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'Glee' Recap: New Directions And The Funky Bunch

'Loser,' 'Good Vibrations' and 'Give Up the Funk' are this week's highlights.

We all learned an important lesson from last night's "Glee." No, not the fact that Sue Sylvester is capable of having feelings below the neck. We learned that if you're not normally a vengeful person, getting revenge isn't actually as sweet as you might think.

Since Jesse St. James had finally completed Operation: Reunite Rachel and Shelby, he didn't need to stay at McKinley High anymore. He announced to New Directions that he was transferring back to Carmel High and re-joining Vocal Adrenaline just before performing "Another One Bites the Dust" with his VA-mates, who had toilet papered the McKinley choir room. Apparently getting inside their competitors' heads is an annual Vocal Adrenaline tradition called "Funkification."

New Directions were at a loss about what to do to get back at VA, Schue included, and the only thing they could come up with was a lame prank: Puck and Finn slashed the tires on Vocal Adrenaline's 26 Range Rovers. Principal Figgins wanted to expel the culprits, but VA director Shelby Corcoran said it would be OK if Finn and Puck just paid her back the damages. The newly divorced Terri Schuester hired the two boys at Sheets and Things, where they all commiserated about their lowly lives in a too-short cover of Beck's "Loser."

Clearly revenge Plan A didn't work, so Plan B went into action: master something in which the enemy has always had a weakness. Though Vocal Adrenaline are a well-oiled machine, they don't have New Directions' biggest asset: soul. VA have never been able to pull off a funk number, so that's what New Directions decided to do. Besides, everyone was in a funk (Kurt was so depressed he wore the same outfit twice in one week).

Meanwhile, Mr. Schuester hatched a revenge plot of his own. Sue Sylvester's plan to make the choir room into her trophy annex made him snap (and he rather dramatically smashed one of her statuettes on the ground). So, he decided to use the same strategy as he was doing with glee club: hit his opponent where she couldn't compete, her heart. Step 1: A private performance of "Tell Me Something Good," complete with unnerving butt-wiggling close-ups. Step 2: Ask Sue on a date, then stand her up.

Sue was enraged when she realized Will wasn't going to show, so she stormed over to his house in her red tracksuit-and-pearls ensemble, where Will informed her that she was getting a taste of her own medicine. But the plan worked too well. Sue fell into a funk of her own, retreating to her bedroom for five days. She canceled the Cheerios' Nationals appearance, causing her girls to fall into a deep depression too. (Brittany was so depressed she wore her uniform backwards. Well, that's probably why.)

Schue realized how Sue's sadness affected all the Cheerios, and being the model teacher he is, he couldn't take his revenge that far. He went to Sue's trophy-filled house to apologize and help her realize how much she actually cared about her students. He also spoke Spanish to Sue's maid. (Remember how he's a Spanish teacher, but has been seen teaching Spanish maybe once since the pilot?) Coach Sylvester and her crew took first at Nationals, and brought a comically large trophy back to its new home in the choir room (after she almost let Schuester kiss her in exchange for not putting it there).

New Directions' funk numbers included Quinn's rage-filled "It's a Man's Man's Man's World," complete with pregnant backup dancers, which led Mercedes to invite Quinn to live with her family. Puck, Finn and Mercedes sang "Good Vibrations" by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, completely missing the point of "funk." But they didn't find their groove until after Jesse and Vocal Adrenaline humiliated Rachel by pelting her with eggs in the parking lot. Admirably, Rachel's fellow Gleeks literally jumped up to get revenge, before deciding to handle it an even better way: inviting VA's "soulless automatons" to watch New Directions perform Parliament's "Give Up the Funk." Funkification indeed.

Which funk song was your favorite on last night's "Glee"? Do you think New Directions has a shot at winning Regionals? Sound off in the comments.

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