And when it's over, Mr. Schue announces that he and Coach Sylvester have settled upon three finalists for that iconic piece of polyester trash: Santana Lopez, Mercedes Jones, and... flat-footed Frankenteen! Frankenteen looks mighty pleased with himself, even though he's the only one of the three not to receive a round of applause from his peers because everyone knows how much he sucks and we enter this evening's first commercial break wondering how long it'll take for someone to call Mr. Schue on this blatant bit of results-rigging fuckery.

Forever, as it turns out, for while the first scene after the break more or less opens with Santana Lopez scorching both Mr. Schue and dimwit Frankenteen with a pair of vicious side-eyes, neither she nor Mercedes actually questions the contest's questionable results until Mr. Schue admits the whole thing was nothing more than a tawdry ruse to get the three finalists to focus on their futures. Their actual assignment for the week, he tells them during a private confab in a temporarily abandoned classroom, is "to perform a song from Saturday Night Fever and then share [their] hopes for the future." This should suck. Well, as far as Frankenteen's concerned, at least. "So, what is this?" Mercedes sasses. "Some teacher's manipulative game to get us to tell you what we want to be when we grow up?" Basically, yeah. Mr. Schue, however, pretty much blows off Mercedes's excellent question in favor of spouting a few more platitudes in the children's general direction, and when he's done...