All coffee, no omelet

That didn't make any sense.

Okay, let's get past the strange character turns, particularly Quinn's and Santana's. High schoolers are teenagers, and they do things even they can't fully explain all the time. The whole Sunshine subplot was absurd, but we needed to introduce new characters. The lack of Jayma Mays is distressing, but only slightly so, particularly since this particular episode was so concerned with catching us up with the kids and stuffing as many songs as possible into a single episode like frat boys into a phone booth. Lots of this episode didn't make sense, but what I talk about here is temporal issues, and so that's where I'll focus.

The new football coach comes in to practice and announces everyone is cut, and it's time for new tryouts. That's great and all, but if classes have started, the team has been practicing for weeks, and has probably already had a game. It's not unheard of for a new coach to show up after the season has started (particularly if the old coach has a breakdown), but school budgets don't get set after the students show up. When does this episode take place? If it's before classes start, what is everyone doing in the halls? If it's after, why are all of these little subplots just happening now? Did anyone associated with this show actually go to high school?

Speaking of going to high school, are all of these kids in the same class or what? We know that Rachel is a junior (sure, she looks like she's in her twenties, but John Hughes did this all the time), but all we know about the rest of the cast is that none of them graduated. Even Matt, who we could have graduated in a nod to the fact that people are only high schoolers for a short time, transferred. Finn was the star quarterback for the football team last year, and Quinn the head cheerleader, and Santana her replacement, so one might have thought at least one of them was a senior, but that wasn't going to happen. Perhaps this is their graduation year? Certainly, the school's best football players, the captains of the cheerleading squad, not to mention the school's #1 "power couple," weren't all sophomores last year?

Anyway, there were funny bits, but mostly this episode was a steer with six teats and no oink. Hopefully, this is an aberration, and we can get back to some actual plot, instead of six music videos interspersed with whatever filler is deemed necessary to get to the next song.