"The Purple Piano Project" is the premiere episode of the third season of the American musical television series Glee, and the forty-fifth overall. The episode was written by series co-creator Brad Falchuk, directed by Eric Stoltz, and first aired on September 20, 2011 on Fox in the United States. It features the start of a new school year at McKinley High, and for its glee club, New Directions. Members of the club have left, and a recruitment drive is launched to bring the numbers back up. Blaine Anderson (Darren Criss), Kurt Hummel's (Chris Colfer) boyfriend, transfers from Dalton Academy to McKinley High, Quinn Fabray (Dianna Agron) becomes rebellious and joins The Skanks, and Mercedes Jones (Amber Riley) gets a new boyfriend. Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) is running for Congress.
The episode received mixed-to-positive reviews, with favorable notice being taken of the renewed focus on the core characters, though there was a lack of overall enthusiasm from several reviewers. The subplot with Kurt and Rachel Berry (Lea Michele), and its introduction of Harmony (Lindsay Pearce), garnered praise for all three performers. The musical performances were generally well-received, and the "Anything Goes" / "Anything You Can Do" mash-up featuring Pearce was widely acclaimed. Five covers were released as singles, three of which charted on the Billboard Hot 100 and the Canadian Hot 100. Upon its initial airing, this episode was viewed by 9.21 million American viewers and garnered a 4.0/11 Nielsen rating/share in the 18–49 age group. The total viewership and ratings for this episode were down significantly from the previous episode, "New York".
Plot It is a new year at McKinley High. New Directions glee club director Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) and guidance counselor Emma Pillsbury (Jayma Mays) are now in a relationship. Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch), coach of the Cheerios cheerleading squad, is running for Congress but doing badly in the polls. Glee club member Mike Chang (Harry Shum, Jr.) is now a senior, while fellow members Tina Cohen-Chang (Jenna Ushkowitz) and Artie Abrams (Kevin McHale) are juniors. Club co-captain Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith), a senior, has no idea what to do about his future. Mercedes Jones (Amber Riley) has a new boyfriend (LaMarcus Tinker); her former boyfriend Sam Evans (Chord Overstreet) moved to another state. Dave Karofsky (Max Adler) transferred after being outed at McKinley. Three New Directions members have left: Sam, Lauren Zizes (Ashley Fink), who also broke up with Puck (Mark Salling), and Sam's ex-girlfriend Quinn Fabray (Dianna Agron), who has completely reinvented herself with pink hair, a nose ring and a tattoo; she has taken up smoking, and has made friends with a group of outcast girls called the Skanks. She refuses to rejoin either the Cheerios or New Directions.
To recruit new talent, Will places several purple pianos around the school and encourages the club to sing whenever they see one. When Mike and Tina play on one in a hallway, Sue interrupts them by snapping the piano strings with wire cutters, and is praised for doing so by an arts-hating teacher (Barbara Tarbuck), who promises to vote for her. An inspired Sue goes on television and vows that, if elected, she will cut all funding for school arts programs until all students read at or above grade level. She makes Santana Lopez (Naya Rivera) and Becky Jackson (Lauren Potter) cheerleading co-captains, to their mutual disgust, and gets their pledge to help her sabotage the glee club. After New Directions performs "We Got the Beat" in the cafeteria, Becky starts a food fight that targets the club. Following lunch, Sugar Motta (Vanessa Lengies) auditions, but cannot sing in tune. An agonized Will eventually rejects Sugar, but gains a new recruit when Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer) convinces his boyfriend Blaine Anderson (Darren Criss) to transfer from Dalton Academy.
Kurt and Rachel see Emma about their plans to attend college in New York City. She suggests they consider a top school for the dramatic arts there, and the two of them attend an Ohio "mixer" for students interested in applying. They have rehearsed "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead", and expect to overawe the other attendees with the performance, but are instead intimidated by their performance of an "Anything Goes" and "Anything You Can Do" mash-up led by Harmony (Lindsay Pearce). Although badly shaken, they vow to persevere.
Blaine sings "It's Not Unusual" to a large crowd in the school courtyard while a growing number of Cheerios, directed by Santana, join in as back-up dancers. As the number is ending, the Cheerios circle the purple piano, and they each sprinkle it with lighter fluid. Quinn flicks her lit cigarette onto the piano, and it bursts into flames. Will tells Santana that because of her sabotage she is banned from New Directions. Rachel breaks up the resulting pity party by singing the opening to "You Can't Stop the Beat", and they all perform the song in the auditorium, while Quinn secretly watches from above.
Production
The first day of filming for the episode was August 9, 2011, though some cast members were called the day before to begin recording musical numbers. Murphy realized that The Glee Project runner-up Lindsay Pearce would be ideal for an already-written role in the episode, but the filming needed to take place before the project's finale was broadcast on August 21, 2011, upon which it would be revealed that she had won a two-episode prize. They "kept delaying" the shoot, and "snuck [her] into a soundstage to make sure no one recognized her." In aid of this secrecy, her name was omitted from the Fox press release for the episode. Once Murphy had cast Pearce, he made the musical number she was to appear in bigger. According to Lea Michele, the filming of the first episode ended on August 19, 2011.
