fake mustaches and snappy quotes about root-beer fountains and robot teachers beat a very dark baboon heart. In the end, that murky, telltale undercurrent burst to the fore, like a ... slap in the face, leaving us gasping and a little confused." Houston Chronicle Bobby Hankinson stated that it was "surprisingly good", and that "Mash Off" was a "solid hour of television that was bursting with fantastic musical numbers and some really gratifying narrative developments". Michael Slezak of TV Line said that the episode contributed to a revitalization of the quality of the show's third season. Catriona Wightman of Digital Spy wrote, "This was a confusing episode of Glee. For a while, it seemed pretty unremarkable—a standard installment, meandering along enjoyably enough. But then, in the last few minutes, it suddenly got really rather dark indeed. I'm intrigued about what happens next." The A.V. Club Emily VanDerWerff gave "Mash Off" a "C" grade, and felt that the episode did not reach its full potential. She wrote, "The gut-punch moment is sufficiently gut-punchy, and we'll get to that in a bit. But everything building up to it is so messy that the solidly dramatic moment almost made me angry. There's something about this show that leads to messy tonal mash-ups. But where the show's musical mash-ups are usually pretty harmonious, the tonal shifts can often be brutally unsubtle." James Poniewozik of Time felt that it was notably inferior to the previous episode, with many more "forgettable scenes and stories". The character development of Santana and her interactions with Finn were well received by critics. Poniewozik stated that Santana confronting her sexuality was one of the highlights of "Mash Off". Wightman commented that despite Santana's callous personality, "watching her burst into tears and sob that she hasn't even told her parents about her sexuality yet [was] heartbreaking". Robert Canning of IGN wrote, "The biggest development was the unexpected way Santana's sexuality became public. It was a nice way to end things, building tension towards hopefully more resonating episodes to come." VanDerWerff said that "the last five minutes of this episode are phenomenal, one of those times that the show gets the mix of tones just right and something that's vaguely comedic gets more and more horrifying and dramatic, and then we plunge down the rabbit hole and everything goes nuts." To Ryan Gajewski of Wetpaint, the scene that concluded "Mash Off" was