Glee: "Heart"

First Aired February 14, 2012

"Let's hear it for luuuvve!  Your assignment Valentine's week is to find and perform the world's greatest love songs."
-Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison)

Valentine's Day is approaching and love is in the air in the hallways of McKinley High!

Sugar Motta (Vanessa Lengies) announces she's throwing a huge Valentine's Day party. Every member of the New Directions glee club is invited, but they must bring a date. Both Artie (Kevin McHale) and Rory (Damian McGinty) want Sugar to be their Valentine date. Each boy sings a love song to Sugar and they try to win her affection with gifts.


Rachel (Lea Michele) and Finn (Cory Montieth) announce their engagement to the rest of the glee club. Some are in favor of the wedding, some think it's a terrible idea that will destroy their dreams.


Rachel's dads Hiram (Jeff Goldblum) and Leroy (Brian Stokes Mitchell) , have given their blessing to Rachel and Finn to marry. But this is actually part of a plan to postpone the wedding through reverse psychology.

Finn & Rachel announce their engagement to New Directions.

Principal Figgins (Iqbal Theba) stops Santana (Naya Rivera) and Brittany (Heather Morris) from kissing each other in the hallway. 

He has received complaints about their displays of affection. Santana says Figgins is a hypocrite, since heterosexual couples kiss in the hallways all the time.Kurt (Chris Colfer) keeps getting Valentine cards and presents from a "secret admirer". He believes the gifts are actually from his boyfriend Blaine (Darren Criss), but he may be in for a huge surprise.

Mercedes (Amber Riley) breaks up with her boyfriend Shane because she is still "in love" with Sam (Chord Overstreet). But she tells Sam they can't date because she feels guilty about breaking Shane's heart and it would be bad to start a relationship under those circumstances.

The God Squad (a club for Christian Students) is trying to raise money through singing telegrams for Valentine's Day.

Santanna wants to pay them to sing for Brittany, but the God Squad must first have a debate about singing for gay couples.


All that, plus lots of song-and-dance numbers!

J.A. Morris says:

As you can tell from the summary, there's a LOT going on in this episode. There's actually too much going on and most of it involves characters I don't care about. Rory and Sugar don't bring much to the table.  There's also a big plot-hole here regarding Sugar's party.  She says only people with dates may attend and that single people aren't invited because they're "sad" and "don't exist" in her world.  Then Artie shows up...without a date with no explanation.  I don't think the Mercedes/Sam (A.K.A. "Samcedes") relationship was handled well either.

The most important thing about this episode is the introduction of Rachel's dads. Jeff Goldblum and Brian Stokes Mitchell are a lot of fun in "Heart", and they're the best part of the episode too.

Rachel's dads make a surprise appearance in the school auditorium.

The dads could have been played for easy laughs, but Goldblum and Stokes Mitchell are funny and make this episode twice as entertaining whenever they're onscreen.  I was also amused by Hiram's story about meeting Leroy when they both performed with Up With People.

The big "show-stopper" song features Amber Riley performing "I Will Always Love You". It should be noted that Riley's performance was recorded several days before the death of Whitney Houston, and this episode is dedicated to Houston.

Mike and Tina don't get a plot in this episode, but I thought they had the best performance.  They perform a duet of the standard "L-O-V-E.".

There's also an ensemble performance of the B-52's "Love Shack", featuring a decent Fred Schneideresque vocal from Chris Colfer.

This isn't a great episode, but the two performances mentioned above and the scenes that feature Hiram and Leroy make it worth watching at least once.  But I don't see this becoming a perennial Valentine's Day favorite.

J.A. Morris' rating:








Two and a half Valentine Hearts


RigbyMel says:

Season 3 of Glee was where the series really started to go downhill in my estimation and this episode kind of demonstrates why.   As J.A. Morris says, there is way too much going on here and not much of it pays off in anything resembling an intelligent fashion.  

We start with an "assignment" for the club members to show off some of their favorite love songs and are not treated to very much that fits into the "great love song" category.   The assignment also seems to be pretty much forgotten after the first 5 minutes.

Artie's attempt to woo Sugar with the song "Let Me Love You" comes off as gross and creepy.

Mike and Tina are adorable.  The inter-cutting during their song and dance number?  Not so much. 

Mike and Tina's rendition of "L-O-V-E", while very cute,  is inter-cut with the stupid Artie/Rory competition over Sugar, which is not at all cute.  This might be ok if it was intended ironically, but seems to be meant to be taken at face value.

Rory is trying too hard

One also wonders why anyone (highschool horndog or not) would be interested in someone as vapid and superficial as Sugar  -- so the Artie/Rory fight over her lacks any sort of resonance.    Speaking of resonance, the ever-present auto-tuning of voices on this show always gets my goat.

Brittany's Valentine playlist for Santana is pretty amusing, actually

The "God Squad" plot thread feels tacked on just to clumsily make a foregone conclusion point about being accepting of attractive young people sharing PDA regardless of sexual orientation.

Kurt receives a "Gorilla-Gram" from his secret admirer

The reveal  of Kurt's secret admirer is only surprising if you've never watched tv or seen a movie involving a secret admirer.

The best things about this episode are Rachel's dads (despite the silly reverse psychology plot they have to carry),  the cute "L-O-V-E" number (marred by the aforementioned inter-cutting) and Chris Colfer's channeling of Fred Schneider during "Love Shack", but this is not enough for me to give this episode a ringing endorsement.

