The ridiculous, unnecessary conclusion to the ridiculous, unnecessary return of April Rhodes (Christen Chenoweth) to Glee got me thinking: How much would it cost to pay Brad Falchuk to never, ever write another episode of the series? Every week we get one of his episodes I hope that my assessment of his negative contribution to the show is wrong and every week one of his episodes is featured, I'm disappointed. Without fail, every single one of Falchuk's episodes capture everything that's wrong with Glee and the only thing that saves them from being uniformly terrible is the strength of the cast. I got the feeling from "Home" that the episode consisted of nothing but loose plot ideas that could have popped up in any other episode, but thankfully got lumped together rather than drag down a much more interesting plot later down the line.

It's not that I have a problem with Christen Chenoweth. She's clearly a talented singer and a capable actress, it's just that the April Rhodes character is one of the worst things to happen to Glee. She's a cartoon character who eats plot and has an unfortunate habit of hogging the spotlight. I don't watch Glee to see a bunch of accomplished triple-threats do a routine they could do in their sleep, I watch it to be dazzled by the incredible talent of young, mostly undiscovered performers. Just like the episode's concluding number, April's presence put the rest of the Glee cast in the background in addition to doing nothing for the plot.

The theme for this episode was, as the title suggests, the concept of home, whether it's a physical place, a sense of belonging, or comfort in one's own skin. We know these are all related because the word "home" gets batted around in as many clumsy ways as Falchuk can manage. Will, in search of a temporary practice space for New Directions, runs into April at a roller rink where she's working. Thus begins the first of three songs fronted by Christen Chenoweth, "Fire" by Bruce Springsteen. April worms her way into a night at Will's apartment with the pretense that she's interested in subletting it. The less said about that development, the better.

So, not to be entirely negative, let's talk about what worked in "Home". Even though the romance between Kurt's dad and Finn's mom came out of left field when it would have benefited from one or two episodes of build-up, it actually made for some worthwhile character development. We've known for a while that Finn's father died in Desert Storm and Kurt's mother passed away a long time ago, too. It was nice to get into Finn's head and see how life without a dad has affected him. I'm also not as resistant to the idea of Finn and Kurt eventually becoming stepbrothers. There's not a whole lot of mileage in Kurt's impossible crush on Finn, so maybe the show will have enough good taste to not turn their interactions into some kind of incest joke. There's more hope in the form of a plan to give Kurt a genuine boyfriend, though that part hasn't been cast yet.

And though it was rife with cliche, Mercedes dealing with a budding eating disorder rounded out nicely at the end. Her conversation with Quinn was well-acted and it actually made a lot of sense. I could have done without the Bugs Bunny-esque "people appearing as food" joke. Stuff like that undercuts all the "being fat doesn't matter" talk that pervades the episode's more self-affirming scenes.

Best Moment: Mercedes and Quinn's conversation. I'm glad Amber Riley got some time downstage in this episode instead of being relegated to the occasional sassy comment.

Favorite Song: Kurt singing "A House is Not a Home" by Luther Vandross. The episode was chock full of tunes that are more than twice as old as the show's target demographic, but if one member of the cast can pull off timelessness, it's future gay icon Chris Colfer.

Episode Rating: 3/5- When things were firmly in the hands of the regular cast, the episode was strong. When it relied on Brad Falchuk's clunky script or gave too much attention to a terrible character like April, it fell apart. I guess they can't all be winners. On the plus side, now we can look forward to a much more interesting episode next week.