...the present, where Jesse St. James just wants to make sure he's got this straight: "Are you saying your fathers impregnated Patti LuPone in the Marriott in Akron? Was Mandy Patinkin in on this?" HA! And as Rachel whips out a series of photographs that supposedly prove Patti LuPone was mourning her lost daughter for most of the mid-1990s, I'll note that I've done a little research of my own, and the Encores! production of Pal Joey ran for all of three performances from May 5th through the 7th. In 1995. In April of 1994, Patti LuPone was actually indulging in a very long and terribly chic European-style nervous breakdown because Andrew Lloyd Webber fired her from the Broadway transfer of Sunset Boulevard. Ooops! Maybe they'll get it right the next time. Then again, it's called "Google," idiots, and it took me all of three minutes to dig that crap up. How much are you guys getting paid for these scripts, again?

In any event, none of this actually matters, because Idina Menzel is Rachel's birth mother, a fact for which we will receive confirmation before tonight's episode is over, and NEXT!

Gary Wright croons "Dream Weaver" as the camera pans through a dimly lit bar to land on Will and Bryan Ryan perched on a pair of adjacent stools, sucking down a couple of beers. "You were a big deal at McKinley," Will remembers, somehow managing to mask his loathing of Bryan Ryan with tones of admiration as he continues, "You were one of those dudes where all the guys wanted to be you and all the girls wanted you." "Not all of them," Bryan Ryan snorts. "Really?" Will retorts, amicably enough. "Who was the one that got away?" "Ter(r)i Delmonico," Bryan Ryan replies, and Will executes a perfect spit-take across the bar while I rush over to the Internet Movie Database to check on the spelling of his ex-wife's given name, because I haven't seen her wonderfully psychotic ass on this program in what seems like years, and I can't remember if it's one R or two. And by the time I've returned, Will's already told Bryan Ryan about the breakup of his marriage, and there's some blathering about how Glee Club saved Will from himself, or some such bullshit, and then we finally -- finally -- get to the point of this scene: Bryan Ryan has been living a lie. A filthy, disgusting, perverted lie. You see, despite his earlier protests to the contrary, Bryan Ryan desperately misses performing, and has taken to sneaking off to New York three times a year to see Broadway shows. "I have a box of Playbills hidden away in my basement," he sobs, deeply ashamed, "like porn!" Or, you know, like photos of your very special "travel assistant," your utterly unqualified Homeland Security advisor, your underage Congressional page, your exceptionally vigorous meth dealer, or that nice undercover police officer you met in the Minneapolis airport, am I right? Is this what's passing for humor in this episode? Seriously? Seriously? Ugh.