On My Way is the fourteenth episode of Glee's third season and the fifty-eighth episode overall. It premiered on February 21, 2012.
Sebastian blackmails Rachel by threatening to post a photoshopped photo of Finn Hudson on the internet unless she drops out of Regionals. Sue seeks Quinn's advice on her pregnancy, Dave Karofsky faces bullying about rumors about him being gay spreading at his new school, which pushes him to attempt to end his own life, and Finn and Rachel move up their wedding to immediately following the competition. When Sebastian hears of Karofsky's experience, he abandons his plan to blackmail Rachel. As the New Directions grapple with challenging subjects and they go head to head with the Warblers at Regionals.
The episode was directed by Bradley Buecker and written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa.
Plot[]
In the Lima Bean, Kurt and Rachel are looking at wedding magazines, looking over different wedding dresses. Sebastian surprises them and hands Rachel an 'engagement gift.' It turns out to be a photoshopped picture of Finn, naked and in pumps. Sebastian tells Rachel not to perform at Regionals or the picture will be uploaded everywhere on the Internet, so every time someone searches "Finn Hudson" it will show. He gives her 24 hours.
In the Choir room, Rachel shows New Directions the picture. Finn threatens, along with the New Directions boys, that he is going to go after Sebastian. Rachel tells them not to worry, that they will beat them at Regionals. Finn gets upset about Rachel performing even if it means that the picture will be uploaded. He walks out after Rachel tells him that her future career depends on it.
Sue calls Quinn into her office to tell her that she is pregnant and asks her for advice on dealing with morning sickness. She tells her how she dealt with it, ate saltines, drank herbal tea and sucked on lollipops. Sue, however doesn't feel like Quinn's suggestions are helping her in any way. Quinn asks Sue if she can rejoin the Cheerios because she wants to finish her high school career in the two clubs that made her happy. Sue says she can't let her rejoin the Cheerios because it would be unfair to the who had been practicing for months.
Dave dressing, preparing to hang himself
In the April Rhodes auditorium, Blaine performs the song Cough Syrup for Kurt to get his opinion about performing it at regionals. As he sings, the scene cuts to David Karofsky, who walks into his new school's locker room. As he does, everyone stops to watch him walk to his locker. Someone has written "F--" on it. Stunned, Dave stops and turns around to look at the other boys. He tries to leave quickly but Nick pushes him into a locker, threatening him. He backs down and runs out. As Blaine continues to sing, Dave escapes to his room. He checks his computer and sees messages from kids at his school telling him to go back in the closet, not return to school or threatening his life. He begins to go through emotional states—breaking things, calming down, and crying. He walks into his closet and pulls out his suit. He lays it on his bed and bursts into tears again. He calms himself again and begins to change into the suit. As the song ends he walks back into the closet and pulls out a belt to hang himself.
In Principal Figgins' office, Will, Emma, Sue and Shannon talk about Dave's attempt to take his life and how they should tell the student body. Out of the five of them, Sue is the most visibly affected by it. After initially blaming it on pregnancy hormones, she admits that she feels guilty because she was principal when he Dave was going through his rough time with Kurt. She wishes she had done more to help him back then and thinks it could have prevented his attempt to take his life. She feels worse thinking about what his dad must've gone through finding him.
In The God Squad meeting, Mercedes tells them that they should spend the day praying for Dave. Quinn says that they should pray for his family more. She believes what Dave did was selfish as he not only wanted to hurt himself but everyone around him. She tells them she went through things as hard as him but never could do what he did. Kurt walks in, telling her she has no idea what Dave was going through. She tries to back herself up, but realizes it's not her time as Kurt lists off what he was going through, what drove him to do what he did. He tells them that the Facebook comments haven't stopped, one of them being, "Better luck next time." Quinn asks Kurt why he is there, saying she thought he didn't believe in god. Joe tells the group that Kurt asked if he could come, as he found out that they were praying for him in the session. Kurt tells them that he feels somewhat responsible since Dave called him many times but he never answered. Mercedes tells him that they are going to the hospital, and asks if he wants to come. He nods.
By Rachel's locker, Finn hugs Rachel, forgiving her. He tells her that there is nothing anyone can say or do to have him do what Dave did. She tells him that life is too short and that she wants to get married now, after Regionals.
