‘Glee’ season 5, episode 4 review: We praise Adam Lambert, and eviscerate that Marley story

We’ll get to some of what worked here on Thursday night’s “Glee” episode in just a minute, but there is something else that we got to address here first: What in the world was going on here when it comes to that Marley story?

After the writers turned Will Schuester into this emotional and complicated figure, he was subjected to one of the worst moments on the show in suspending Marley from the glee club for a week for not wanting to dress up in a Gaga costume for the Gaga / Katy assignment. But the outfit she was supposed to wear was a hand bikini! Seriously? You’re going to suspend someone who developed an eating disorder for not wanting to show off a ton of skin? The one nice thing about this McKinley story is that Sam finally has something fun to do that shippers aren’t going to hate on him for; we like the Penny character, and we like that he put on some sort of insane production for her just because he thought she would like insane things.

Now, let’s return to where the good stuff lies for now in New York. Adam Lambert did a great job in his debut as Elliott “Starchild” Gilbert, mostly in that we got to see both an aggressive and mellow side to his personality. Elliott’s clearly a patient guy in that Kurt pretty much treated him like dirt, and he still wanted to be in his band anyway; but in time, we imagine that this will be more of a personality flaw for Kurt to try to deal with than one that Starchild will worry about. And, this band was entitled “Pamela Lansbury” by Rachel, which is both corny and awesome at the same time. Lea Michele is still taking her time easing her way back onto the show, and that is understandable.

The “shocker” at the end of the episode was that the New Directions kids are suspended for a week for violating the dress code, but we don’t really care that much about that … mostly because there’s no drama in competitive show choir anymore. The New York story was about a A-, and the McKinley story was a solid C- thanks only to Sam bailing the rest out. What grade does that equal out to. Try this: B-.

Did you think that the entire McKinley story was as ridiculous as we did this week? If you want to read some more “Glee” scoop then click here, where you want to read some more news (including watching a preview for next week’s episode).

Photo: Fox