After the outrageous camp of the Britney Spears episode, ‘Glee’ toned things down a notch last week with an episode that’s a little more somber, a little more serious, and a lot more emotional. The title: ‘Grilled Cheesus’. OK, it’s not that serious.

A significant chunk of the episode is actually quite silly. The title comes from a storyline in which Finn burns his grilled cheese sandwich and sees an image of the Messiah in the pattern. Still hungry, he carefully cuts the sandwich and only eats the religion-free half. For the rest of the week, he carries around the other part and prays to his “Cheesy Lord,” which he seems to think will work like a genie and grant him three wishes. Remarkably, they start coming true.

Being a horny teenage boy, his first wish is to get to 2nd Base with Rachel. And it works! Next, he prays to become Quarterback of the football team again. Sure enough, new kid Sam is promptly injured, and Finn profits from his misfortune.

This is a return of the bonehead Finn from early first season – the moron who believed that he got his girlfriend pregnant even though they never had sex. While the storyline is kind of funny, and while I don’t necessarily expect a dramatic evolution for the character, this feels like a regression for a character who’d shown at least a little bit of growth in the meantime. It’s also a return to the dumber aspects of the show’s early days, before it found its footing and straightened most of that nonsense out.

Also quite annoying is the storyline about Artie trying out for the football team. Not only does he make the team (Ugh), Coach Beiste lets him play (Double Ugh), and the team actually wins when they roll him out onto the field. There aren’t enough facepalms in the world to express how I feel about this storyline. It just needs to stop. Right now.

Fortunately, the bulk of the episode works a lot better. The major story thread concerns Kurt, whose father Burt has a heart attack and spends most of the week in a coma. When the rest of the Glee Club tries to comfort him with talk (and songs) about God and spirituality, Kurt announces that he’s an atheist and believes that their reliance on religion is condescending. He’s actually offended by their constant harping on it. “God’s kind of a jerk,” he declares when explaining how he doesn’t understand a world in which such horrible things can happen to good people.

Of all people, Kurt finds support from Sue, who shares his views. She convinces him to file a complaint so that she can enforce a more strict “Church and State” separation in the school. Of course, partially she does this just to screw with Will and the club. But she’s actually not the villain here.

In fact, the episode manages to hold an honest debate about religion and atheism without pandering to either side, which is pretty remarkable. After Kurt freaks out about his friends saying prayers over his father’s bedside, Mercedes convinces him to go to church with her, which helps him to understand the comfort that religion can bring some people. However, while he’s ultimately moved enough to relax his hard-line stance against religion, he isn’t converted. He just becomes more accepting and tolerant of other views, just as the other characters are of his.

Did this really air on the Fox network? Amazing.

As for the singing, well, it’s kind of all over the map. Puck jams to “Only the Good Die Young” and does a great job of it. Rachel belts out “Papa, Can You Hear Me?” from ‘Yentl’, and is predictably annoying. After Emma deflates his grilled cheese fantasy, Finn sings “Losing My Religion” and is frankly pretty terrible.

Mercedes gets two numbers in: the Whitney Houston song “I Look to You,” and “Bridge over Troubled Waters.” Both songs seem to be clearly within her wheelhouse, but I swear the latter doesn’t sound anything like her voice. If the show is going to have her lip-sync, shouldn’t it at least use a believable vocal? It’s weird.

The episode wraps up with the whole gang joining in on “What If God Was One of Us?” That one is just sort of OK. The best number of the night is Kurt’s somber, down-tempo cover of the Beatles’ “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” which I believe is based on a version from the movie ‘Across the Universe‘. It’s very emotionally powerful.

Two final notes:

In flashbacks to Kurt’s childhood, the young actor looks exactly like him. I’d swear it must be star Chris Colker’s younger brother, but the role is credited to an Adam Kolkin, who doesn’t appear to be related. The resemblance is really uncanny.

The best line of the episode comes from Brittany. (Doesn’t it usually?) After Kurt rails against the absurdity of a man in the sky controlling everyone’s lives, she slips in a befuddled, “Is God an evil dwarf?” I’ll say it again: I [heart] Brittany.