Who’s ready for the Glee premiere on Tuesday? Raise your virtual e-hands up high!

Well, it’s a good thing that Fox was kind enough to send me a screener of next week’s season 2 premiere. Otherwise, I might have been tempted to sleep all the way through the weekend to make Tuesday get here faster. This way, I not only avoid epic Monday bed-head, but I can also give you a little pre-show taste of what’s to come. It’s a win-win!

Keep reading for mild spoilers and analysis of the Glee season 2 premiere, “Audition,” airing at 8pm on Tuesday, September 21 on Fox. And if you’re the kind of Gleek who would rather go into Tuesday with a blank slate, I still have two important words for you: Be. Excited.

The Good:
(And when it’s good, it’s oh, SO good!)

  • The cold open. Don’t tune in late and do try to squelch your screams of excitement, because you might miss fearless blogger Jacob Ben Israel (Josh Sussman) busting open the fourth wall a bit and getting us up to speed with what we missed over the summer. It’s a clever way to catch up, refresh and reward fans with self-aware jokes about everything from Rachel’s self-love to Will Schuester’s tragic addiction to rapping.
  • More Mike Chang. Wait, let me be more specific: More shirtless Mike Chang. It’s good for us, but perhaps bad news for Harry Shum, Jr, who will surely get sick of everyone constantly yelling “Take off your shirt!” after the premiere airs.
  • Rachel (Lea Michele) and Finn (Cory Monteith) making it work. Theirs is such a bizarre, potentially volatile coupling, and it’s a common complaint among fans that we don’t see enough of their special (non-singing) moments that explore just how their relationship works. In the premiere, we get a good look. And it’s a-dooor-able.
  • New faces, and new roles for old ones. We’re in for some major social shifts as Tina and Artie are no more (at least for now), one character went under the knife over the summer, Sam (Chord Overstreet) shakes up the football team, and a couple other Gleeks attempt to round out their club memberships in unexpected ways.
  • Sunshine Corazon (Charice). Her rendition of “Listen” from Dreamgirls is a #1 iTunes track just waiting to happen.
  • Coach Bieste (Dot Jones). The new female football coach is bigger, badder and more prone to talking in the third-person than Coach Sylvester, making her a formidable opponent for Sue and Will, and clearly a joy for the writers to work with–she’s got some of the best lines in the episode. Like Sue, Bieste is not your cookie-cutter one-dimensional villain, and there’s a gooey core inside that hard candy shell that I can’t wait to see get explored further. Maybe she and Sue will discover they’ve got more in common than they think … ?
  • Speaking of Sue: Her tongue’s just as sharp and her diabolical plans just as diabolical as ever. And Brittany’s (Heather Morris) got a couple spectacular one-liners to watch out for, too.

The Bad:
(Don’t worry. None of it is really bad. At all.)

  • No sight of Emma Pilsbury (Jayma Mays). At least we know she’ll pop back up with her new dentist dreamboat, John Stamos, in episode 2.
  • Silent footballer turned Gleek Matt Rutherford and Coach Ken Tanaka are both no longer with McKinley High School. This makes my story about that time that I let Patrick Gallagher cut in front of me in the airport security line (true story, and he’s very nice, even to overenthusiastic Gleeks who force him to take photos when he’s in a hurry) significantly less cool.
  • Not enough Brittany or Kurt. It’s good to spread the love around, of course, but when it comes to Brittany and Kurt, can we ever get enough?
  • Only one scene of shirtless Mike Chang. That counts as bad, right? “TAKE OFF YOUR SHIRT!” (Told ya. I just can’t help it.)

The “Uh, Glee?”
(What I’m not so sure about, but will remain optimistic because I trust Ryan Murphy that much.)

  • No mohawk on Puck (Mark Salling). It’s supposed to be his totem of power, but he’s shaved (albeit, still sexy) in the premiere. Does this mean we’re in for a softer side of Puck?
  • The relationship between Sam (Chord Overstreet) and Finn. The casual homoeroticism cup overfloweth in this episode … not that I’m complaining. But shouldn’t it be Kurt, not Finn, watching his rumored future love interest in the shower?
  • Will and Sue’s scheming reveals a whole new side to their dynamic, and it’s simply really fun to watch as they plot and giggle together. I don’t want to give too much away, but I’m really hoping that we’ll get to see them team up more against the Bieste, and I’m not sure we will.

(Image courtesy of Fox)

Meghan Carlson

Senior Writer, BuddyTV

Meghan hails from Walla Walla, WA, the proud home of the world’s best sweet onions and Adam West, the original Batman. An avid grammarian and over-analyzer, you can usually find her thinking too hard about plot devices in favorites like The Office, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and How I Met Your Mother. In her spare time, Meghan enjoys drawing, shopping, trying to be funny (and often failing), and not understanding the whole Twilight thing. She’s got a BA in English and Studio Art from Whitman College, which makes her a professional arguer, daydreamer, and doodler.