Weekly Gleek: Never Can Say Goodbye

for a loop—what happened to, “If Tony winner Hugh Jackman were here right now, I’m certain he’d be as impressed with your performance as I am,” Professor Whoopi? And what’s gonna happen to Kurt now? Did he for realz only apply to one college? We’ll have to wait for next season to find out.

Rachel, on the other hand, did get in; and in her own, final senior monologue of the episode, she roams the halls and thinks about how her life now is exactly what she dreamed it would be when she was a freshman—prom queen, marrying the football stud, going to her dream school—but she still feels sad, and realizes it’s probably because “in real life, dreams are more complicated than in our fantasies,” and she actually seems perfectly content as she decided to defer college for a year so she can hang around Lima with Kurt and Finn to help them work on their applications for next year. There are not enough HELLZ NO’s in the universe to sum up my feelings on this right now, so let’s just move on to Santana and Mama Gloria, who gives her daughter her graduation present as she’s cleaning out her locker: a big fat check for some big fat amount of money, that could theoretically pay for her entire college education. Santana, bless her, tells Mama to keep the money and go on a cruise or something, she doesn’t need it, cause she has a scholarship. And she’s not going to college anyway.

“So use it to go to New York,” Mama Gloria insists, telling her daughter that she’s an adult now, so her choices are her own. Totally hard rock. Don’t you wish Gloria Estefan was your mom right now?

Of course, that still leaves the question of Brittany; and we know Santana’s thinking about this too as she looks lovingly at an old pic of the two of them in her locker. Should she stay or should she go? Frankly, I’d be fine either way—if she stays, we get another year of Brittana; if she goes to New York, she’ll be kickin’ it with Faberry, and I for one would pay good money to see that buddy movie. We know they’ll all be back next season; we’ll just have to wait and see where the dice fall.

Finally, Rachel gets in the car with Finn to go get married; and for once, Finn does the exact right thing, and drives her to the train station to go to New York instead. He finally confronts the fact that they are just not in the same place in life right now, and it would be wrong for either of them to be a tagalong footnote to the other while they’re just getting started in life. If it’s meant to be, they’ll be together when they’re ready. And if not…well, Rachel will have Quinn’s luscious shoulder to cry on. WIN.

Gotta say, Lea Michele really acted her ass off in this scene. She’s so good at the comedic stuff, it’s easy to forget sometimes how utterly mesmerized I was by the depth of her Broadway performance in Spring Awakening, and how strong her range as an actress is, as well as her singing. Did I mention she also looks awesome topless?

Sorry, moving on. The episode—and the season—ends with the entire glee club seeing Rachel off on her train to New York, as she sings the final number about how you gotta have roots before branches. She emerges from Grand Central station (quite a feat, since the only trains going out of Grand Central are Metro North; but whatever, Penn Station doesn’t make for a very impressive “first glimpse of NYC” montage, I know). Then she walks around Times Square and sings her little heart out, and waits for Quinn to come join her on board the USS Faberry. Grilled Cheezus be with you, ladies.

And that’s all she wrote, bois & grrlz…until next season. Will Santana, and possibly Kurt, join the NYC crew next year? Will Sue and Roz stage a coup on Figgins? Will Sue’s baby pop out fully grown and talking on a cell phone? Will Brittany actually start attending classes? We’ll find out all this and more next season. Until then, it has been a great pleasure sailing with you all on the good ship Glee. Au Revoir!