At The Lima Bean, Sebastian is doing his homework when Santana and Kurt, along with Brittany and Blaine, show up. Santana tells him that all this underhanded blackmail is to stop and he agrees, surprising her. Revealing he called them there, nearly in tears, he apologizes to Blaine for his eye then tells the group that all the photos of Finn have been destroyed. He informs them that the Warblers will be taking donations at Regionals to be given to Lady Gaga's Born This Way foundation, and that win, lose or draw they're dedicating their performance to Dave. We learn that Sebastian and Dave had a previous interaction at Scandals, in which Dave asked Sebastian for advice on how to get a guy. Sebastian answers with sarcastic and rude insult and tells Dave that he should stay in the closet. Visibly upset, he says that "It's all fun and games, until it's not."
Back in the auditorium, Will and the New Directions sit in a circle on the stage. He first tells the group that Rory has never eaten peanut butter before and gives him a teaspoon, to which he tells them it's the best thing he has ever tasted. He uses this to lighten the mood to what he is talking to them about, asking them to never consider doing what Dave has done, no matter how depressed or lost they feel.
Mercedes tells him that they may be dramatic but they would never consider taking their own life, to which Will reveals he did, after he was caught cheating on his Mid-Term in Junior year. He was worried about what his dad would think, the disappointment he would feel. He tells them he went to the roof, to the edge and looked down and thought that in one-step all the pain and humiliation would be over. He says that that day felt like the end of the world but if he went through with it, he would have never met them, or Emma. He asks them to tell the group what they are looking forward to.
Sam reveals he is looking forward to earning enough money to buy his parents a house so they don't have to go through what they did before. Mercedes is looking forward to meeting Rachel's children. Artie wants to see his kids' first steps. Sugar wants to see Sex and the City Part 3. Puck is secretly looking forward to graduating high school. Finn wants to petition the army to have his dad's dishonorable discharge changed to an honorable one. Quinn is looking forward to graduating from Yale at the top of her class. Santana is looking forward to the day her grandmother loves her again. Brittany would like for Lord Tubbington to stop his ecstasy addiction. Blaine wants to see marriage equality in all 50 states. Mike says he is looking forward to his first dance at Carnegie Hall. Tina says she just wants a song. Kurt is looking forward to watching his dad make a change in Congress. Rachel is looking forward to having New Directions as her friends for life, while Rory is looking forward to winning Regionals.
Performance of "Glad You Came"
At Regionals, the Warblers are first to perform. As they sing Stand, Finn is the first to stand, which surprises a Golden Goblet performer. She asks why he is standing for his competition, and he tells them "life's too short"; he encourages them to try it. Afterwards, Sebastian reminds them to make donations to a charity baskes located around them and then they sing Glad You Came. The Golden Goblets follow and begin to sing She Walks in Beauty, surprising the crowd, as they are a choir group.
In the Choir room, Will tells the group to get focused and ready to go on. Finn tells the group that after the competition, he and Rachel are getting married and wants to see all of them there.
Performance of "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger"
They begin by singing Fly/I Believe I Can Fly, with Rachel's dads enjoying every moment that their daughter sang. As New Directions file off, the Troubletones appear and sing What Doesn't Kill You (Stronger), as promised by Will, one performance for every competition. When they finish, Rachel walks on and surprises her dads with a solo, Here's to Us. The New Directions girls return and sing behind Rachel as the boys appear in the balconies of the theater. When Finn appears, Rachel stares directly at him and sings the last bit of the song to him. The New Directions whole performance lasted for more than 7 minutes.
The New Directions, Warblers and the Golden Goblets are all on stage as a judge is brought on in a coffin and dressed as a vampire. He announces the Golden Goblets to be third, Dalton second and New Directions as the winners.
Quinn walks into Sue's office and Sue tells her that she always admired her, for all the ways she isn't like herself and gives her her old Cheerios uniform. Quinn happily accepts it. She walks past Kurt and Blaine in her uniform, receiving a "looking good" from Blaine. She then bumps into Rachel. After Quinn has shown her her new uniform, Rachel tells Quinn that everyone deserves to be happy and she's glad for her, Quinn interrupts her and ask that when she sang her solo, was it to Finn and only Finn. Rachel replies with yes. This makes Quinn say she'd be delighted to attend her wedding and to be bridesmaid.
In the hospital, Kurt visits Dave, who has just come out of a 72 hour suicide watch. Meaning he gets to go home the next day. Kurt tells him that he is happy that he is alive, and is sad that he didn't return the calls. Dave tells him it's okay, he understands that he made Kurt's life living hell for months and he took it. It happened to him and he couldn't handle a week. He reveals that his best friend never wants to talk to him again, his mom tells him he has a disease and could be cured. He doesn't know what to do. Kurt tells him that if he can't go back to his old school, he should go to a new one, but it won't be easy and that some days where life will suck and he will be there with everyone who loves him to help him. He tells him to screw them if they can't accept him.
