Glee: Pot O' Gold

"Pot o' Gold" is the fourth episode of the third season of the American musical television series Glee, and the forty-eighth overall. It was written by Ali Adler, directed by Adam Shankman, and was first broadcast on Fox in the United States on November 1, 2011. The episode featured the arrival of Irish foreign exchange student Rory Flanagan (Glee Project prizewinner Damian McGinty) at McKinley High, a new challenger to Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) in her congressional race, and the ongoing fragmentation of the show's central glee club, New Directions. The episode as a whole received mixed reviews from reviewers. The storyline involving Quinn, Puck and Shelby was extensively criticized, while the injection of Burt Hummel (Mike O'Malley) into the congressional race as Sue's opponent was greeted with enthusiasm. The music was received with somewhat more favor than the episode itself, especially "Candyman", sung by the newly constituted Troubletones. All five song covers performed in the episode were released as singles, available for download, and one of them, "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)", charted on the Billboard Hot 100. Upon its initial airing, this episode was viewed by 7.47 million American viewers and earned a 3.0/8 Nielsen rating/share in the 18–49 demographic. The total viewership numbers and rating/share were down significantly from the previous episode, "Asian F", which had been broadcast four weeks earlier on October 4, 2011.