The Rocky Horror Glee Show "Slant Magazine" called it a "travesty" and criticized "the arms-length treatment of the Frank N. Furter character", and Amy Reiter of the "Los Angeles Times" deemed the episode flawed through its sanitization, despite initially having found the two shows "a particularly promising match". "The Rocky Horror Glee Show" received several favorable comparisons to previous themed episodes; Erica Futterman of "Rolling Stone" deemed it the best yet. Both "Entertainment Weekly" Tim Stack and Jarett Wieselman of the "New York Post" preferred it to the Britney Spears tribute episode "Britney/Brittany"; Wieselman hailed it as a "run-away success" that would satisfy "Rocky Horror"
The Rocky Horror Glee Show and the second scripted show behind only "Modern Family". In overall viewers, it placed twentieth for the week. In Canada, the episode was watched by 2.48 million viewers, ranking as the fourth most-watched program for the week of broadcast. Viewership was again up on "Duets", which attained 2.25 million viewers and ranked seventh. The episode's Australian broadcast drew 1.34 million viewers, making "Glee" the fifth most-watched show of the night and the most-watched with viewers aged under 50. It placed eleventh in the weekly program rankings. There also, "The Rocky Horror Glee Show" registered a rise on the previous episode,