was down from those of the previous episode, "Night of Neglect", which was watched by 9.80 million American viewers and acquired a 3.8/11 rating/share upon first airing. In the UK, the episode was watched by 2.52 million viewers (2.087 million on E4, and 433,000 on E4+1), becoming the most-watched show on E4 and E4 +1 for the week, and the most-watched show on cable for the week. Critical response "Born This Way" was given a positive reception by many critics of the show. Erica Futterman of Rolling Stone and Sandra Gonzalez of Entertainment Weekly both considered it to be an improvement from the previous episode. Futterman wrote that it "gave us the charm, wit and just-zany-enough-to-be-plausible plot lines we were sorely missing after last week's predictable" episode, and added, "Even better: the episode didn't feel as long as the 90 minutes it clocked in at." IGN Robert Canning gave the episode a "great" rating of 8 out of 10. While he said the episode was entertaining, he felt that it did not need to be an hour and a half. Emily Yahr of The Washington Post agreed about the extended length, and did not like what she called "lame attempts to fill time", which she said "detracted from what started as a decent episode". She did, however, cite several "promising storylines", including Rachel's, and noted, "Usually, New Directions leader Rachel Berry is a caricature of all things annoying—but this episode, we see her genuinely struggling with wanting to love herself the way she is". The Houston Chronicle Bobby Hankinson summed it up as follows: "Not an epic episode, just sort of … meh." Amy Reiter of the Los Angeles Times reacted more positively and wrote, "The 90-minute episode had a lot of laughs, a lot of heart, some good lessons, character development, a few good numbers and more than a few surprises." The A.V. Club Emily VanDerWerff gave it a "B", and wrote that she "finally got a sense that, yes, this second season has been building toward something and has been trying to tell an emotional story, as well as a humorous one. 'Born This Way', for the first time in a long time, made me feel like I could say I was a fan of Glee without a million qualifiers." Gary Mills of the Florida Times-Union felt that the episode didn't live up to its hype, but also