"Glee" Episode 308 Recap: Growing Up Glee

Before I begin, let me thank Heather Hogan for stepping in last week when my power went out. I believe in retrospect it was the gods showing mercy to me by not making me recap what I now firmly believe to be the worst-structured, most badly-written, pointless, plotless episode in the history of Glee, with the sole exception of Santana's amazing scene in which she comes out to, and is rejected by, her abuela.

It didn't help my evaluation of the episode when its author, Matthew Hodgson, took to Twitter last night to opine that those of us who want to see Brittany and Santana kiss should realize that they've already kissed last season in "Duets." He was joined by fellow newbie writer Michael Hitchcock, who decided to tell a fan she "must not have watched the show" if she didn't think they'd kissed.

I'm not sure how they define "kiss" where these boys come from, but in my world it involves lips touching. Not lip to neck. Not hand to hand. Lip to lip like Finn and Rachel, and Finn and Quinn, and Kurt and Brittany, and Jesse and Rachel, and Kurt and Blaine, and Will and Emma, and Will and Terri, and Santana and the guy with mono… I'm assuming you get the picture?

The guys next experienced a Twitter bombing courtesy of the Brittana fandom, and deleted their Tweets. Ooops. Welcome to Glee.

Despite all that, and fortunately for the sake of this recap, "Hold Onto Sixteen" was pretty good. Not "The First Time" good, but it had a good beat and I could dance to it so I give it an 8.

It starts with Insane!Quinn telling Rachel all about how she's going to get Shelby fired for doing the deed with Puck.

Rachel thinks that's a truly bad idea. "First of all, Puck is 18," she says, "so what he and Shelby are doing, even though it's just wrong and so gross, is not illegal, so all you're doing is you're getting her fired, which is going to take away her income to provide food and clothes and put a roof over her child's tiny little blonde head."

Quinn doesn't care, because she's the mommy understudy and plans on getting Beth back herself. But Rachel's not done. "Beth loves her mom. Shelby is her real mom. You've done a lot of really bad things, Quinn, but if you tell people about Shelby and Puck, you'll ruin this little girl's life and then you'll have really hit rock-bottom."

In the choir room, Will is telling Finn they need to do something upbeat for Sectionals, and Finn says they shouldn't be worrying about the set list yet. (Yeah, heck, worry about it the night before – that worked so well as Nationals!) He says, "At least the Cheerios can dance." You know, Finn, so can Mike Chang and Blaine, and they're on your team.

The conclusion he comes to? "We need star power! We need Sam Evans!"

Now, be honest: if we hadn't known Sam was coming back in this episode, wouldn't that have felt like it came out of nowhere? I like him a lot and I'm glad he's back, but when was Sam the big "star power" of New Directions?

Will says that's impossible, because he moved away and no one knows where he is. But Finn does; he's in nearby Kentucky. He found this out because "even homeless people have Facebook."