(excerpt)

But in the last stretch the episode tightened its focus to Finn, Rachel and Kurt, the three characters with whom an erratic season 3 has felt most grounded in the realities of senior year and in Glee’s more bittersweet theme: the gulf between dreams and reality. And from the point the envelopes start to open, the show—and Chris Colfer, Lea Michele and Cory Monteith—absolutely nail it.

First, credit to the writers for not neatly setting up an exit for all three characters to go to New York together. (Not that I doubt they’ll end up together eventually.) Kurt’s rejection from NYADA genuinely surprised me, and Colfer’s silent expressions as Rachel announced that she got in perfectly balanced hurt, envy and genuine happiness.

The breakup scene with Monteith and Michele, meanwhile, was raw, uncomfortable and dead-on, one of the best examples of Glee’s addressing straight on the show’s real stakes (which Finn voiced in the pilot when he feared ending up a “Lima loser”). This wasn’t just a scene about a boy and a girl breaking up. It was also a scene about a young man and woman who badly want things in addition to each other and finally have to accept that “Love will work it out” doesn’t answer everything. After Rachel’s spent a season trying to convince herself that Finn can just tag along to New York as her new husband, it’s Finn who forces himself to realize that that would be wrong for both of them.

Monteith especially acts the hell out of the scene, but the way it unfolds, both of them in the car watching their realities change, is one of the best things the show has ever done. I half—maybe three-quarters—expected it to somehow resolve with Rachel staying behind on that train platform or Finn showing up somehow at Grand Central Station. Instead, we just get a very long sequence of Rachel, walking the streets of Manhattan alone—because it’s really the only choice she could make and remain Rachel Berry.