cared for her - even just as a friend - just as happened with the egg incident back in high school.
On top of that yet again, in Cassandra, she has a tormentor who has humiliated her and made her look a fool, just like Santana did when she told Rachel in front of the whole glee club that she had slept with Finn.
Rachel said in Britney 2.0 that it felt like NYC was just like Lima, nothing had changed, so Kurt talked her into a makeover and Brody made her feel like the makeover was a good thing.
Turns out, that didn’t change a thing either. She’s still the girl who gets played for a fool.
Put that humiliation on top of her already being emotional about FInn, and Rachel is not in a very good place emotionally when she runs into Finn in the hallway.
Finn knows something is up the moment he sees her because he knows her so well and Finn being Finn he tries to help but from the moment Rachel hung up the phone her walls were up again and her pride wasn’t going to allow Finn to see how badly she was hurting and from here on in, Rachel - apart from a brief moment when she lets her walls down to talk about the musical and we see the Rachel who still loves Finn and is proud of his achievements - is in total denial, being proud and lying through her teeth as my recent anon said.
Rachel says she shouldn’t come and responds that she came for Kurt - denial again - until Finn reacts to that and she briefly lets her walls down and admits she also came for him.
We then get a really beautifully played moment by Lea and Cory as we see the Finn and Rachel we know and love emerge as they discuss the musical. Rachel in her very Rachel way saying she had notes - but only small ones - and then Finn admitting that she was his moose - a nice nod to all those times Finn didn’t know the right thing to say and Rachel corrected him - except this time he had done it deliberately just to make her smile.
It was in this moment that we know that they really aren’t over each other, neither of them have got closure and just like in season two, they are both pretending again.
Speaking of the song Finn penned for them in season two, some of those lyrics are really relevant in this episode, especially to Rachel:
“How long do I fantasise, make believe that it’s still alive” (Rachel in her fantasy moment during Grease).
“But I hold on, I stay strong, wondering if we still belong” (Rachel in denial and pretending that she isn’t crying over Finn)
“Will we ever say the words we’re feeling, reach down underneath and tear down all the walls?” (both are lying through their teeth in this scene, Rachel about not crying over him, Finn about wanting no communication, their walls are up right now).
“Will we ever have our happy ending or will we forever always be pretending?”
That last one we are going to have to wait for but they really are back where they were in season two, trying to deny their feelings because they are both, to quote Rachel, sad and confused and for now it’s easier just to deny their feelings.
Finn persists and asks if she was crying about him and she denies it, but as my anon pointed out, the way she looks down, the way her voice wavers, she’s lying and this allows Finn to jump to conclusions about Brody - just as Rachel jumped to conclusions when Finn talked about the fireworks because he didn’t correct her - because Rachel doesn’t fully correct him.
When he accuses her of moving on too fast, she says he doesn’t know that and then he goes into his spiel about her cries. He really does know her well because she does have those cries except this time he got it wrong. She has one more cry now - the I’ve been utterly humiliated when I’m already a mess cry - although that could be mistaken for the crying over a guy cry because it’s quite similar.
Rachel’s pride gets the better of her after Finn shows why he still knows her best - even if he misread her crying - just as Rachel misread his firework comment - and gets defensive and said this is why they shouldn’t have talked about it, which leads Finn to get even more defensive and wants to shut down all communication, when at the start of the conversation he was talking about how they could still be friends.
His feelings about Brody of it all get the better of him in that moment.
Finn is hung up on the Brody of it all, just like Rachel was hung up on the Quinn of it all. Brody makes Finn feel inadequate and feeds into his insecurities just as Quinn made Rachel feel inadequate and fed into her insecurities.
He thinks Rachel has moved on and she hasn’t. Rachel’s pride stops her from correcting his misunderstanding.
So we are at an impasse, just as we were at the end of the SLS talk, the only thing missing was Finn breaking into Firework.
However, take note of this moment in particular:
“No contact, not even in song…”
“Hi Finn Hudson, I’m your cruise director for De Nile Tours in Egypt. Here, hop aboard your sailing boat. You’ll find a young woman is just ahead of you, having already started her journey down this River in Egypt!”
Who else but either Finn Hudson or Rachel Berry would demand as part of a non communication edict for their relationship that they not communicate in song?
Here’s where Finn joins Rachel in denial. He’s jealous, he’s feeling like Rachel has moved on when he hasn’t so he moves to protect himself too. For these two the one way to absolutely deny their feelings is to not communicate through song because the moment they start to sing, one to the other or singing together, those walls crumble and they can’t keep pretending there is nothing there.
This of course upsets Rachel even more and she puts another brick in the wall and continues to lie by saying he no longer makes her feel like the most special girl in the world, and that it doesn’t feel so bad, except she can’t even look him in the face when he says it.
Rachel, you really are a bad liar but the lines of communication between them are so mangled right now that Finn buys it and still continues to believe she is cut up about Brody and Rachel continues to allow him to believe that to protect herself.
Pretending.
So they go their separate ways. Finn to his life as the new director of New Directions and Rachel back to New York.
We get one more very important moment. Rachel tells Kurt she wants to go home, Kurt says I thought this was home, and Rachel, after turning back towards where Finn had been standing said it doesn’t feel that way anymore.
“My whole life I felt like I was in the wrong place. Like I was just some alien and no one understood me. That all I had to do was go to New York, go home to Broadway, and then everything would be fine.
But I was wrong. My home isn’t some place. It’s someone. It’s you.”
You know Rachel Berry, you were right. You are a little bit psychic.
Rachel has gone to New York, but everything isn’t fine. Sure, she’s enjoying NYADA and she’s beginning to audition and make her way but things still aren’t quite right, despite her current denial she was right in The Break Up, there is something missing because Finn - her home - isn’t there.
So when Rachel says it doesn’t feel like home anymore, she’s not just referring to Lima, she’s referring to Finn not feeling like her home right now, because things seem so messed up again.
Some people have said after all the things that were shown in season three to make them see wonderful together, the writers have trashed that completely and made that seem like it wasn’t important.
I disagree. I agree they have messed some things up, but I don’t think they have made a mockery of those feelings they expressed in those second half of the season episodes after the proposal. Those feelings are all still there, they are just buried amongst the confusion and hurt they are both feeling now but moments like this one says to me that the writers have not forgotten about last season, and the keep giving us these small reminders of that.
Also, remember when Rachel launches into the comments about him not making her feel special, she says that she doesn’t know what is going to happen with them.
That doesn’t sound like a girl completely giving up and the fact that she feels sad and confused adds to that.
This is not over. Not by a long shot and if there is a phone call in 4.09 it just shows they aren’t capable of keeping up the idea of no communication.
I also think Finn’s singing comment shows that when they do come back together it will probably be another epic moment in song like Season 2, except this time it will probably be at the Wemma Wedding.
We thought they had hit rock bottom in 4.04. They hadn’t. This is it. From here they start to rebuild, slowly, starting with the phone call.
They both spend the next few episodes focused on their individual paths, showing that they can have lives independent of each other, but when they come back together it will be because while they could continue to live without each other, they don’t want to. They can make that choice as adults rather than two kids scared of the future clinging to each other because they are scared of the future.
“Sometimes things need to splinter apart before they can be brought back together stronger”.
Keep Ryan’s words in mind as we go through the next through episodes. We don’t know when the reunion is coming but it is coming, you can bet on that.