Glee: Yes/No

Glee is one of my favorite shows on television, and because the world has a vendetta against me watching Glee at its normal time, so last night was a special treat for me. And the episode did not disappoint. Now because it's Glee, there were multiple plot lines, and some were better than others.
Plot #1: The episode began with the girls and guys begging Mercedes and Sam for details about their brief summer romance, which led, inevitably into the Grease song "Summer Nights", which was well done. Though Mercedes kept insisting that she loves Shane, her current boyfriend, and Sam tries to figure out why she is no longer attracted to him, but deep down, Mercedes still harbors feelings for him, revealed in the form of another song, when she (and all the other girls in Glee have flashbacks to when they first met their boyfriends) thought of Sam. Sam, meanwhile, is determined to win Mercedes back, so he joins the only sports team he can, synchronized swimming. That led to a funny speech by the swimming coach, saying that Sam has the biggest lips of any white boys she'd ever seen, among other things.
Plot #2: This is the big one, and really is two plots combined into one. Will decides to propose to Emma, so he asks the Glee club to prepare a number that he can perform for Emma, and then it gets even weirder when he asks Finn (a great Cory Montieth) to be his best man, which is just the most awkward thing ever, after all, Will is the teacher and Finn is the student, but I'll get over that. It was when Will was picking out a ring for Emma when Finn told Will that he was talking to an army recruiter so he could be a hero just like his father. Will then decides to get the parents involved, and both Burt (Finn's stepdad and Kurt's father) and Carol (Finn's mother and Kurt's stepmother) tried to persuade him not to do that. And then Carol revealed the big, huge family secret. Finn's father didn't actually die while serving, instead he was dishonorably discharged and died of a nasty drug problem away from home, and Carol didn't want Finn to ruin his life the same way his dad had. And the kicker is she was waiting to tell Finn until he was ready, and Finn runs away claiming he's still not ready. It was certainly the best and most emotional scene in the episode. Now, back to Will's proposal, he asks the permission of Emma's parents, but they give him the answer of a firm, no, and continue to be mean about their daughter's condition, saying they can't believe anyone would want to marry her and that she won't be able to handle children or even herself. This gives Will second thoughts, and after a few tense moments, he decides to go ahead, and after another grand song in the pool, Will pops the question and Emma says yes, inevitable. But then Finn has a suprise of his own, after Rachel promises to be quiet, Finn says that she is the best thing in his life and of all the people in the world, he can't believe that she chose to love him, and so he proposes, but the camera cuts off before she can answer him. I feel the reason that Finn did this was because he was depressed over hearing the tragic news about his father, and after being turned down for the football scholarship, he felt that the army was the only way he was going to get out of this town, but now, he can't even do that, and he feels that Rachel is the only good thing in his life, which isn't necessarily true.
Plot #3: This was another minor one. Becky (with a lovely voice over by Helen Mirren, thanks to those who pointed that out to me) develops a crush on Artie, and Artie does like her too, and feels her pain about being an outsider, but he does not love her, he only wants to be good friends with her, but she wants more. Artie lets her down, and Becky is devastated by this news, feeling as though the only reason why he did that was because of her Down Syndrome, though I don't feel that that is the case, she simply was coming on too strong.
This episode is easily one of the best of the season, the songs were good, and included some newer ones, like Rihanna's "We Found Love" to older ones such as Grease's "Summer Nights" among others. There were some great one liners, and though some plots twists you could see coming (like Finn's proposal to Rachel, though it was still shocking), there were also some you couldn't see, like the big reveal about Finn's father, all in all, it was a great episode. Grade: A