Emma rolls her eyes all the way into the back of her skull as the kids from Haverbrook tunelessly howl their way through "Don't Stop Believing," and oh, my God. We don't see the actual performance, given that they've chosen to treat us to a variety of delicious audience reaction shots instead, but the Haverbrook kids sound just as awful as you were expecting them to the moment we all learned a deaf choir was supposed to be McKinley's primary Sectionals competition back during the sixth episode. Don't lie. Mating walruses is what you expected to hear, and mating walruses is what you've finally received. I love this show. Of course, the teary-eyed gentleman sitting directly in front of an increasingly agitated Rachel finds this all terribly touching in the extreme, and as he dabs at his watery cheeks with a delicate handkerchief, Rachel finally explodes. "Meet me in the green room in five minutes!" she bellows at her fellow clubbers, just barely making herself heard over the deliriously wrong caterwauling pouring from the stage, and she flounces right into...

...said green room, five minutes later, where we find most of her thoroughly demoralized, disheartened, and depressed compatriots slumped over in chairs while Kurt angrily accuses Brittney and Santana Lopez of being "Sue Sylvester's little moles." Before either get a chance to deny it, Quinn confirms that Sue did, indeed, task them with spying on the Glee Club's activities, but Santana Lopez angrily insists that neither she nor Brittney gave Sue the set list. "Well, uh?" Brittney begins. "I did? But I didn't know what she was gonna do with it?" Oh, Brittney! Santana Lopez rolls her eyes and tells the others they can believe what they want, but the fact is no one's forcing her to participate in Sectionals. "And if you ever tell anyone this, I'll deny it," she adds, "but I like being in Glee Club -- it's the best part of my day, okay? -- and I wasn't gonna go mess it up." This shocking revelation stuns everyone present into silence, or something, until Rachel kindly allows that she, for one, believes everything Santana Lopez just said, but that's not going to help them win this thing. They need to strategize, and they need to strategize fast. First up: A new ballad. While Mercedes does have other appropriate songs in her repertoire, she admits none of them have the impact of "And I Am Telling You," and none of them therefore can match -- much less top -- whatever Rachel's got up her aggravatingly well rehearsed sleeve at the moment. "You're the best singer that we've got," Mercedes allows, disappointed at the way things have turned out, but with absolutely no animosity towards Rachel. Kurt, of course, has animosity to spare, but even he's forced to admit that Mercedes is right. "Rachel's our star," he sighs, having long ago slumped into a thoroughly demoralized, disheartened, and depressed chair of his own, "and if anyone's gonna go belt it on the fly, it should be her." Rachel, grateful, admits she does happen to have something she's been working on since she was four, and with the new ballad thus nailed down, everyone hastily agrees to close with a reprise of "Somebody to Love," but that still means they're one number short. Whatever shall they do?