"I wanted to," Will protests, and we've just leapt ahead in time to later that afternoon in the guidance office, where Emma wears a delightful outfit accessorized with a cunning pair of latex gloves as she scrubs down a potted orchid -- the orchid, naturally, not the pot. Will continues, "I just never had..." "...the guts?" Emma pointedly finishes for him, and knock yourselves out while Emma opines, "They say it takes more certainty than talent to be a star." "I mean," she shrugs, "look at John Stamos." HA! Will babbles about his non-impending non-fatherhood for a bit before apologizing for unloading on her, given their relationship's awkwardness as of late. Emma studiously avoids his eyes while babbling herself about said awkwardness until her mouth finally just stops moving. Will, eager to change the subject, asks how the whole Coach Ken situation is working out. "He's flawed," Emma admits needlessly because duh, we've all seen him, before starting in again with the babbling: "But he knows who he is and that's great and there really is nothing sexier in a man than confidence, you know?" AAAAAUAUAUAUUUUUAUUUGH.

After the silent and brief black-and-white title card, we join Will in the teachers' lounge, where he's surprised to find his Glee Club predecessor, Sandy Ryerson, sitting at one of the tables, casually filing his nails. "I thought you weren't allowed on campus," Will opens, taking a seat beside him. "No, William," Sandy corrects, "I'm not allowed within fifty feet of children!" Heh. Sandy, incidentally, has on one of those four-colored pastel Oxford atrocities that just flew off American Eagles Outfitters' shelves at some point during the Clinton administration, along with pants and a casually knotted sweater in coordinating pink. I want to hurl. In the best way. Especially because his nail file's pink, too. Anyway, he explains his presence by noting, "Henri and I go way back -- I got him a job before we even had a shop class. In fact, I told Figgins, 'You are going to have a school full of nancies unless you get some hot wood in those teenagers' hands.'" HA! Will barely has time to let that sink in when Henri -- played by the near-unrecognizable Tony-award-winning star of Jersey Boys John Lloyd Young -- arrives. "I'm back," Henri groggily announces, holding up both of his heavily bandaged hands, and I start in with the inappropriate giggling even before we're slung into a flashback that opens on a trashcan filled with empty cough syrup bottles as Will VOs, "Henri had a little problem with over-the-counter cough medicine." The camera pans up past a whirring table saw to Henri's even groggier flashback face as the zonked-out shop teacher mellowly runs a sheet of plywood across towards the spinning blades and...SPLAT! Good thing my houseguest has no interest in this show, or I'd be deaf from the shrieking. Back in the present, unfortunate and thumbless Henri barely manages to get a mug of coffee up to his lips using both of his hands before sighing, "I'll never hitchhike across Europe. That was a dream, man." Hee. Just then, Sheets 'N Things drudge Howard arrives with the "Welcome Back" cake Will's wife was supposed to deliver herself. "Where's Terri?" Will asks. "Doing the inventory," Howard glumly replies, explaining, "I can't count higher than thirty." And the cake Terri picked out? Features an entirely inappropriate pair of digitally complete hands in the expected position with a jaunty "TWO THUMBS UP" scrawled in red icing beneath. God, I love this show.