SUE SYLVESTER’S TRACK SUITS. Just two were broken out of the sports locker this week:

• Black with red stripes
• Red with white stripes

SUE SYLVESTER’S BEST LINE(S):

We know everyone is guffawing at Sue’s declaration that Will has a haircut that makes him look lezzie, but our favorite was:   “Get ready for the ride of your life, Will Schuester,” she told him. “You’re about to board the Sue Sylvester Express. Destination: Horror!“

This is the power of Jane Lynch:  she doesn’t have to be in every scene, or even in the majority of scenes, but what ever she is in makes a lasting impact for the rest of the episode.  Witness, then, Glee’s Fall Finale, in which Sue Sylvester steals the two – only two – scenes she is in, and oh, is it delicious.

The episode opens up with Rachel explaining that she is psychic.  (FYI: Rachel will henceforth be known as Miss Cleo.)  She thinks something is up with Puck and Quinn, and, when she is proven right, tells Finn.  We next see Finn pounding Puck with the same frantic, hollowed-out anger that Edward Norton had when he beat up pretty face Jared Leto in Fight Club.  He quits Glee Club.  Quinn cries for his forgiveness.  Oh, honey.  Chillingworth didn’t forgive Hester Prynne, now did he?

Quinn decides that Puck, Jr. will not have any daddy.  This is what woman’s lib was all about, people: the luxury of choice.  This includes the choice to return to one of her knights in football armor when she realizes how difficult it is raise anything – a plant, a puppy, a baby, whatever – on her own.  If there’s one thing we learned from television, it is, with the exception of an abrupt death of the father and Lorelei Gilmore, there really is no such thing as an unpunished single mother, much less one who chose that role in the middle of her second trimester.

Sectionals.  Schuester is giving the Gleeks his Goodnight and Good Luck speech.  The way this is going, with his can-barely-hold-’em-back-he’s-choking tears and his sadly encouraging words (“I don’t know what the future holds for me or for us so goodbye for now”), you’d think he just finished painting his face blue and was sending his kids off to fight an epic battle a la Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

Emma is now the teacher/supervisor of the New Directions.  What about her wedding to Ken?  Ah, Emma cleared her schedule – i.e., pushed back her wedding to the evening (“Now the wedding doesn’t have to take place in broad daylight” – heh) – to be there for Will.  Er, the kids.  Riight.  Poor lovestruck Emma.  Sidenote:  she looks like she popped out of a J.Crew catalogue, she’s so cute.

The Gleeks scramble.  Who will sing what?  Miss Cleo ungraciously volunteers to do the ballad, but Mercedes steps in and pronounces that she’s better.  In the ensuing demonstration that thankfully did not reek of AutoTune, she bellows out Dreamgirls’ “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” with an Arcade Fire-like orchestra accompanying her.  The Gleeks cheer the way I cheered the first time I heard “Neighborhood #3” live.  She wins.

At Sectionals, the Gleeks have the last straw.  Literally: they will go last, after Eve’s Jane Addams Reform School for Girls and the School of the Deaf.  Eve’s girls do Mercedes’ number, with added hairography effect.  Then they do Proud Mary in wheelchairs.  Which we found incredibly dumb; even if you were going to rip off of another school’s setlist, would you really do it verbatim?  Couldn’t they be singing this song in roller skates or something instead, just to add one iota of orginality to this?  All of the Gleeks’ numbers are up before they even had a chance to sing.

Emma confronts Eve and the deaf school choir teacher and guilts them for doing the deed.  “You’re teaching them that the only way they could get ahead is by cheating,” she schools.  Uh, yeah.  The kids have to learn this lesson sometime, Emma.

AH Sue!  Finally!

Will, hears about the fiasco via Emma, accuses Sue of leaking the setlist; she states that he can’t prove anything, and that when the New Directions lose, the budget will go back to the Cheerios.  He states he’s going to take her down; Sue states, delicously:

“You’ll be adding revenge to the long list of things you’re no good at, right next to being married, running a high school glee club and finding a hairstyle that doesn’t look like a lesbian.“

Ha ha!  His curls do make him look a little like a Midwestern butch.  No offense at all, Midwestern butchies.

“Love you like a sister,” she ta-ta’s.  We do.  We really do.  She shoves Will a bit, taunting him: “You wouldn’t hit a woman, would you?” before she whips around, walks away, and fist pumps the air.  Fist pumps!!

