'Glee' Season 3, Episode 7 Recap & Song List - 'I Kissed A Girl'

Yesterday afternoon, we learned that Ricky Martin is likely to be guest starring on "Glee" sometime soon. Never mind the fact that most of the viewing audience of this show won't know who he is, it breaks one of Ryan Murphy's promises for the new season: no celebrity cameos.

Along with that, Murphy promised a focus on the core characters and less current pop, more classics re-imagined. Well, today was a big setback for all three promises.

Not only that, but no sooner had I started praising the show for breaking out of that awful "here's the week's assignment, now everybody sing in front of the group in the choir room" thing that they did last season, but they fell right back into it.

This week was about Santana and her unexpected out-ing by the campaign commercial, so Finn decided to have everyone (from New Directions and from the Troubletones) come up with a "lady song," which is a nice way of saying "song by or about a lesbian."

This means that almost every musical number of the episode is spent in the choir room, awkwardly delivering to the other students. I just don't buy it. Shouldn't they be rehearsing? Like, as a group? How does this help anyone?

The song selections are at least okay, and Finn's cover of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" was kinda sweet. But good lord, they did another Katy Perry song. ANOTHER KATY PERRY SONG. They have now covered, I think, every single song that Perry has released as a single, except for "ET." Wait for it. They'll get there eventually. There will be an episode set in space or something.

And hey, why not? The show is already stretching to fit this Shelby/Puck relationship in. Puck's behavior is understandable, but is Shelby so lost and hurt and confused that she's willing to risk her job--and likely her entire career as a teacher--by sleeping with a student? That doesn't seem like Shelby. That doesn't seem like anyone. She clearly doesn't even like him that much.

And as for the core characters: we got a little bit of Kurt as he loses the class president bid to Brittany, but he also sees his dad win his election over Sue, so that's good. But did you notice how many times Kurt had to outright state that he needed this class president title on his high school resume or else he'll never get into NYADA? Yeah, he had to keep telling us because our logical-thinking brains are telling us "no art school is going to give a flying you-know-what whether he was class president or not." It's true. They'll care if he can sing, dance and act.

But for as much time as was spent on Kurt, we spend more on Coach Bieste, who is having boy troubles after Sue uses him for leverage for her campaign. And as good as Dot Jones has proven to be on this show, I don't care about any of this. One episode of Bieste romance was cute. Two is too much. Don't care. Move on. And she doesn't need to sing in an episode that already has five other musical numbers.

Yeah, I know. I'm whining. But the show was on such a good trajectory early on in the season that I hate to see it start to go off the rails now. Ultimately, I think the issue is just that there are way too many episodes of this show. Fans clamored for more after the first half of season one because it was short.

The episode attempted to get us emotional over Santana's plight by having her come out to a parent or aunt or grandmother or someone whom we've never met before. That kinda took away all of the emotional weight, didn't it? We're also supposed to be worried about Rachel being suspended over stuffing the ballots, since now she'll miss sectionals. But there wouldn't be much of a show if they didn't make it past round one, would there?

Other notes:

-Kurt's sweaters are getting ridiculous

-Sue hooked up with Dan Quayle, David Boreanaz, and Matt Leinart?

-Sue has an iPhone 5. Nice.

-Ross Perot write-in. Also nice.

-Blaine rapping and the cast's disapproving looks

This week's musical numbers:

"Perfect" - Pink - Blaine and Kurt

"I'm the Only One" - Melissa Etheridge - Puck

"Girls Just Want to Have Fun" - Cyndi Lauper - Finn

"Jolene" - Dolly Parton - Coach Beiste

"I Kissed a Girl" - Katy Perry - the girls of New Directions and the Troubletones

"Constant Craving" - K.D. Lang - Santana

Sue Line of the Week:

"This is between me and Brian Dennehy."