Written by Katherine Murray.
Glee was set in Lima, and then it was set in Lima and New York, and then it was set in New York, and now, for its final, 13-episode season, it’s moving back to Lima. The most important thing, though, is that it’s finally going to end.
Glee has been on for five seasons, and there was no point during that time when it knew when it was trying to be. Originally conceived of as a cynical indie film, the TV show version of Glee became a mishmash of voices, depending on who was writing each episode, and it swung from satire to saccharine, comedy to drama, genuine insight to whatever the hell “Shooting Star” was supposed to be on a regular basis.
Glee has never known what it’s trying to be, but the question really got called at the end of season three, when most of the main characters were due to graduate high school. At that point, somebody had to decide: is Glee a show about a high school glee club, or is it a show about particular characters, whom we can follow after they step outside high school?
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the answer was still “I don’t know.”
The next one and a half seasons were split between the fictional high school, stationed in Lima, and a fictional performing arts school in New York, where most of the graduating characters happened to go. The New York plot line (eventually) featured three of the characters who had anchored the show during the first three seasons – heterosexual diva Rachel Berry, martyred gay man Kurt, and razor-tongued lesbian Santana.
In a slightly aged-up version of Fame, the characters lived and worked in New York, while Rachel and Kurt attended the fictional arts school, and they dealt with young-adult problems, like how to make long-distance relationships work, how to choose between competing opportunities, and how to deal with setbacks and disappointment. Adam Lambert was also there, for some reason.
Back in Lima, the B-team was still going to high school, and high school was full of new characters… who not-so-cleverly stepped in to fill the exact same roles as the old characters who’d left. Only, they had less distinct personalities, because no one is going to own the role of “The New Rachel” the way Lea Michele owns Rachel, and no one is going to be the new Kurt.
Part of Glee’s success came from its original casting decisions. The role of Rachel was written with Lea Michele in mind, and Kurt was created for Chris Colfer, after he auditioned for another part. Naya Rivera and Heather Morris (Santana and her on-again-off-again girlfriend, Brittany) were originally cast in small roles that got bigger once it became clear that their delivery was turning the characters into fan favorites. None of the characters added late in the series – except, arguably, Kurt’s boyfriend, Blaine – have made such a strong impression.
It’s understandable that the producers would want to keep Lea Michele, Chris Colfer, and some of their other rapidly aging stars. The problem is that Glee was never framed as a story about particular people; it was framed as a story about the high school experience.
Shows that start out in high school typically have a rocky transition once the characters graduate. The ones that manage it best are the ones that are focused on particular people who happen to be in high school, rather than high schools who happen to have people in them.
Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, for example, followed its main character from high school to college, and then from college to normal adulthood. The series was never about Sunnydale High – it was about the girl who killed vampires there. Similarly, Veronica Mars managed a slightly less graceful, but still pretty good transition to college, since the series was more about Veronica being a private detective than it was about Neptune High.
The way that Glee was framed and presented, during its first three seasons, it was mostly a show about high school. Rachel Berry was the lead character, but the focus of the show was the high school glee club and its power to transform the lives of students (by literally making them good singers as soon as they stepped inside the choir room, without any practice or training – I digress). The point of the show was that there were multiple journeys of personal discovery, and they were all united by the glee club.
Fame 2.0, in New York, was arguably a better show than Glee, but it wasn’t Glee, and, as we cut back and forth between the two shows, for one and a half seasons, it eventually became clear that someone was going to have to make a choice about which show to pour production resources into.
Someone chose New York.
The last half (or thereabout) of season five dumped the high school story line completely and moved everyone interesting – mostly characters who were introduced during the first three seasons – to New York on a permanent basis. The only strong character who didn’t move there was Coach Sylvester, played by Jane Lynch, but she came by to visit when she wasn’t hosting Hollywood Game Night. It was the right decision in terms of making a show that was good, but it was the wrong decision in terms of making a show that was Glee.
And, now the show is moving back to Lima for its final season. And its characters are now people who keep hanging around their old high school after they’ve already graduated.
The boldest, riskiest decision that Glee could have made two years ago would have been to dump its existing characters and try to create the same magic with an incoming cast. But that’s not the world we live in.
Instead, Glee has become a hybrid of High School Choir Show, and The Rachel Berry Show, with Rachel (who is still the series’ most recognizable character) tethered to her high school for the rest of her life, in order that the series may exist. In season six, she’ll return to McKinley High – along with lots of her friends – as the new coach of the glee club. It’s sort of like when Buffy became a “counselor” at her high school, during the last and worst season, just so the action could take place on site.
Rachel’s story – which mirrors the story of many of the characters on Glee – was that she wasn’t pretty, and she wasn’t popular, and people threw ice in her face, but she knew, deep down in her heart, that she could be somebody special. That all she had to do was believe in herself, and keep pushing, and trust that one day she’d get the brass ring. Unfortunately for her, Glee loved her so much that the show clipped her wings to stop her from flying away.
Her story is now (spoilers say) that she “failed” in chasing her dreams, and has become a music teacher, like the series’ other failed dreamer, Mr. Shue. If Rachel wanted to be a teacher because she loved it, that would be different, but her only consistent motivation, over the past five years, has been wanting to be a star – something that the show has alternately criticized and rewarded her for at different times.
The truth is that Glee has always been partly The Story of Rachel, and the stakes have always been partly about whether or not she can triumph, despite having been unpopular when she was sixteen. At heart, it’s an underdog story, where (rightly or wrongly) she is the principle underdog, and we’re led to believe that her suffering will be redeemed because she turns out to be special.
The fact that Rachel now, literally, cannot leave high school behind just reinforces one of the most troubling messages Glee has produced – that the person you are at 16 is the person you have to be, always. That you’d better embrace that person and sing a song about her, because any kind of change or growth is inauthentic.
An essential part of growing up is letting go, and learning to leave the past, whether good or bad, behind. It’s a tragedy if Rachel stays trapped in high school, either because it was the best time in her life (like Mr. Shue), or because it always haunts her as the worst.
The only hope I have for season six is that it somehow involves letting Rachel go free. After hate-watching this thing for five years, though, I’m also just glad it will end.
The final season of Glee is set to air in 2015.
Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.
I couldn’t care less about Glee, but your writing is beautiful and enaging
I, too, am glad to see this stomach-churning, hot mess, roller coaster ride of a show end. You’ve really summed up the problem with Glee (apart from its sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia etc. etc.): it never allowed itself to grow and change.