Glee: Momentum, Momentous or Just a Moment?

Tonight, we’ll get to see if Ryan Murphy can keep it up.

The momentum, that is. Can he and his team successfully follow up the extraordinary quality on display in last week’s stellar episode?

It was as if the sleepy storyteller roused himself and, begging our pardon, jump-started a formerly meandering, exasperating, repetitious series and decided that an Emmy or two (and fans’ everlasting love and respect) might just make his day.

Surely, the artistry and poetry on display in Glee, "The First Time" owed much to the lovely melodies and lyrics generously excerpted from West Side Story.

Just as certainly, the charming and thoughtful script, knowing and able performances, inspired cinematography and deft editing contributed to making the episode one that ranks with, or even above, the magical first 13 episodes of the entire series.

Is it enough to declare the episode’s awesomeness by pointing out that, almost alone on TV, in movies and in popular literature, the episode put forth the proposition that losing one’s virginity as a young teen could be, under the right circumstances, a smart choice, even an affirmation of humanity over hormones?

Interspersing rehearsal and performance scenes from the McKinley High School presentation of West Side Story with deeply personal vignettes of a few days in the lives of the show’s leads, Rachel and Finn, and Kurt and Blaine, the episode wove themes of love’s awakenings from the Broadway musical with the two couples' desires to take the next step into adulthood.

This was no typical TV sex romp, with teasing glances, randy wrestling and crude one-liners. Instead, it was a carefully-plotted, deliberate and dramatic journey from Glee – the show with exasperating storylines and bewildering character behaviors – to Glee, the show that, for once, could handle itself with skill, daring and a professionalism that probably wasn’t possible until now.

In the 39 years since a Movie of the Week called That Certain Summer showed two gay men living together, Ellen DeGeneres murmured “I’m gay” into an airport microphone, Will and Jack line danced at “The Cowpoke” and Carson Cressley dressed several dozen straight men. But there was always that one inviolate line never to be crossed: if one male character was going to profess love for another male, they’d better be football players, and one had to have cancer.

Looking back, the Glee episode was the one we’ve been waiting for since Will ran after and kissed Emma in the McKinley hallway so long ago. It’s the one that we’ve waited for, slogging through all of Finn’s, or Puck’s, or even Artie’s never-ending romances. It’s the one we’ve deserved since Blaine first popped up and smiled his whiz-bang, tight pants way through “Teenage Dream.” It’s the one that can certainly win Emmys.

We got what we were waiting for. It’s not just that there were two, count ‘em, two loving and long kisses between Kurt and Blaine, but that, at the end, après sex, Kurt and Blaine (and, in another location, Rachel and Finn) were portrayed in loving embrace; soft lighting, equally happy and pleased to be exactly where they were. Has this ever been seen on TV before?

What’s important is not just the upside-down shot that showed Kurt and Blaine in embrace, but the equally languorous shot of Rachel and Finn. It was the juxtaposition of these two separate moments, of young people equally in love, with no judgment of either couple. Those side-by-side dissolves of young people who have made the choice to love one another – and have the right to do so – it wasn’t just a moment, it was a momentous event.

So is there life after the “first time?” Tonight’s “Mash Off” episode promises the Troubletones’ Adele performance, a young Sue Sylvester, more of the student presidential race, a brutal outing, the super-skeevy relationship between Shelby and Puck, what looks to be a near-reunion of Glee Project winners, and finally, the dodgeball takedown we’ve been waiting for.

I can’t wait to see what kind of stamina Ryan Murphy has.