Okay, it's growing on me. But still: Barbra? With the mink turban? And the Cleopatra eye makeup? And the carrot-colored dress and the luggage and the roses and the tugboat and the nails? Flawless. FLAWLESS.

Ahem.

Right. So, where was I? Oh, yes: Rachel's Sectionals audience leaps to its feet in rapturous applause, and I can't help but feel a little misty-eyed myself now that Rachel's finally getting the sort of adulation she's craved since first we met her way back in May. In any event, once the ovation dies down, Rachel reintroduces the group, and with little fanfare, they begin the song Finn threw at them at the last minute. Unsurprisingly, given Will's neon-lit Meaningful Line towards the end of that locker room scene I all but ignored, that song is "You Can't Always Get What You Want" by The Rolling Stones, and it's...ridiculous. The choreography's a little too polished, the audience is way too into it, Will and Emma practically bursting into tears of joy on either end of their open phone line is just too much, and I really have nothing else to say about it. Well, other than to note that International Recording Artist Eve And Her Scraggedy-Ass Blonde Wig are scowling away in their seat, perhaps having just realized they violated their ethical standards for nothing, but that's not important right now, because we've got to jump ahead to the...

...SECTIONAL JUDGES ROOM at 12:15 PM, as the little label splashed across the screen so helpfully informs us. A stone-faced matron of color sits at a table adjacent to a bleached blonde sporting a cotton candy-colored satin suit who...holy crap! It's Sarah Newlin from HBO's True Blood! Love her. Let's have a listen, shall we? "Okay, I'm just gonna come out and say it!" she begins, and this oughta be good. "This is a singing competition. I don't know how those deaf kids got in -- they weren't singing, they were, like, honking, and everyone was crying, and I was, like, 'Get off the stage! You're terrible and you're making me super uncomfortable!'" HA! In the middle of that magnificent speech, another label popped onto the screen identifying her as "Candace Dystra, 5th Runner-Up Miss Ohio 2006." Hee. "Now, hold on just a second, Candy," a velvety baritone interrupts, and when the camera flips over to the gentleman in question, we can see that those marvelous tones are emanating from none other than Sue Sylvester's erstwhile paramour Rod Remington, whose label further identifies him as "Co-Anchor WOHN-TV, Ohio Legend." Snerk. In any event, Rod continues, "Those Haverhurst [sic] kids twice had me reaching for my handkerchief, and those Jane Addams girls? Had it goin' on in all the right places." "Can I just say something?" The Stone-Faced Matron Of Color chimes in. "I have no idea what the hell I'm doing here!" Her label informs us she's "Donna Landries, Ohio Vice Comptroller, State-Paid Cynic." "I'm serious," she continues, "I don't understand what a glee club is, and I have never even heard the term 'show choir' until about three hours ago when my boss told me he had tickets to NASCAR, and I had to fill in at this fool event." The fact that our protagonists have spent the last thirteen episodes agonizing over Sectionals, only to have that competition judged by these spectacularly unqualified and incompetent idiots? Brilliant. Bravo, Glee. Bravo.