Episode Recap: Glee S01E17 Bad Reputation
Glee Season 1
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A good reputation is no reputation at all
The episode started with the Glee kids laughing as they watched a video of Sue dancing to “Physical.” Kurt had stolen it from Sue’s office and Finn decided to post it on YouTube. When it went viral, all the kids started making fun of Sue and all the teachers were no longer afraid of Sue. Sue went to Principal Figgins and blamed the video leak on the Glee club. Will was sure his kids didn’t do it but Sue presented Figgins with another piece of evidence – the Glist. It was a list ranking the Glee kids according to their bad behaviour aka coolness. Figgins warned Will to find the perpetrator or else Glee club will be disbanded.
Back in the Glee practice room, everybody pointed the finger at Puck as he was the delinquent amongst them. But Puck strongly denied he was behind it. Giving up finding the perpetrator for the moment, Will told them their assignment for the week was to find a bad reputation song and rehabilitate it.
In the hallway, Rachel was upset at being ranked last on the Glist (with -5 points) and was determined to climb up the list. She was determined to use this week’s assignment to give herself the worst reputation in the school. She enlisted the help of Artie to make a video, promising him that “Rachel Berry is going to become musically promiscuous.”
And now I can't remember how to leave
Meanwhile, Kurt held a meeting with Artie, Mercedes and Tina, in the Glee practice room, saying they needed to do something bad to get themselves on the Glist. Brittany was also present (she was there since first period). She also wanted to join in their plan because she was only ranked fourth on the Glist despite having made-out with every single one in the school. The five of them decided the worst thing they could do at the school was to create full-on chaos in the library.
Sue, meanwhile, was trying to cope with the humiliation she was suffering at school. She went to her sister Jean, who comforted her by reminded her that whenever they were picked on in their childhood, they would go and help out at the animal shelter to give back because there was always someone who was worse off.
So Sue volunteered as a counsellor and was given Emma’s name. She went to Emma and told her that she had been spying on Will through his landlord and knew Will had a make-out session with the director of Vocal Adrenaline as well as a sleep-over session with April Rhodes (refer to previous episode recap). Coaching Emma to stand up for herself, Sue encouraged her to let Will know how she felt in a public setting (so he can’t escape or manipulate her). This led to a public showdown in the teacher’s lounge during lunchtime.
Can you have failure feet?
The five Glee kids (Tina, Mercedes, Artie, Kurt and Brittany) went to the library and performed “Can’t Touch This” to the shock of the librarian. When they finished and the librarian approached them, they were fully expected to get kicked out. Instead the librarian thought the performance was very cute and wanted them to perform at the Sunday service in her local church.
Dismayed that their squeaky clean reputation was still intact, the Glee kids decided the only way to get a bad reputation was to admit to the notoriously bad-tempered Sue that they were the ones responsible for putting her “Physical” video on YouTube. But when Kurt told Sue in the hallway, a smiling Sue thanked him. Shocked, the Glee kids went back to YouTube and found a completely different and very impressive video to the one they posted up. It turned out Olivia Newton-John had seen Sue’s video and contacted her to reproduce the “Physical” video with Sue donating her proceeds to her sister’s nursing home for a garden patch for her sister to enjoy.
After interviewing all the Glee kids (in a Law and Order style as pointed out by Kurt), Will still couldn’t discover who was putting up the Glist. However, after being teased and tormented by his fellow staff members over him cheating on Emma, Will realized it was Quinn because he understood how it felt to go from the top to the bottom in a couple of seconds. To prevent Quinn from getting suspended or expelled, Figgins asked Will if he find the culprit and Will said no but added that he was confident the Glist was stopped. After a telling look at Quinn, Figgins relented before adding he was still praying for Will.
It was seen in the middle of the episode that Rachel convinced Puck to help her out with her glee club music video. But when the video was finally shown to Glee club, Rachel was seen singing “Run Joey Run” opposite not only Puck, but also Finn and Jesse. It also turned out that she didn’t tell any of the guys either. When the video ended, only Rachel was super excited. All three guys exploded in anger and both Finn and Jesse stormed out of the room. Jesse later broke up with Rachel over it. The episode ended with Rachel singing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and finishing with everybody in Glee exiting the room, leaving Rachel heartbroken.