Meanwhile, in a very Vanity Fair-esque spread, the New Directions members are sulking in a green room with the nicest furniture arrangement we’ve seen outside of Ikea.  After an inspiring pep talk by Will (“Sometimes being special sucks”), Finn grandly re-enters to quarterback a sudden death, 4th and Goal situation: he brings new songs and enlists Asian guy to choreograph a dance, giving Asian guy one of his very few lines: “It’s going to be choppy.”  Yeah Asian!!

Stage.  Music.  Singing.  Where’s Miss Cleo?  Ah, there she is!  In a classic example of Suprise Them By Entering Through a Different Door, Miss Cleo bursts through the auditorium doors and starts belting out Bahbawa Streisand’s “Don’t Rain on My Parade.”  Have you ever seen the stage version of The Lion King?  Well, if you have, then you will know what we mean when we say: the New Directions stream through those auditorium doors like the animals completing the circle of life during the opening moments of the The Lion King.  Good job, Miss Cleo!

The next number is Finn and his annoyingly breathy pipes that have been so obviously AutoTuned and edited that I don’t even know why they bother.  He’s singing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” which obviously means a lot of things for different people at different times; for him, though, he is getting what he wants: to not have his scholarship and future screwed up because of an unplanned baby.  Overall, a decent cover, but Mick Jagger ain’t Mick Jagger for nothing.

Schuester can hear the amazing-ness that is his Glee Club via Emma’s cell phone, and he is on the verge of the tears.  So, too, are the judges, in their judging room, jousting over who wants to be there the least: they don’t want to be there any more than Ken wanted his fiancee to be there.  Any notion of political correctness that this show has finally collapses under its overly sincere weight:  the Ohio beauty pageant judge confesses that she had no idea why the deaf kids were up there “honking” (that is exactly what she said; we can not be snarky enough to dare making that up).  The state comptroller declares that she will vote against the Jane Addams girls because she does not want to the state to fund their whore-ishness.  Oh, welcome back Glee — this is exactly the type of mocking self-awareness we were talking about during “True Colors.”

The judges finish their deliberations.  Can you guess who won?

Will can’t.  He’s too busy gravely putting on his tie to attend Emma’s now-evening wedding.  On his way out, he brushes off Terri, who attempts to do what too many people do: explain how her newfound therapy session is indicative of her commitment to him.  Just keep brushing, Will, and pretty soon the stain will go away.

Emma and Ken’s wedding looks like it had a budget of approximately $1,000, with $800 of that going to Emma’s lovely dress.  Just lovely.  If Design Within Reach was a clothing line, she’d be its model.  So she sits, alone.  Ken had enough of her obvious love for the man with the lesbian haircut, and left her at their fugly altar.  She confesses her love to Will, explains that now she must resign in shame, and rushes out.  This reminds us of a lot of gay movies we saw in the ’90s.

Back at school, Eve and the other teacher ratted out Sue, and Principal Higgins is about to fire her.  “I beg your PARDON?” she asks, twice, in a row, with barely a breath in between.  We’re going to say this that way from now on.  Will wins.  Big woop.

Thankfully, Sue is not down for the count just yet.  After her tar and feathering, she confronts Will about her Rocky IV plans:  “I’m going to head down to my condo in Boca, brown up a bit, get myself back into fighting shape.”  By the spring opener of Glee, she’ll be ready for the next bout: “Get ready for the ride of your life, Will Schuester,” she told him. “You’re about to board the Sue Sylvester Express. Destination: Horror!”  She leaves, shoving students out of her way.  This is the awesomest part of the whole episode, possibly the entire series so far.

Will licks his chops as he walks into the Glee Club’s rehearsal room.  Oh, right, who won Sectionals?  Oh, right, you have watched television for the last few decades, right?   To celebrate their win, the Gleeks put on a little AutoTuned performance of Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You,” for Will.  Just as “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” resonated particularly well with Finn, this teenybopper song resonates with Will.  He slow-mo runs down the high school highways – hey, when did John Hughes start directing this episode? – and finds Emma.  He kisses her.  My neighbor weeps.

The fall finale is over, but don’t fear!  The Jane Lynch Project doesn’t take hiatuses!  Stay tuned….