Glee Season 6 Episodes 1 & 2 Review: “Loser Like Me”/”Homecoming”

At its core, Glee has always been a show about underdogs. The reason why so many people connected to the show back when it first premiered (and the main reason that it quickly became my favorite series on television) was its ability to tap into the universal desire to, as Rachel Berry put it in the pilot, “be a part of something special.” We all, on some level, want to be noticed and accepted and loved, and Glee was about achieving that, about discovering self-love and the friendship of others through the power of music and performance.

Unfortunately, when Glee the show and its characters began to revel in its popularity and try to take advantage of it, that’s when the wheels of the series began to come off. You can look to as early as Season 2 for signs of the show going from its fun yet somewhat modest roots and replacing its heart and soul with spectacle. Similarly, in later seasons, specifically Seasons 4 and 5, when the show became more New York-centric, characters’ dreams were constantly coming true, even when they put in little to no effort into making them a reality. Glee was no longer about underdogs but about a bunch of entitled individuals who could essentially ask and take whatever they wanted, and in order to be close to the show it was before, it needed to reclaim its underdog spirit.

And that’s why I was so pleased with last night’s two-hour season premiere, because it felt like Glee was not only resetting storylines and character locations but also regaining its old spirit. It’s the symmetry of both episodes, too, that does this, as “Loser Like Me,” the show’s first hour, makes most of its characters hit rock bottom fast and hard, while “Homecoming,” in all its very Glee ways, gives Rachel, Kurt, and the rest of the gang (along with the audience) a little bit of hope for something better. And really, a lot of it has to deal with Lea Michele’s Rachel, who is front and center for both of these episodes, doing her best to rediscover who she really is.

While people can argue about who the true protagonist of Glee is, there’s no denying that last night’s Season 6 premiere makes it clear that, for this final season at least, it’s Rachel, as it’s her story that we follow through the two hours, with sprinkles of others thrown in there as well. The opening scene of “Loser Like Me” is Rachel getting the horrible news that her TV show has been cancelled and that she’s been fired, an act that causes her to essentially go off the map from family and friends for months to quietly mourn the only thing she thought she had left: her chance at stardom. Then, when she finally does return home, things only get worse for her: she’s the laughing stock of Lima (as she tries to conceal her identity while getting coffee with Blaine), her dads (as Brian Stokes Mitchell makes a guest appearance here) are getting divorced, and everything has changed for her friends (Blaine and Kurt broke up, Will’s now the coach of Vocal Adrenaline, etc.). Rachel’s hasn’t been in this dark of a place in a longtime, and when she returns to her old stomping grounds at McKinley High and sees that Sue has not only dismantled the glee club but gotten rid of any and all arts programs, it’s as if it’s too much for her–she’s finally inspired, compelled to do something, and that something, it turns out, is giving her own money toward reviving the glee club and becoming its new coach, the new Will Schuester, in a way, although Kurt’s also there, acting as her second in command as a part of his NYADA third year work/study program.

“They say you have to lose everything before you can really find yourself,” Rachel’s father says to her earlier on in the episode. For Rachel to really remember who she is, she needed to return to the place where she first discovered herself, the McKinley choir room, and help others realize what’s so special about themselves. And when the first hour, “Loser Like Me,” ends with her rendition of “Let It Go,” it acts as a proclamation, a promise to both herself and the audience that she and the show are going to do everything they can to make this final season into something great.

The following hour, “Homecoming,” keeps that promise; it’s Glee at its most campy and fun, and, as I said before, it does a great job of providing hope for the future through a mix of the old and new. We don’t learn much (if anything really) about what has been going on with Puck, Quinn, Santana, Brittany, Artie, Mercedes, and Tina in the episode, but their presence and the idea that they are they’re because of how close these people, because of the fact that glee club turned them into a family, helps soften the completely unrealistic nature of their return and reminds the audience of why we care about the originals so much. We watched these characters, Rachel, Finn, Quinn, Puck, and the rest of them, so different from each other, come together and be there for another in a way that didn’t feel forced and calculated but that honest and real.

It remains to be seen if the same can be said for the new kids we meet in the episode, but they’re certainly memorable and incredibly likable. Jane, who wanted to be the first female Warbler but wasn’t allowed in, is strong and independent and doesn’t wait around for others to help her–she helps herself, which is why it’s actually somewhat believable that she would be able to convince her parents to let her transfer from Dalton to McKinley. Meanwhile, Roderick is shy and nervous but completely comes into his own when he gets up on the stage to sing “Mustang Sally”–it’s as if you’re watching a metamorphosis occur. The twin Cheerios, Madison and Mason, don’t get much time to make an impression on the audience, but what I’ve seen so far from them, I’ve liked, and they look to fit right into this group of lovable oddballs.

In the first hour of the premiere, Will tells Rachel, “You’re not going to be defined by this failure. The future will judge you based on what you do to come back from it.” Although I wouldn’t call last season of Glee (or the one that came before it) total failures, they certainly were problematic. However, if the rest of Season 6 can be like “Loser Like Me” and “Homecoming,” I’d say that Glee‘s on its way to repairing those problems, and for the first time in a long time, I’ll be more than happy to watch it do so.

Other thoughts:

– So Blaine and Karofsky are together. Even though it’s weird to see the two of them dating, I’m happy to have Max Adler back on the show. I just hope Glee allows Karofsky to be more of a person as the season continues and less of a walking, talking romantic roadblock for Kurt and Blaine.

– So many great callbacks in this episode, from Sue making a “You think this is hard…” joke to Kurt referencing Sebastian Smythe (a.k.a. Grant Gustin who is now the star of a little show called The Flash). However, I think my favorite one was Tina saying that “Sugar Motta was literally tone-deaf,” and Artie responding with “Yeah, but she was hot.”

– Although I’m a little upset with the reasoning for why virtually none of the Season 4 newbies are on the show anymore, I was so happy to see Kitty (Becca Tobin) again and hope that she returns to the nicer, more fun version of herself soon.

– “Home,” the ending musical number of the second episode, was this great operatic mix of fun camp with genuine character emotion and is what Glee used to be able to do all the time when it was at its peak.

– I really loved all the music from last night’s episode, but I’d have to say that the standout performances for me were “Let It Go” (I may like Lea Michele’s rendition better than the original, and I thought this song worked so well for Rachel’s character and what she was feeling in the moment), “Suddenly Seymour,” “Take On Me” (even though I wasn’t a fan of the music video recreation), “Problem” (which may have been my favorite of all the numbers), and “Home.”

What did everyone else think of last night’s Glee premiere? Are you excited for the rest of the final season?

[Photos via FOX]