Glee – Lights Out

• Title: Glee – Lights Out
• tv.com: link

A power outage at McKinley High School leads Mr. Shue (Matthew Morrison) to throw out his original plans of big arena numbers after catching a glimpse at the competition’s secret weapon (Jessica Sanchez) to have the New Directions instead focus on a group of acoustic numbers while Principal Figgins (Iqbal Theba) works to try and solve the problem. In New York Rachel (Lea Michele) and Kurt (Chris Colfer) try to perform an intervention for Santana (Naya Rivera) after discovering their friend is now working as a cage dancer at a sleazy New York night club.

Santana and Rachel tag along when Isabelle (Sarah Jessica Parker) asks Kurt to step in with a couple of his friends to volunteer at a charity event for the New York City Ballet’s educational programs, which means far more to Santana than she initially lets on. Both Blaine (Darren Criss) and Becky (Lauren Potter) attempt to convince Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) to admit the truth about the school shooting and quit her new job as personal trainer and take back the Cheerios from an out of control Roz Washington (NeNe Leakes).

In a moment of frank honesty, Ryder (Blake Jenner) admits to the group that he was molested as a child by his 17 year-old babysitter when he was 11 years-old. While the other boys have a hard time relating to why he would be ashamed, one member of the Glee Club, Kitty (Becca Tobin), knows exactly understands his experience all too well and decides to share her own own story over dinner at Breadsticks. The pair’s burgeoning friendship may be short lived however when Ryder blows off having lunch with Kitty to continue his online romance with the mysterious Katie.

After the build-up we don’t actually witness any of the ballet fundraiser, although Santana’s experience that night does help her rediscover a piece of herself she had lost. The Ryder and Kitty confessions were unexpected, although handled well, but I am sorry to see the show so quickly abandoning the idea of a Ryder/Kitty relationship. And for a show supposedly centered around a capella numbers there were surprisingly few to be had, although it was refreshing to hear less of the auto tune and electronic sound that has become far too much a staple of the show over the past couple of years.

This week’s songs include Sam (Chord Overstreet) performing The Righteous Brothers‘ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” Ryder performs R.E.M.‘s “Everybody Hurts,” Artie (Kevin McHale) leads the group in a performance of Queen‘s “We Will Rock You” featuring makeshift musical instruments, Sue performs “Little Girls” from Annie, Santana sings “At the Ballet” from A Chorus Line in a performance that includes Dior Goodjohn as a young Santana, and the show’s final number features the entire New Directions performing an a capella version of Billy Joel‘s “The Longest Time.”