Naked

Glee picked up a bit this week, but in part just because it wasn't hard to top last week's mess. Writer Ryan Murphy seemed to have come up with this episode mainly as an excuse to make eye candy of his male cast members, but a few moments of brain candy snuck in too.

At first I wasn't quite feeling the conceit of Rachel literally talking to herself, but then the double diva rendition of "Torn" turned out to be one of the better numbers on the show in a while. It had creative staging, and it was fun to compare "college style Rachel" and "high school style Rachel."

I also wasn't really going with the Sam plot this week at first. I feel like I remember a time when the show didn't play him as being dumb like a male Brittany, but at least they've now gotten some decent material out of going all the way down that road. It was nice to see Emma back for a bit, having a moment on screen that didn't have to do with Will, and doing some actually counseling of a student that didn't involve a jokey pamphlet. Plus, the video montage Blaine assembled for him was sweet (even if the three seconds of Mercedes did make me think it's been far too long since we've seen her on the show in any meaningful capacity).

Of course, Rachel wasn't going to go through with the nude scene, and of course she had to make a big diva scene in deciding to back down. That all would have been a total yawn for me, except for the fact that the subplot brought Santana and Quinn to New York. I haven't missed the latter much, though I've certainly missed the former. And it seems like they were setting up for her to relocate to New York, and hopefully become a more regular fixture on the show again.

The rest of the episode was pretty lightweight, but it was an enjoyable enough kind of fluffy once you overlooked the fact that Sue was actually probably right on this occasion -- it didn't seem quite right for Finn to be pushing the sale of a calendar of shirtless pictures of students.

I'd call this one a B-.