Dance With Somebody

Tonight, Glee served up the second of two back-to-back theme episodes, this one a tribute to the late Whitney Houston. And it was definitely the kind of mixed bag that a Glee theme episode usually is.

In the plus column were the orchestrations of the songs themselves. Several of the songs featured this week were arranged in very different ways from the original recordings. Rachel and Santana's version of "So Emotional" took on an almost Motown vibe, and a noticeably faster tempo. "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)" stayed true to the original's pop sensibilities, but embraced an almost techno instrumentation that made sense for a dance song now, 25 years later. (Yes, the song is that old.) And no song was more transformed than the episode opener, the a cappella rendition of "How Will I Know."

Honestly, I wish that Glee would take this sort of approach to their music more often. Many haters accuse Glee of being glorified karaoke, and I sometimes find myself agreeing when they adhere too rigidly to the original songs. Performances like this show that the series doesn't have to resort to mash-ups to present a song in an interesting new context.

However, the curse of a Glee theme episode is that the songs -- whether creatively rendered or not -- are often shoehorned into the plot. And that was especially true this week. Those three songs I just mentioned really had no context at all. The finale number, "My Love Is Your Love", was similarly chosen for no particular reason. Two other songs were given context, but only by manufacturing a fracture in Blaine and Kurt's relationship that had never been hinted at before tonight. Yes, the reasons for it, once revealed, made sense, but the whole thing would have played out better if it we'd actually seen any of this supposed "last month" in which the two had grown cold to each other.

So that basically left just one song well paired to its story, the Joe/Quinn duet on "Saving All My Love for You." The beginning of a possible romance between them was the most solid thread of the hour. The other significant subplot (unsupported by song) of Will trying to move up his wedding to Emma was alright, but possibly placed in the wrong episode. The moments felt genuine, but also redundant to the conflict between Kurt and Blaine.

I do have to give bonus points, though, for another fantastic scene between Kurt and his father. Burt Hummel, once again, is the best father on television. With that, I might just kick my grade up to B-. But I'll definitely be glad if this is the last theme episode we see this season.