Glee – Britney 2.0

• Title: Glee – Britney 2.0
• tv.com: link

While Brittany (Heather Morris) struggles from being removed from the Cheerios and reliving her senior year without Santana (Naya Rivera), Rachel (Lea Michele) struggles to make strides in New York, which means it’s time for Glee to turn to the music of Britney Spears for the second time in the show’s four seasons. As Brittany spirals further out of control the New Directions attempt to perform and intervention that only leads to an unfortunate performance of “Gimme More” at McKinley’s first pep rally of the new school year.

The show tries to insert some new character drama with a new love triangle between Kitty (Becca Tobin), Marley (Melissa Benoist) and Jake (Jacob Artist) than includes a duet of mashup of “(You Drive Me) Crazy” and Aerosmith‘s “Crazy.” In New York, with a little encouragement from Kurt (Chris Colfer) and some help from Brody (Dean Geyer), Rachel attempts to prove her sexiness and dance ability to Cassandra July (Kate Hudson) with a performance of “Oops!… I Did It Again” that doesn’t quite go over as well as she planned but does give her some insight into he least favorite teacher.

Despite mixing in cameoes from Puck (Mark Salling) and Santana (Naya Rivera) the Ohio/New York split continues to give the season a decided lack of focus. Brittany’s story is cute but empty (much like the character) and the show hasn’t spent enough time developing the characters of Marley, Jake, and the Cheerios new ice queen to really sell the triangle as a major arc. Jane Lynch gets off a couple of mildly amusing lines but for the second episode in a row Matthew Morrison and Jayma Mays are given little to do.

At a time when it should be concentrating on integrating new characters with the existing cast to create a new season and showing us a little of Will and Emma’s married life (a storyline that has been completely ignored) what we’re given here is a retread of an episode we’ve already seen, and music performances that don’t necessarily serve the narrative separated by minimal storytelling or character development. The only part of the episode that really works is Rachel’s story which is completely disconnected from everything, and everyone, else in show (with the exception of Kurt).

Other performances include Brittany performing “Hold It Against Me,” Blaine and Artie’s mashup of Spears’ “Boys” and Justin Bieber‘s “Boyfriend,” Wade, Marley and Tina perform “Womanizer,” Tina, Joe and Sam perform “3,” and Marley performs “Everytime.”