Funeral (Chorus)

Choir director Will Schuster ( Matthew Morrison ) hires Jesse St. James ( Jonathan Groff ) to help set up a national competition next week, guided by his experience as a lead singer in Vocal Adrenaline. Jesse uses the strategy of “Vocal adrenaline”, where they choose the best soloist, and the rest focus on him. He arranges an audition in which Santana Lopez (Naya Rivera), Rachel Berry ( Leah Michel ), Mercedes Jones ( Amber Riley ) and Kurt Hummel ( Chris Colfer ) take part. Jesse sharply criticizes the performances of Santana and Mercedes and pays tribute to his ex-girlfriend Rachel. When he chooses Rachel as the winner, this becomes the cause of the dissatisfaction of the others and threatens another collapse of the team. Schuster decides to ignore Jesse's advice and take advantage of what brought them victory in regional competitions: to write their own songs.

Sue Sylvester ( Jane Lynch ) learns about the death of her sister Gene (Robin Troki), which unsettle her. Trying to get distracted, she decides to disrupt the choir trip to New York and rebooks their tickets to Tripoli instead of New York, and also expels Becky (Lauren Potter) from the cheerleader team. When the choir finds out about Gene's death, Finn ( Corey Monteith ) and Kurt organize a funeral with Sue’s permission. She asks the choristers to come to the funeral, otherwise no one will come to them. Packing things, Gene, Finn and Kurt learn that her favorite film is “ Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory ” and decide to organize a funeral inspired by this film. Reading a speech at a funeral, Sue from an overabundance of emotions cannot finish her, and Will Schuster does it for her. The choir sings Pure Imagination. Sue, in gratitude, tells Will that he is a good friend, unlike her; she says that she has rebooked their tickets and now promises to end with attempts to close the choral circle. She announces that she will run for the US Congress instead, and for the first time wishes good luck to Will. Returning to school, she apologizes to Becky, returns her to the team and says that she will be the captain of the cheerleaders. As a conciliation, Sue hugs Becky, who, like Gene, suffers from Down syndrome.

After the funeral, Finn realizes that he does not want to be with Quinn ( Dianna Agron ) and still feels sympathy for Rachel. Quinn says that Finn ruined her “more plans” for New York, but does not specify which ones; Finn intends to confess her love to Rachel, but leaves when she sees her with Jesse during a kiss on stage. Will Terry's ex-wife ( Jessaline Gilsig ), who helped Sue book tickets for the choir, tells him that she managed to get tickets out of the airline as a donation to the choir, and so they can go national. She says goodbye to Will and reports that she leaves Lyme and moves to Miami to start life anew.

The episode "Funeral" received a mixed response from critics, yielding in this regard to the previous episode, " Prom Queen ", which was rated positively. Most of the negative reviews are related to the storyline, called “weak” and “unreliable”. Poptimal 's Alana Dee called the episode a "bummer", criticizing the plot twist with the death of Gene Sylvester, but appreciated the play of Jane Lynch ^[5] . Sandra Gonzalez from Entertainment Weekly described the series as “weird,” which was “awkward to watch,” in particular, to watch Sue Sylvester suffer. She also spoke negatively about the storyline with Jesse St. James, calling him Jesse St. Jerk ( English jerk , Russian dumbass ) ^[6] . Todd VanDerWerff of The AV Club gave the episode a C rating, noting that the funeral episode was delivering, however, by “killing” Gene, the creators signed their helplessness and lack of ideas for the Lynch character, as well as for Groff and his character Jesse, with whom, according to VanDerf, the creators just did not know what to do ^[7] .

However, there were also positive reviews. IGN Robert Canning gave the series 8.5 points out of 10 possible, praising the game of Jane Lynch, the emotional funeral scene, and calling the plot with Jesse “a successful deviation from the grief of loss” ^[8] . Chris O'Hara from TV Fanatic called the series exemplary for Sue Sylvester and one of the best roles for Jane Lynch for the entire series. He also praised the scene with Terry, noting that “Jessaline Gilsig was magnificent” ^[9] . Despite a negative assessment, VanDerff rated “Lynch's tears” and found Matthew Morrison’s impressive game ^[7] .

• Funeral on Fox.com
• Funeral on the Internet Movie Database