Glee Season 2, Episode 1, "Audition" Overview / Review

So the day has come! Glee has returned and all is right with the world again!

The first episode of Season Two, titled Audition, opens with Jacob Ben Israel and his Glee's Big Gay Summer video blog, recapping the summers of McKinley High's Glee Club. Between his bashing of the Will's past song choices and opinions of members of the Glee Club, we find lots has changed since this past summer.

 Rachel and Finn are back together, Puck spent his summer pool cleaning money on a vasectomy as it is better for the world, Santana got a boob job, Brittany spent the summer lost in the sewers and Mike Chang and Tina apparently hooked well working as counselors at Asian Camp. Yes, a camp where Asian children are taught to operate electronics. The kids of the Glee club had a very busy summer indeed.

 As like the year before, no one seems to want to join the glee club. That is not the only problem facing the Glee Club this year, Prinicpal Figgins has cut both the Cheerios and the Glee clubs budgets to strengthen their ailing football team. A football team that has a new female head coach, Shannon Beiste.

Sue doesn't take kindly to the loss of two of her confetti cannons and talks Will into helping get rid of Ms. Beiste. The episode finds them playing pranks and just being mean to the point of making the new coach cry.
You really start to feel bad for her if you have ever found yourself on the end of being harassed.

Finally in the end Will realize how childish and mean he was being and can't go on with Sue's plan when she steps over the line. The line, Sue getting Brittney to say Beiste touched her breasts. Will gets Brittney to admit she was lying and eventually makes apology to Beiste. This of course doesn't sit well with Sue and the battle with her and Will begins again.

After a disappointing loss at Regionals at the end of Season One the Glee club decides that it needs to beef up its lineup to win this year and Rachel so she has more background singers. With sign up sheets not working, the kids decide to go out and show the students of McKinley High, how cool it is to burst into random song. First song of the show is Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, "Empire State of Mind". While singing Finn and Rachel notice that two new students seem to be interested in their singing and dancing.

Finn well hanging up Glee signup sheets in the gym locker room stumbles upon one of said students singing in the shower. Transfer student, Sam Evans is singing Poison's, "Every Rose Has Its Thorn". Meanwhile, Rachel runs into exchange student, Sunshine Corazon in the bathroom and tells her she should come join Glee. Sunshine agrees, afterward she starts singing Lady Gaga's "Telephone" and so starts the duet with Rachel. Sue comes and breaks up the singing and Rachel leaves terrified of this girls amazing voice. Finn asks Sam to come sing with the guys in the club and sings "Billionarie" by Travie McCoy and convinces him to come tryout also. It worries me adding two more singers when some of the current club doesn't get enough screen time as it is.

Artie heartbroken over his breakup with Tina convinces Finn to help him get on the football team so he can get abs, as, a battering ram. As you can imagine this doesn't go well and Finn ends up getting kicked off the football team. Meanwhile, Quinn decides to go take back her throne as head of the Cheerios cheerleadering squad. After ratting out Santana's boob job to Sue, she succeeds and ends up in a cat fight with Santana in the hall. That is two more Glee members at each others throats now. Will Quinn revert to her evil self from the beginning of the series or will she remember all of her life lessons she has learned?

Neither Sunshine or Sam ends up showing up for Glee Club auditions. Sunshine ends up at a crackhouse because of the directions to tryouts given to her by a certain Rachel Berry. Sam on the other hand had football tryouts and is now the new quarterback replacing Finn. Finn finds out when he confronts him to find why he missed the audition. I can't imagine when Sam does finally join the Glee Club that is going to go over well. Rachel after being guilt-ed into apologizing asks Sunshine to come sing a song for the club, which very well may not work in her best interests. Sunshine sings "Listen" from the musical, Dreamgirls and rocks the house. Rachel has another enemy now coming to steal her crown as star of the Glee Club.

But as the world of Glee tends to be, nothing works out simply. Sunshine ends up being recruited or I guess bribed to join rivals, Vocal Adrenaline head by new coach, Dustin Goolsby. Once again all Rachel's fault.

Rachel seems even eviler than before. She is a person who has no problem running over anyone she deems below her. Which is everyone. I never trust Rachel. She never learns from any of her mistakes from hurting her friends. The episode ends with Rachel singing, from the Broadway musical The Chorus Line, "Kiss The Day Goodbye", and throwing a pity party for herself, as a montage of the episodes events climaxes plays. She really thinks the world revolves around her. Hopefully she learns something and it sticks this season.

All in all, this episode was everything I expected from the season premiere. Everything seemed much better paced than last seasons second half. The humor and silly plot twists are where they should be. Brittany is still my favorite character and has the best lines on the show. Some characters were missing out completely from the first episode but I'm fine with that. With the sheer amount of drama and clashing of characters, it was fine without them. Hopefully they find a way to give everyone their time to shine. The groundwork has been laid for a great second season and I can't wait for next weeks episode. Let the singing begin!