...shunted over to the music room, where Rachel, Finn, Tinkles, and about forty-five members of McKinley's orchestra and jazz ensemble have assembled so Finn and Rachel might rehearse their entry in the Glee Club's duets competition, and I'm sorry, but these two dolts shrieking "Wooooo-hoo! Nobody knooooows it!" is like Torquemada himself returning from Hell to shove a pear of anguish into my ear canal and start spinning. Tinkles is so totally done with them as well, if that icily irritated glare he tosses in Rachel's general direction is anything to go by. Granted, she brought it upon herself by mussing with his hair while twirling around the piano, but still. Revel in the hate, Tinkles. And when it's all over, Finn realizes, "We're totally going to win this thing." For some reason, this understanding on his part sends Rachel spinning into a shame spiral, and while Tinkles and the eight or nine dozen student musicians presumably listen in on everything that follows, Rachel sinks into one of the chairs on the risers to announce, "I'm not really a nice person." "NO SHIT," Tinkles and the teeming mass of musically inclined teenagers do not scream in her face, choosing instead to putter around silently in the background as Rachel continues, "I'm selfish -- the fact is, I'm only really generous if there's something in it for me."

She goes on to compliment Finn on his kindness and openness, and if you haven't figured out by now that this is all merely a ploy of hers to get him to do something unpleasant for her, you haven't been watching this show for more than a couple of minutes. And long story short, Rachel tells Finn that they have to throw the competition for the sake of New Directions as a whole. "If we want to win Nationals," she asserts, "then Sam has to win this contest, okay? He has to feel like he belongs, and the team has to believe in him!" "Wow," Finn replies after a beat, impressed by Rachel's unexpected munificence. "I've never seen you like this." "You inspired me!" she simpers, leaning in to grant him a peck on the lips. And then Finn thinks real hard for a minute and comes up with this dandy little revelation: "But technically, you're doing this because it'll help us win Nationals, which means there's something in it for you, so it doesn't really count as you doing something nice." Rachel chooses to ignore this and instead urges Finn to focus on the goal: Helping her lose a singing competition so the new kid sticks around. Commercials.