RigbyMel's rating:

1 and a half Valentine hearts

Glee: "Extraordinary Merry Christmas"

Aired December 13, 2011


In this episode the members of the New Direction glee club are celebrating the holidays just after Sectionals are over. The show opens with Mercedes (Amber Riley) singing "All I Want For Christmas Is You" with the other members of the club joining in.

Mercedes singing "All I Want For Christmas Is You"

After the opening number, we learn that Finn (Cory Monteith) is having trouble finding a Christmas present for Rachel (Lea Michelle). Rachel gives him an expensive and long list full of "bling" and tells Finn he can just get her five things off of it. Finn is hit with the realization that, “Holy crap, I'm dating Kim Kardashian.”

Finn and Rachel sharing a Christmas moment by the lockers

We cut to a scene where Coach Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) is talking to Kurt (Chris Colfer), Artie (Kevin McHale) and Blaine (Darren Criss) in her office. Sue is being uncharacteristically magnanimous, saying she forgives the New Directions for past misunderstandings (mostly of her own creation) and wants them to sing at a homeless shelter. Sue has been looking for ways to keep busy since her sister died and says that her plans to shoot reindeer with Sarah Palin fell through.

Irish exchange student Rory (Damian McGinty) will be spending Christmas away from his family for the first time. He sings "Blue Christmas" as a tribute to them. Sam (Chord Overstreet), who is also away from his family, is sympathetic and offers to be Rory's Christmas sponsor and show him how Americans celebrate the holiday.

Meanwhile, glee club sponsor teacher, Will Schuster (Matthew Morrison) has an exciting proposition for the group - their very own television Christmas special with Artie as director. (The local tv affiliate has lost the rights to the "Christmas Yule Log" video and needs to fill time.) Artie agrees to direct as long as he can film in black and white and include a Star Wars tie-in - which was inspired by the Force (apparently) infiltrating Artie's dreams. We get a great cameo from Chewbacca when the scene shows us what was going on in Artie's head.

Chewbacca and the cast of Glee - what a Wookiee!

Unfortunately, the planned tv special is scheduled for the same time as the planned visit to the homeless shelter, but everyone is so excited about being on television that they don't think it through.

Artie auditions people's song ideas for the special including Rachel covering Joni Mitchell's "River." He deems it too depressing. Rachel counters that "Joni Mitchell isn't depressing, she's emotional!" but Artie is unmoved. His vision for the show sounds like a corny old school Christmas special with Kurt and Blaine receiving guests at their "ski chalet" and random friends dropping by to perform various musical numbers. We see lots of these in the show including Kurt and Blaine's rendition of "Let It Snow", Britney and the Cheerios doing a cover of the Waitresses' "Christmas Wrapping" and Rachel and Mercedes duetting on "My Favorite Things."

As per usual, we get to see disagreements between members of the Glee club in this episode. Will Finn find the right present for Rachel? Will the Glee club help bring Christmas cheer to the homeless or will dreams of local tv stardom get in the way? "Yule" (haha) have to watch this episode of Glee and see for yourself!

Haul out the holly (and tinsel) ...

RigbyMel says:

This is the second Christmas episode for Glee and it is ... ok. Not great, but ok. I enjoyed the fun references to old-style Christmas variety specials of yore, right down to the deliberately goofy overacting and stilted segues into songs - it kind of reminded me of a less funny Colbert Christmas. The songs were mostly well-chosen (with one exception that I'll get to momentarily). I find it irritating that the producers of the show choose to use and abuse auto-tune on EVERY SONG especially on people like Amber Riley and Lea Michelle who have fine singing voices and DON'T need to be electronically tweaked onto the right pitch - this is a general complaint I have about the series.

I also don't like the fact that we have yet another instance of women being portrayed as crazy or greedy on the show in the subplot about Rachel wanting "bling" from Finn for the holidays. (SPOILER ALERT: Rachel eventually sees the error of her ways in this ep. However, I have doubts that the lesson learned will carry forward much in future episodes of the show.)

Which brings me to another lesson we're supposed to take away from the show - yes, being kind to people and thinking of others at the holidays is a GREAT message to be putting out there and it cannot be repeated often enough. BUT the use of the ultimate "white-guilt" song "Do They Know It's Christmas?" is condescending at best, and perhaps a bit insulting at worst. I have never been a fan of this song whether in a Bob Geldof, Glee or any other context and I find the song's treatment of the subject - hunger/homelessness - to be smug and heavy-handed. ("Thank God it's them instead of you" - REALLY?)

Complaints aside though, if you are a fan of Glee and/or Christmas there are definitely things to enjoy in this episode - I cannot call it a "classic" though.

My rating:
Two and a half candy canes


J.A. Morris says:

We're in general agreement on "Extraordinary Merry Christmas," including our feelings about "Do They Know It's Christmas." A decent episode, but not one I see myself watching annually. I thought Amber Riley did a better job at hitting the high notes than Mariah Carey does on "All I Want For Christmas Is You." The episode features an original song called "Extraordinary Merry Christmas," which is okay, but won't make you forget "White Christmas" or "Rudolph."

I also appreciated the episode's references to A Charlie Brown Christmas (such as Rory's reading at the end) and The Star Wars Holiday Special .

In last year's Christmas episode (which we have yet to review), we learned that Britney (Heather Morris) still believed in Santa Claus. It would've been nice to know if she still believes, but the writers seem to have forgotten about that plot line (as they often do).

As a fan of the classic Holiday variety shows RigbyMel mentioned, I'll admit that the "chalet" scenes brought a smile to my face. Chris Colfer and Darren Criss did a nice job here with the singing and dancing.

My rating:
Two and a half candy canes