The Philippine Online Chronicles

The latest episode of the TV show Glee is either the high point of the series or its 'worst episode' ever.

Seth Abramovitch of TV.com described it to be, “an episode that felt both emotionally manipulative and incredibly flat. It was bad. Really bad. Maybe the worst Glee ever.”

On the other hand, Lisa Respers France on CNN's Marqee Blog said that, “'Funeral' was absolutely one of the best episodes ever in my opinion.”

The second-to-the-last episode for this season had drummed up a lot of expectation with the announcement that one of the main characters would die. Viewers finally found out that this meant Jean (Robin Trocki), the Down Syndrome-inflicted sister of Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch).

According to France, “We got to see the range and complexity of Sue Sylvester, who in losing her sister played out all of the emotions you would imagine: sadness, confusion, rage, grief and love.”

She said that Jean had “humanized” the nefarious Sue, and that the aftermath of Jean's death showed “some of the show's best writing.”

Similarly, James Poniewozik of TIME's Tuned In hailed the episode for showcasing Sue as an “Actual Sympathetic Human” as opposed to a “Cartoon Network supervillain”

While Jean's death and the titular funeral gives plenty of room for Sue to pound on some emotional chords, Amy Reiter on the LA Times's Show Tracker says that Sue herself is the episode's biggest problem.

“Sue's character is getting increasingly hard to get a hold on,” she says. “One minute she's remorselessly slamming kids into lockers and severely injuring a rival music director by repeatedly throwing him down the stairs, and the next she's willing to stand up and publicly pronounce the pure power of her love for her sister.”

“I think it's fair to expect some consistency from the characters," she said. "And consistent inconsistency of Sue's character is wearing thin.”

The Glee cast performs five songs in this episode – Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black," "Some People" from the Broadway show Gypsy, Otis Redding's "Try a Little Tenderness," "My Man" from the movie Funny Girl, and in honor of the dead Jean – "Pure Imagination" from Willy Wonka.