What Rachel Berry Would Do For Love - Glee S2 Spoilers

Warning: If you haven't seen the opening episode of the second season of Glee, then this blog is going to get fairly spoilery. I won't be doing this every week. Every other episode will be talked in my usual TV highlight jumble.

Appropriately titling this episode, Audition, this was an opener all about new beginnings for many of the characters. The Glee club desperately needed new members and Rachel's jealousy got the better of her when Sunshine proved too good a rival to be in the club. So, it's no surprise that Rachel's act of sabotage ended up resulting in Sunshine switching schools and signing up with Vocal Adrenaline instead. A lot of people online have cited this episode as a bad one for Rachel but her behaviour is alarmingly consistent, actually. Rachel is that determined to be Queen Bee of Glee club and it was Finn who got her to admit that she ruined Sunshine's chances of joining the club for her own end than anything else.

There seems to be an ongoing theme of rivalry in this episode as well. When Rachel wasn't getting rid of her own competition, both Will and Sue struck up a temporary alliance to try and get rid of new football coach, Shannon Beiste after she got Figgins to cut budgets for both the Glee club and Cheerios. Surprisingly, Beiste is actually a likeable enough character in this episode. Okay, she did kick Finn off the football team but I felt bad for her when Sue was using Beiste's obvious insecurities to try and get rid of her and the stunt with getting to falsify sexual harrassment claims was a bad move on Sue's part. So, for the time, it looks like Beiste is here to stay.

Quinn and Santana - both of these girls love being Cheerios but I have to hand it to Quinn - the bitch has returned. She used Sue's budget cuts and blabbed about Santana's boob job in order to get back on top of the cheerleading pyramid and their scrap was a nice sight to behold. Much better than new power couple Rachel/Finn or Artie brooding over Tina dumping him for Mike Chang. If you're a Kurt, Puck (who got snipped) or Mercedes fan, then this episode is a damp squib with them. Neither of them did anything of interest in this one.

Other stuff of noteworthy interest in this episode - well there was Finn's embarassing attempts at auditioning for Cheerios, Jacob's blog discussing Rachel's diva behaviour and Will's abysmal rapping, absences from Emma, Terri and Burt, Sam chickening out of trying out for Glee club due to peer pressure (when he wasn't replacing Finn as quarterback). In terms of the song choices - Rachel/Sunshine's bathroom square-off with Telephone and the predicted Rachel solo of What I Did For Love are good standouts along with the group's efforts on Empire State Of Mind but the boys (lead by Sam) take on Billionaire wasn't my favourite choice. As an opening episode, it wasn't bad, solid in places but it's going to take more episodes to decide whether or not this show has real staying power or if it is a one season wonder.