'Glee' Season 3, Episode 5 Recap & Song List - 'The First Time'

Before this episode, "The First Time," even aired, people were up in arms about it. The Parents Television Council accused it of "celebrating teen sex" and called it "reprehensible." People are awfully quick to judge this show before they even see it. People, let's be reasonable about this: let's judge it after we've seen it.

It was a rough start, filled with the usual logical stretches that we've come to expect from "Glee." The musical is just days away, but they're not memorized on "Tonight?" This is almost as bad as when they flew to Nationals without any idea what songs they were going to sing.

Even worse, Artie tells Rachel and Blaine flat out that they should go bone their significant others in order to get a better feel for the passion of the characters. At least Beiste and Emma had the decency to leave the room when that conversation started. Then, after that, Artie approaches Beiste and asks her whether she's lost her virginity. Dude, mind your own business.

Incidentally, she hasn't, but has a big crush on the visiting Ohio State scout (whose name is Cooter), who asks her out in another moving "I'm not pretty" scene from Beiste. They're lucky it works every time, or I'd get on their case for repeating what we basically already saw in "Never Been Kissed" last season.

So naturally, Rachel and Blaine try to take Artie's advice and set up some sexy time with their boyfriends. Rachel totally blows it the first time by revealing that it's for the role, and Blaine runs into a Dalton Warbler, Sebastian, who is aggressively into him, which causes some problems with Kurt.

Side note: all of the music from this episode was from "West Side Story" except for that performance of "Uptown Girl." Why? Why disrupt the theme of the episode, and do it with a Billy Joel song to boot? Yeesh. Also, apparently the Dalton teachers are totally hot.

Further logic stretches have Blaine, Kurt, Rachel and Finn having the most reasoned, thoughtful conversations about sex that any high schoolers have ever had in history, not to mention the fact that I don't think any high school boy acts the way Finn does when confronted with the possibility of sex. Here's how that conversation would go in real life:

Rachel: "I want to have sex with you to prepare for the role."

Finn: "Okay!"

Also, Blaine and Kurt go to a gay bar (in rural Ohio...sure) which is kinda strange, but when it turns out that it's so Kurt can run into Karofsky(!) it kinda makes sense. A nice scene between those two.

Things continue to go badly for Blaine as he attempts to jump Kurt while drunk, after spending most of the evening dancing with his new friend Sebastian. Good thing Kurt has some self-worth.

But after the performance of "West Side Story" (complete with its updated version of "America"), things turn for both couples and they lose their virginities in an expression of love and whatnot. And it's totally not "reprehensible" and the world didn't end, PTC, so cool it.

This episode rather sneakily turned into a good one. There were some moments of honest emotion, particularly as expressed by Chris Colfer and Dot Jones, and the chemistry between Lea Michele and Cory Monteith has improved to the point that their scenes really had that first love feeling to them. They described shooting the scenes as "awkward," but clearly that helped.

Also nice were the intercut scenes with the songs from "West Side Story." One of my main complaints with this show is when there's a musical number for no reason, but this was a nice way of simply reinforcing a scene with a musical overtone. The song described the emotion behind the discussion, and it worked very nicely.

Seems a little harsh that Mike's dad would basically disown him for being in a musical, especially with all that joking around about an "Asian F," but people have really strange attitudes towards the arts in this show.

There was also little to no Schuester in this episode, and I was totally okay with that.

Other notes:

-"My only note is more teeth."

-"Because of the layers." Aww.

-"A People's Choice would have gotten you to third base."

-"Someplace nice, like a Marriott or something."

This week's song list:

"Uptown Girl" - Billy Joel - The Warblers

"Tonight" - West Side Story - Rachel and Blaine

"A Boy Like That" - West Side Story" - Santana and Rachel

"America" - West Side Story - Cast

"One Hand, One Heart" - Rachel and Blaine

Brittany line of the week:

"I lost my virginity at cheerleading camp. He just climbed into my tent. Alien invasion."