And with that, we enter the Grinch homage proper, with faithful Becky tugging a Sue-bearing wagon through the darkened halls as k.d. lang's special cover version of "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch" plays itself out on the soundtrack. And while it's been a very, very long time since I've seen the 1966 animated special upon which this sequence has been based, I can still recognize some of these shots as direct reproductions of ones in that cartoon, and that is fabulous. Of course, it helps that they've added some truly beautiful new moments of their own, like when Sue starts whacking away at the tree's delicate ornaments with a golf club, or when Sue spray-paints the white keys on Tinkles' baby grand black, or when Sue runs the Glee Club's sheet music through an industrial-sized shredder, or when Sue goes all Joan Crawford on Will's inspirational evergreen with a massive pair of pruning shears, but it's the little references to the deathless Chuck Jones original, like Sue snipping away at the toy-laden stockings with a pair of scissors, that really put me in the holiday mood. Sniff.

And in the end, just as Sue tells Becky to load up the sleigh, they top themselves by having Brittany appear with her hair all done up in twisty, gravity-defying Cindy Lou Who loops. "Santa?" Brittany Lou Who calls out. "Why, Brittany!" Sue responds, dropping her voice an octave in order to play along. "What are you doing here?" She's bringing a gift to put under the tree for the homeless kids, of course. "It's a dollhouse," Brittany reveals, "so at least their dolls won't be homeless." That's both incredibly touching and deeply offensive at the same time. How does she do that? Brittany and Sue then parrot some actual lines from the original special, with Brittany Lou Who wondering what Santa's doing there, and Sue The Grinch lying that she needs to fix a faulty bulb on the tree back at her workshop in the North Pole, and while it's not as much fun as Sue clobbering those goddamned ornaments with a golf club, it's still awfully cute. After relieving Brittany Lou Who of her present, Sue The Grinch sends her on her way, and the sequence ends with faithful Becky tugging that wagon back to Sue's office with Sue riding triumphantly atop her pile of purloined Christmastime goodies. And the last thing we see before the next commercial break? Sue's green-skinned, flinty-eyed expression of magnificently malicious malevolence. It's perfect.