Returning recurring characters that appear in the episode include ex-glee club member Lauren Zizes (Ashley Fink), Principal Figgins (Iqbal Theba), football coach Shannon Beiste (Dot-Marie Jones), cheerleader Becky Jackson (Lauren Potter), school reporter Jacob Ben Israel (Josh Sussman), and television anchors Rod Remington (Bill A. Jones) and Andrea Carmichael (Earlene Davis). Three new recurring characters were introduced: football player Shane (LaMarcus Tinker), who is the new boyfriend of Mercedes Jones (Amber Riley), Sugar Motta (Lengies) and Pearce as Harmony. Effective with this episode, former recurring guest stars Harry Shum, Jr. as Mike Chang and Darren Criss as Blaine Anderson join the main cast, while Jessalyn Gilsig and Mike O'Malley, who play Will's wife Terri Schuester and Kurt's father Burt Hummel respectively, are no longer given starring credits. Gilsig was in the main cast for the first two seasons, and her change had been previously reported. O'Malley's had not, but he is listed in the Fox press release for the second episode as being a guest star, his credit in the first season. Barbara Tarbuck guest starred as Nancy Bletheim, a geometry teacher at McKinley.
At the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con on July 24, 2011, series creator Brad Falchuk said that in the first episode of the third season, "The opening sequence is everybody saying what they want to do when they grow up, so you see everyone's anxieties." He also stated, "Come the first episode back, you see who the seniors and juniors are."
The episode features seven musical cover versions. Two are in the form of a mash-up of "Anything Goes" from the Cole Porter musical Anything Goes and "Anything You Can Do" from Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun, with the lead sung by Pearce. The other five are "You Can't Stop the Beat" from the musical Hairspray and "We Got the Beat" by The Go-Gos, both performed by New Directions; "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead" from the film The Wizard of Oz (as performed by Barbra Streisand and Harold Arlen from Streisand's Duets album), sung by Michele and Colfer; the Tom Jones song "It's Not Unusual" featuring Criss; and "Big Spender" from the musical Sweet Charity, performed by Lengies. All songs, except for "Big Spender," were released as singles, available for digital download.
Reception
Ratings
"The Purple Piano Project" was first broadcast on September 20, 2011, in the United States on Fox. It garnered a 4.0/11 Nielsen rating/share in the 18–49 demographic, and received 9.21 million American viewers during its initial airing. It was beaten in its timeslot by the NCIS premiere on CBS, which garnered a 4.3/12 rating/share in the 18–49 demographic, and also by the premiere of the new show New Girl that followed Glee on Fox, which brought in a 4.8/12 rating/share and 10.27 million viewers. The Glee numbers were down by over 25% from the season two opener, "Audition", which was watched by 12.45 million American viewers and received a 5.6/16 rating/share, and down nearly as much from the season two finale, "New York", which attracted 11.80 million viewers and a 4.6/11 rating/share. However, with DVR numbers, the episode viewership increased to a total of 12.21 million viewers and a 5.3 18-49 rating.TV by the Numbers
In the UK, "The Purple Piano Project" premiered on digital subscription channel Sky1 with an overnight average of 639,000 viewers (2.8%), down by nearly 50% compared to the overnight rating of the season two finale, "New York", which aired on E4. Final ratings brought Glee up to 1.17 million viewers. It was the ninth-most watched show on cable for the week, down 55% from "New York" and 61% from "Audition", both of which were the top-ranked cable shows in their respective weeks of broadcast.UK viewership data: "The Purple Piano Project": "New York": "Audition": The episode's Australian broadcast attained 760,000 viewers, which made Glee the twelfth most-watched program of the day, although viewership was down almost 30% from the 987,000 viewers of "New York". In Canada, 2.10 million viewers watched the episode, where it was the most-viewed show in its timeslot and outperformed its closest competitor by 183% in the 18–49 demographic. It was the tenth most-viewed show of the week, down three slots but up 16% from the 1.77 million who watched "New York".
Social media The night the episode debuted, several topics related to the show appeared in the top ten trending topics on Twitter. At one point, Glee cast member Kevin McHale tweeted "5 TT's! Woo woo!", indicating that five of the top ten slots were filled by Glee-related topics. The Hollywood Reporter, in their story on the online reaction to the show, said that there were four of ten topics claimed by the debut rather than five: "#gleek", "Kurt and Rachel", "Sue Sylvester" and "Warblers".
Twitter was also used to advertise the show. To highlight the beginning of the third season and its move to a new channel, Sky was the first company to use Twitter's geographically targeted ad capability in the UK with a "promoted trend" that was displayed on September 22, 2011, the day that Glee debuted on Sky1.
Critical response