Glee: Big Brother Review (3.5/5)

Not Glee's best comeback, but a solid reentry for the show all the same!
As fans of Glee will know, this musical-drama/comedy certainly has its peaks and troughs, often fluctuating in the centre of its seasons when there's little to do but tread water until the next big competition episode comes around. That of course means that when said events do finally hit, we expect big changes for the New Directions and the various plot arcs surrounding the current run, and in that respect the recent mid-series finale On My Way did not let up. We had Dave's attempted suicide, Finn and Rachel getting ready to walk down the aisle, their parents preparing to stop them in the wedding, the Glee Club winning Regionals and of course Quinn's car crash all in the space of one hour, making for what I dubbed one of the finest pieces of television of the year. Picking up from that masterpiece was always going to be hard- Big Brother, the first episode of the final part of the run, seems to struggle under the weight of our expectations. One reveal that is handled with particular respect and success is Quinn now inhabits a wheelchair due to her spine being damaged in the accident, a storyline I'm sure will have dramatic reprecussions what with her denial at Artie's worries that her condition might not be only temporary. It is honestly great to see Glee once again treading so lightly on the toes of these genuine modern issues in teenage society as it did with the gay suicide storyline two weeks back, but whereas this was handled well, Blaine's brother Cooper visiting along with the bizzare machinations of Sue Sylvester's pregnancy all felt a bit rushed, as if they could have been confined to single episodes in the next few weeks alongside the Saturday Night Fever and Whitney tributes we're getting before the season finale. Worse still, it felt as if the Finnchel wedding had been near completely tossed aside for now, leaving the budding couple to once again question their romance in almost the same way as they have done multiple times before in this run alone! Thankfully, though, the song selection was great, especially with a fantastic rendition of Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know from Blaine and Cooper towards the episode's conclusion. What we're left with, then, is a season opener of sorts that had a little too much on its plate to deal with, so while I enjoyed Big Brother, I hope in the final five or six episodes we have left the writing team work on balancing their storylines a little better so I can get to connect with the individual lives of the New Directions agian a little more than I did with them this week.