Kurt and David at the hospital
Kurt suggests that Dave try what Will had the kids do and imagine what he is looking forward to when he leaves. Kurt starts him off, what he will be like in 10 years. Sitting in a great office, he suggests as a sports agent. He has moved away from Lima and has a beautiful son and a handsome partner. The son and partner come in and Dave lifts up his son and hugs him tight, and later kisses his partner. Kurt then cuts to where Dave is about to take his son to his very first football game. Kurt says he leans to his boyfriend and is about to finish, until Dave chips in saying "I'm so happy right now" while blinking back tears of joy. Dave tells Kurt that he would like to be friends, which is when Kurt takes Dave's hand and smiles.
At the court where Finn and Rachel are to get married, Will is trying to work the vending machine, when Sue walks up and congratulates him on his win. Telling him she was in the audience and was amazed by the group. She tells him that she is also pregnant. She tells him that she thinks that they could win at Nationals and wants to help the club, she reveals that there is no catch and really wants to help him.
In a corridor at the courthouse, Burt, Carole, Hiram and Leroy are debating how they should stop the wedding. Burt believes they screwed up, to which Carole jumps in saying that they didn't screw up but raised perfect, independent, loving teenagers. Hiram agrees with Burt, believing that they are in love but aren't ready for marriage. Carole and Hiram agree that if they pulled the plug, that Finn and Rachel would've eloped behind their backs and not even Patti Lupone could talk Rachel out of it.
Leroy tells him that Barbra could, but they could not be able to get in contact with her. Hiram comes up with an idea of all four of them objecting to the wedding, Hiram grab Rachel and take her to a car where Leroy will be waiting, while Burt and Carole distract Finn and the judge, and drive her to Broadway hoping that she would cancel the wedding and get back on her career track.
Finn is waiting in another hallway impatiently,, when Rachel appears in her wedding dress. Finn tells her to rush or else they'll miss their wedding. Rachel, who wants Quinn to be there when she gets married, texts Quinn, asking where she's staying. Quinn replies saying she went home to get her bride's maid's dress and will be there soon.
In her car, Quinn is fixing her makeup, whilst she continues driving she notices that she is stuck behind a slow moving tractor. In the court, New Directions are waiting to start the ceremony. Rachel, who is still waiting for Quinn, is texting her in a hurry. Back in the car, Quinn receives the text from Rachel (WHERE ARE YOU???) and picks up her phone and begins to type out ‘ON MY WAY,' not seeing a stop sign and a truck coming straight at her, the truck crashes into the driver's side of her car. The episode ends with To Be Continued.
Songs[]
| Song Title | Original Artist | Performer(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Cough Syrup | Young the Giant | Blaine Anderson |
| Stand | Lenny Kravitz | Dalton Academy Warblers |
| Glad You Came | The Wanted | |
| Fly/I Believe I Can Fly | Nicki Minaj feat. Rihanna/R. Kelly | New Directions |
| What Doesn't Kill You (Stronger) | Kelly Clarkson | The Troubletones |
| Here's to Us | Halestorm |
Unreleased Songs[]
- She Walks in Beauty by Eric Barnum. Sung by The Golden Goblets.
Background Songs[]
- Chapel of Love by The Dixie Cups.
Guest Cast[]
Special Guest Stars[]
Guest Stars[]
- Mike O'Malley as Burt Hummel
- Iqbal Theba as Principal Figgins
- Dot Marie Jones as Shannon Beiste
- Chord Overstreet as Sam Evans
- Romy Rosemont as Carole Hudson-Hummel
- Max Adler as Dave Karofsky
- Daniel Roebuck as Paul Karofsky
- Grant Gustin as Sebastian Smythe
- Vanessa Lengies as Sugar Motta
- Damian McGinty as Rory Flanagan
- Samuel Larsen as Joe Hart
- Aaron Hill as Nick
Co-Stars[]
- Ian Brennan as Svengoobles
- Dominic Barnes as Trent
- Jed Bernard as Dave Karofsky's Partner
- Hannah Madeleine Goodman as Madrigal Singer
- Joey Haro as Warbler#1
- Riker Lynch as Jeff
- Titus Makin Jr. as David
- Eddy Martin as Thad
- Curt Mega as Nick
- Cooper Rowe as Warbler#3
- Steven Skyler as Warbler#2
Trivia[]
- The following scenes were cut from the episode:
- The Quinn and Rachel scene from the promo where Quinn says "I'm not going to sit around and watch you ruin your life by marrying Finn Hudson".
- The scene at Regionals where LeRoy and Hiram tell Carole and Burt they have to stop the wedding
- The scene where Sue tells Will she is pregnant and Will asking who the father is
- Lea Michele had tweeted that there was a scene that took hours to film with all the ladies in the bridal shop, which was also cut.
