Instead of letting things happen organically and trusting that the audience will understand that things aren't always black or white, they create these contrived situations and then turn the characters into exaggerated versions of themselves (and not even that in some cases; sometimes they just go full on OOC) to fit the plot's absurd demands.

Exactly. It's one of the major reasons why Glee is just Not A Good Show, when you get down to it; as fun/effective/moving as it can be a lot of the time, the characterization always serves the plot, not the other way around. They've done this with Finn before, too; this whole Santana thing just feels like a rehash of the "Kurt was asking for it by pushing me too much" justification from "Theatricality." And what kills me is that I don't think our reaction is supposed to be "What the fuck is wrong with you that you didn't learn your lesson last time, Finn?!" but "Oh, shit, Finn, you shouldn't have done that but you were provoked, so..."

The Adele mashup was just perfect. The other thing I loved, and forgot to mention, was the look on Brittany's face - usually Heather doesn't hit the right notes when it comes to serious scenes, imo, but her expression hurt my heart. She looked so, so sad and worried.

I felt like this time it was mostly about Rachel asking national championship choir coach Shelby for help, not mom Shelby.

Agreed! I really did like that part of it, and I liked that Shelby was giving her some validation. That line just stuck out for me as unnecessary and hurtful, even though Rachel didn't really seem to react.