Oh, glee, how I love you. Why did you stay away for so long?

I take no shame in my unabashed love for this show. From the very first moment of the pilot, I was enthralled, and my love grew and grew, right up to the big sectionals episode. Then, in their infinite wisdom, Fox took glee away from the adoring throngs, and made us wait. A not uncommon move by a network these days, but annoying nonetheless.

Anyhoo, as much as I love, I was fully prepared to not be thrilled with the returning episode. I knew it would be a huge set-up episode for the rest of the season and the road to regionals, and those kind of episodes have a way of being disappointing somehow.

But no! I was mostly wrong. Jane Lynch’s Sue Sylvester was awesomely horrible, Mr. Shue was adorable and didn’t sing any stupid rap mash-ups (thank god), Rachel was her usual self centered self, Finn was a perfect representation of the clueless teen boy (and still perfectly cute), and we got to see into the shallow and hilariously empty minds of Brit and Santana (“Did you know dolphins are just gay sharks?”). With the exception of having to hear “Hello, Again” at all, I enjoyed all of it.

Also, we got the wonderful addition of Broadway lovlies Idina Menzel and Jonathan Groff as potential villian members of Vocal Adrenaline, the main competition to our New Direction glee-ers. Fun!

If you haven’t seen the glorious Sue Sylvester version of Madonna’s “Vogue”, get on that right now, because next week? Madonna week!!