- Sebastian smirked a racist remark that some interpret as explaining why Tina was absent in The Spanish Teacher.
- This episode scored a 3.0 18 - 49 rating with 7.46 million people watched this episode, up significantly from Heart. Source
- The title refers to the final text message Quinn sent to Rachel right before her car crash.
- This is the first time out of all three seasons that Kurt has performed at Regionals and won.
- This was the first time that Rachel performed a solo at a competition and did not introduce the New Directions to the audience.
- All songs in this episode were performed at the auditorium.
- Only Mercedes, Santana, Brittany and Sugar are in all the songs at Regionals.
- Brittany and Santana were supposed to have a secret handshake before the New Directions performance but it was cut.
- There is a cut scene from the original script in which Kurt and Blaine talk about Karofsky. Blaine sees that Kurt is upset about Karofsky and suggests that he visits him in hospital because Blaine knows that he could use a friend to talk to. Kurt agrees, and Blaine offers to go with him but Kurt tells him Karofsky would be more comfortable if he went in alone. Blaine then offers to drive him to the hospital and wait in the car to make sure Kurt is okay after, which they both agree on.
- During and after the original airing of this episode, calls and chat messages to the Trevor Project, an LGBT suicide prevention organization, grew by 300%.
- Dianna Agron said in an interview with TVGuide that she knew about the crash in November, and even helped Ryan Murphy come up with the story.
- On August 2, 2012, one day after tweeting the so-called "Box Scene" from Extraordinary Merry Christmas, Ryan Murphy tweeted the deleted "Bridesmaids" scene from this episode where Quinn confronted Rachel about being too young to marry (as seen in the On My Way promo).
- The scene where Quinn is hit by the truck was used in a PSA about texting and driving. The PSA can be seen here .
- Mitch Grassi from Pentatonix (Winning group of Season 3 of the NBC show, The Sing-Off) was one of the Golden Goblets.
- This is the first time since The Sue Sylvester Shuffle that we see Quinn in her cheerio uniform.
- Lea Michele has a song in her debut album, "Louder," named like this episode.
Mistakes[]
- When the New Directions say "What?" because Rory hasn't tasted peanut butter, it was shown that Rory was holding a spoon but when he stood up he was not holding anything.
- When Rachel reads the text message from Quinn saying, "Ran home to get my bridesmaids dress. Be there soon." her phone shows that it's Feb 9, 2012 and 11:01 PM. Just before this a clock on the wall says it's 4:55 PM, and the Regionals/Finchel wedding takes place after Valentine's Day. In addition, when Rachel texts Quinn later, Quinn's phone shows the time as 4:41 PM.
- When Rachel texts Quinn saying "HURRY UP!!" she sends another text message later saying "where are you" the message "HURRY UP!!" isn't in the thread and it comes after Quinn's text.
- After The Warblers sing "Stand," the stage lights focus on Sebastian only. However, the next shot shows the lights are back to normal; after that the stage lights are focused back on Sebastian again.
- When Quinn is talking to Sue for the first time in the episode in Sue's office, Quinn rises from her chair but when the scene flicks to Sue's side, Quinn is seated back down on her chair.
- After the New Directions are announced the winners, Sugar runs to hug Svengoobles, but in the next shot she's seen cheering with the rest of the New Directions.
- Quinn's VW Beetle doesn't have a front license plate. Front license plates are required in Ohio.
- Quinn's back window doesn't crack but the front one does.
Quotes[]
| “ |
Sugar: If someone posted a picture like that of me online, I would probably kill myself. |
” |
—Sugar and Rory to the New Directions | ||
| “ |
Rachel: I want to get married. Now. |
” |
| “ |
Hiram: New plan. I'm gonna fake an epileptic seizure. |
” |
—Hiram Berry and LeRoy Berry to Burt | ||
| “ |
Sebastian: If it isn’t a young Barbra Streisand and an old Betty White. Where is Gay Cyclops? Still trying to stumble his way in? |
” |
—Sebastian Smythe to Rachel Berry and Kurt Hummel | ||
| “ |
Santana: Let me break it down for you, from one bitch to another. All of this vicious, underhanded crap has got to stop. |
” |
| “ |
Sugar: I want to be here to see Sex and the City: Part III. |
” |
—Sugar Motta to the New Directions | ||
| “ |
Tina: I just want a song. |
” |
—Tina Cohen-Chang to the New Directions | ||
Gallery[]
Videos[]
"Bridesmaids Scene"
The deleted bridesmaid scene.
Glee 3x14 - On My Way Promo SUB (HD)