It's Date Night!

Previously on Glee: The team won Sectionals the weekend before Christmas, then came to school that Monday (which we assumed was due to having to make up snow days), then took a long and well-deserved break. Will broke up with Terri, then made out with Emma, who, presumably, un-resigned. What shenanigans will we get into in 2010?

It's a new year and a new season as we head towards Regionals, but that doesn't mean we can't circle some dates on Glee's Crazy Calendar, now, does it? Let's review the chronology:

Actually, let's start with an aside, in which I point this out to the watchers, the writers, and most especially, the wardrobe personnel of this show: There are way too many outfit changes for the characters. This, in and of itself, provides fodder for this particular batch of posts. I can accept that people might change clothes when they get home from school, but, other than Rachel (who, I assume, keeps several lockers full of clothes around the school), if someone is wearing a different outfit, it is a different day. I get that it's TV, but even on TV there are rules to the non-cartoon world, and one of those rules is that time keeps moving forward, and there are only so many days that people actually spend in school. Suspension of disbelief can cover Rachel telepathically telling the backup band that she's about to sing "Hope it Gives You Hell," and the fact that everyone else in the already knows the words and has thought out the choreography. It cannot cover saying "Sectionals are in two weeks," and then having 30 days' worth of plot before Sectionals. If Regionals takes place in July, and then next season is an interminable march to Nationals, then... I suppose I'll have to write a very stern letter to... someone.

Anyway, thanks to the aforementioned outfit changes, and the fact that people can't be in two places at once and don't live at the school, we go through no fewer than six, and possibly seven, different days:

1) Sue's back! She'd have brought you coffee, but she doesn't like you. Will finds out that he has to place at Regionals.

2) Will hands out the week's assignment, Finn sings his Hello song. Brittany and Santana ask him out.

3) Finn goes on a date with Brittany and Santana. Meanwhile, Rachel meets Jesse.

4) The rest of the gang tell Rachel she can't date Jesse. Will goes to the VA performance and makes out with Idina Menzel. I cannot blame him for this.

5) Emma fixes Will dinner and runs into Terri. (This cannot happen on the same day as 4, by the way, because Will and Idina are clearly at his apartment.)

5ish) Sue brings Rachel to the "Old Maids' Club," Rachel sees Jesse and we find out he's playing her. These could be the same day, or they could be the same day that the Glee Club threatens Rachel, but in three scenes, she has—see previous rant—three different outfits. Not that it really matters, because they don't really have to bleed into a sixth day.

6) Emma confronts Will with a yearbook.

6ish) Final "Hello" sequence. Is it a fantasy sequence, or a rehearsal? I'll go with fantasy, because if it's an actual rehearsal, then this is day 7, because—you guessed it!—Will and Emma are in different outfits.

So, we've gone through at least a week of school days. However, we have a further temporal cue, because the scene with Terri and Emma takes place on Wednesday. Thus, we are at least at the second Thursday of the school year. In Ohio, that means it's January 14.

A few more temporal items of note:

• Jesse mentions having watched McKinley at Sectionals, which immediately struck me as odd, though I suppose it's not out of the question that their own competition would have been on a different day.
• By pointedly telling Finn that she's met "a senior," Rachel implies that Finn is not one. Thus, we have to assume that he is a junior, and by extension, so are Quinn and Puck. This makes little sense to me from the standpoint of high school social hierarchy, but at least they've figured out how to keep them around an extra season without going 90210 on us.

And that's what you missed on Glee. Next week: Madonna!