I love Glee. I mean, I have watched it straight through twice, and if I counted all the episodes I watched out of order, it would probably add up to almost a whole third viewing. But just because I really like something doesn’t mean that there aren’t issues with it. I thought I was done writing about Glee, but apparently that’s not the case. I figured I would do a top ten list sort of in the style of Watchmojo. So I’ll have a top ten with some honorable mentions before number one. I’ll also write a short paragraph for each entry detailing why each choice was selected. Most of these are storylines that seemed out of character, were not explored properly, or were just things I didn’t like. Not all of the entries have direct quotes, but those that do have the corresponding episodes listen in brackets at the end of the entry. Without further ado, let’s wrap this up!
1) Coach Beiste is a Trans Man
Remember when I said Coach Beiste gets the worst plotlines? This is why. This is not a transphobic complaint. There need to be more trans characters so that people will stop demonizing trans people. The problem is that clearly someone on the show wanted to have a trans storyline and picked Beiste as the best candidate. Unfortunately up until this point, the whole point of Shannon Beiste was that she was a straight woman who looked very masculine and who had a traditionally masculine job. She was continually looked down upon. People reviled her for not being sexy. People assumed she was gay because of the way she looked. No one ever kissed her because she looked too much like a man. She repeatedly talked about the fact that no one saw her as a girl, even though that was how she saw herself and that was how she wanted to be seen. Don’t believe me? Here are some receipts of the abuse Beiste suffers and some of her remarks about how she feels.
SUE: First of all, a female football coach, like a male nurse—sin against nature.
and
BEISTE: I know I can be a little intimidating sometimes but deep down inside, where no one can see, I’m just a girl. Am I nuts that I just want to be reminded of that sometimes?
and
ARTIE: This mashup is dedicated to you, Coach—hard and badass on one hand and soft and girlie on the other.
and
ARTIE: Have you just never found the right person?
BEISTE: Guy. I like guys. And no, I haven’t found him. All right, I’ll play. There’s this one gentleman. He’s the bee’s knees. His name’s Cooter Menkins. He’s a recruiter for Ohio State. He’s beautiful. He makes me feel like a girl but he’s not interested.
There may be more. There probably are, but I’m not going to find them since I think that is enough to get the gist. There’s nothing wrong with taking a character in a different direction than initially imagined, but there’s a lot wrong with contradicting canon in order to do so. Besides, there was already a trans character who had been sidelined with bad and/or incomplete storylines: Unique. Unique deserved more screentime and story and their gender fluidity was already established.
Because making Beiste trans just proved that all the things that people had said about her—that she was gay, that only men can coach football, that women shouldn’t look the way that she does, etc.—are true, at least in the Glee universe. And it conflates traditional masculinity with maleness. And that absolutely should not be the case.
In other words, yay for trans representation but boo for the execution.
[2×01 Audition; 2×06 Never Been Kissed; 2×06 Never Been Kissed; 3×05 The First Time]
Rachel and Kurt spend most of season three preparing for their NYADA auditions. Rachel plans to sing Don’t Rain on My Parade, her old standby. Kurt agonizes over his audition, deciding to go with Music of the Night from Phantom of the Opera. He worries that it isn’t exciting enough, running (mostly bad) ideas past Blaine about ways to jazz it up, since he’s worried that it is too safe a song. When he gets on stage before the auditioner, he decides to do something different.
Kurt and Blaine are my favorite part of Glee, but to be honest, what happened in season six was a mess. Season five was great for Klaine. It started with the most adorable and perfect TV proposal of all time and ended with the two of them being on the sturdiest footing ever (and they’d been stable their whole relationship except the aforementioned season four thing). Tell me, how does a couple go from this:
In season three, Rachel explicitly tells Finn that Broadway is her destiny. It has always been her destiny. She sings power ballads from Broadway shows regularly and dreams of attending NYADA, which apparently exists to groom Broadway stars.
There was pretty much no one invested in the Jake/Marley/Ryder love triangle, and it doesn’t take an English major to figure out why. Jake was Puck 2.0. Ryder was Finn 2.0. Marley was Rachel without the ego. The show flirted with a Puck/Rachel/Finn love triangle in season one, though it didn’t last long. Viewers didn’t need to see that rehashed. But even worse than that was the fact that Jake, Marley, and Ryder just weren’t interesting as characters on their own. The fact that they were basically carbon copies of earlier characters didn’t work at all (particularly considering all the original characters were still around). Yet despite the fact that they were so bland, they got so much screentime, at the expense of other storylines and characters that viewers cared more about. The final insult was that the three eventually disappeared entirely (along with Unique), which meant viewers had dealt with a boring love triangle that ultimately went nowhere for a full season.
Glee did its best to address a lot of different types of people and lifestyles. It showed characters with marginalized sexualities, characters with various mental and/or physical disabilities, characters from different economic backgrounds, characters of different races and national origins, and more. It did try to have some characters with religious backgrounds, but it floundered a bit with them. Quinn, despite being apparently quite religious and head of the celibacy club, had sex and got pregnant in season one. Joe, again religious and celibate, was never fully explored as a character and practically disappeared into thin air. Emma was celibate as well, though not for religious reasons (initially I thought she was asexual; that disappointingly turned out not to be the case, and her celibacy was mocked repeatedly). The best attempt was Mercedes, whose faith was a constant. She was allowed to date and be attractive for a while. But when her decision not to have sex until marriage was maintexted, it became an apparently unsurmountable obstacle in her relationship with Sam. Suddenly everyone became very invested in the necessity of the two breaking up, even though all of them had expressed the importance of the first time being special. Artie was hurt when Brittany took his virginity as revenge against Santana. Kurt was initially scared of sex and unwilling to even talk about it. Blaine refused to touch Kurt until they’d talked about it and were both comfortable. Rachel decided not to sleep with Jesse because she didn’t feel like it was the right time for her, and only slept with Finn because she was in love with him and thought the timing was right. So all these characters had strong opinions about when the right time to have sex was, and yet they were against Mercedes’ decision to save it until the time (marriage) that she felt it was right.
I’ve written in depth about what I hate about Santana and Brittany’s relationship, and I may or may not post that. I mean, I guess I’ll give props for a TV show having a lesbian couple that doesn’t end with a death, but that’s pretty much all I can give this one. In short, I think that Santana loves Brittany a lot more than Brittany loves her, and uses Brittany’s stupidity to keep her in a relationship that Brittany really isn’t all that invested in. The sad thing is that their friendship was really adorable, and I actually shipped them before they got together.
In the season premier of season four, Blaine encourages Kurt to go to New York to pursue his dreams and the two have this exchange.
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