Nationals filmingND perform three numbers - The Edge of Glory, It’s All Coming Back To Me Now, and Paradise By The Dashboard Light, in that order.
The Edge Of Glory - This is all Troubletones plus Quinn & Tina. Santana, Tina, and one of the Cheerios are on a platform that rises up in the front of the stage. It’s a pretty dance heavy song with the Cheerios.
It’s All Coming Back To Me Now - Rachel solo with backing “Aaaahs” and “Ooohs” from Blaine, Mike, and Rory (on the left) and Quinn, Sugar, and Tina. There’s no choreography. Just lots of fake lightning. Whoopi’s character Carmen arrives in the middle of Rachel’s solo, and Rachel notices her from the stage.
Paradise By The Dashboard Light - This is of course the big number when everyone finally gets to be on the stage.
Finn starts the song off to the right dancing with Blaine and Mike as his backing. Then all the ND girls come out while Rachel sings for a bit. Kurt and Blaine come on stage in the middle of the risers and then move down the center of the stage, singing together the “And we’re glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife, glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife” bit, then they’re still dancing together center stage while Blaine alone sings “C’mon, hold tight. C’mon, hold tight” and he’s “kind of making grabby hands/reaching at Kurt”. (Toward the end of the song, Kurt and Blaine run up onto this box that’s on the left side of the stage and dance together - it’s all male/female pairs otherwise - so there might be a little focus on them there, too.)
Then Kurt and Blaine move back a bit for the next part, and they do some choreography with Brittana as they sing the “Oh it’s cold and lonely in the deep dark night…” bit. After that there is a lot of everyone going on and off the stage and dancing.
During this number, Carmen is impressed by Rachel’s performance. Whoopi’s direction was “So this is the song where she really wins you over”. The source really thought it seemed like this was direction that Rachel definitely gets into NYADA now, though of course it’s hard to say for sure.
There’s obviously a lot of Finchel. Lots of playing around with him getting down on one knee and such.
Vocal Adrenaline’s performance- They perform two songs, both with Unique as lead.
- First up was Starship by Nicki Minaj which was great. Alex is actually lifted up in the air doing splits at one point. It was impressive.
- Second was Pinball Wizard which while it had great choreography was just not very good at all (in the source’s opinion!).
Nationals Awards ceremony- On stage it’s ND stage Left, The Portland Scale Blazers (who did a truly terrible roller-skate version of Starlight Express that was *supposed* to be terrible) in the center, and VA on the right.
- The Trophies are all off to the right, and only Perez & Rex Lee (who is either a Councilman or Congressman, not sure which) are there for the awards - Lindsay was definitely not at the awards ceremony.
- Unique wins MVP - they announce her as Wade “Unique” Adams
- They filmed two winners, VA first, then ND for first place - but ND got confetti and VA didn’t.
- During the awards Kurt and Blaine are off to the far left of ND (Blaine and then Kurt slightly behind him) and Kurt has his right hand on Blaine’s left shoulder, and Blaine has his right hand over Kurt’s hand.
- Rory is standing right next to them - and during one take of ND winning Damian gestured for Chris to get on his back, and Chris did it. No idea if that’ll make the final cut or not.
- Most of the rest of ND are holding hands. The source thought it was Artie holding hands with Rachel who was then holding hands with Finn, but Santana may have been between Artie and Rachel at one point… not certain, but something like that!
Judges- Sit in the audience. At one point Lindsay stands up to wave, and Perez takes a picture of her that he is meant to be tweeting. He looked to be tweeting during the other performances too.
Teachers & ND in the audience:- Jesse is sitting in the audience in a strategic spot where there is evil glaring going on between him and Will
- Will & Emma sit right in front of Beiste & Sue. There is some teacher dialogue. No idea what was said.
- ND sit in three rows next to and behind them
- ND’s seating arrangements are completely different from the wide shots to what they were in the close ups - this is all for them watching VA’s performance.
- In the close ups (from left to right) Mercedes, Kurt and Blaine sit next to each other because they needed close ups of them while Unique was performing. They seemed to share some brief dialogue there as well.
Nationals Episode awards ceremony at McKinley -- Ms. Hagberg (the old lady teacher who was forced to retire earlier this season) starts by giving an incredibly boring speech about how she’s retiring, something about recovering from a drug addiction, and then giving the dates that her Hoarders and Intervention episodes will air.
- Figgins then awards the Janitor with “Best Heimlich of the year”
- He then presents Finchel to give out the Teacher of the Year award.
- Unsurprisingly, Schue wins
- Finn stops him coming up on stage by saying they wanted to sing for him
- Curtain goes up, ND are dressed in their Nationals outfits to perform “We Are The Champions”
- ND are on risers on the stage, two rows, then come down into one row. That’s the extent of the choreography basically.
- Puck comes in from the left for his line, Santana from the right. Quinn and Kurt are far right, and Kurt walks up for his line, then Quinn follows and sings hers - they put their arms around each other.
- This is also when Finchel move forward to collect Schue. Finn is the one who actually goes into the crowd to grab him. Rachel takes his hand when he comes up on stage and brings him to the left of the line, and then Schue walks down the line to hug every single ND member.
- The source was told this is the finale of the ep after ND has “returned triumphant from Chicago”
Annnd that’s it for season three, folks!
x
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