In just the first five episodes, the hit TV show Glee introduced a fake pregnancy, a teacher-student a cappella boy group, and Broadway legend Kristen Chenoweth, guest-starring as a alcoholic high school dropout who returns to star in the high school’s show choir; and that kind of sums up the show’s major tones.
Glee was a jukebox musical comedy-drama created by Ryan Murphy (American Horror Story, 9-1-1, Pose, etc.), which ran from 2009 to 2015. It had a total of six seasons, which won it six Primetime Emmy Awards and four Golden Globes. It featured 754 musical performances, selling over 11 million albums. In 2009, it featured 25 singles on the Billboard Hot 100; the most by any artist since The Beatles with 31 songs in 1964. In short, the show was a huge success.Â
And on October 21, it announced a reboot. A Gleeboot, if you will.
Glee followed the lives of various students in their Ohio glee club, the New Directions, and their teacher, Mr. Schuester, throughout high school and college. The show tackled serious topics like teen pregnancy, domestic violence, and death (to name a few), all while putting on an incredible array of numbers, everywhere from Madonna to Michael Jackson. The witty writing and satirical nature of the show won the hearts of millions; however, many feel that it has aged poorly.
The show came out in the early 2010s, a period of time with social norms we have the hindsight to look back on as problematic (for example, casual usage of slurs before some were deemed offensive), or oftentimes, completely insane (Rachel Berry sending another student to an inactive crack house). There are a lot of actions taken by well-loved characters in the show that would be deemed “cancellable” by today’s standards. Additionally, what many forget is the progress it made, including the impact the show had on the LGBTQ+ community, specifically with [SPOILERS!] the double wedding between Brittany S. Pierce/Santana Lopez and Kurt Hummel/Blaine Anderson, and transgender and non-binary characters like Unique Adams and Sheldon Beiste.Â
Something specific that stands out in my memory is the media response from during the days Naya Rivera, the actress who played Santana, first went missing. Rivera tragically passed away in 2020 after saving her son from drowning in Lake Piru. Her Wikipedia page states that she is seen as having been a “vanguard of…LGBTQ representation on television,” and I think this rings true. In the five-day search for her body, I remember seeing news footage of people sharing their stories of coming out and self-acceptance after seeing her relationship with Brittany on the show. Demi Lovato, who played one of Santana’s girlfriends, Dani, stated, “The character you played was groundbreaking for tons of closeted (at the time) queer girls like me and your ambition and accomplishments were inspiring to Latina women all over the world.”
The impact of representation like that can’t be faked, and this was just one example of how the show positively moved different groups of people.
That’s the other major elephant in the room: how can the reboot move past the deaths of three major cast members?
Cory Monteith, who played Finn Hudson on the show, passed away in 2013 from an overdose. This was during the filming of the show, and season 5, episode 3, served as a tribute to him, titled “The Quarterback.” Another cast member, Mark Salling, who played Noah Puckerman, took his life in 2018 after being arrested for possession of child pornography.Â
With so much heartache and pain surrounding the show and these characters, many are wondering how they will address it. Some are advocating for Santana to be alive off-screen, but I personally think that she deserves a tribute episode like Monteith’s. I hear the concerns of those who want Santana and Brittany’s relationship to live on, and I think that there is a way for that to happen while also properly honoring Rivera’s memory.Â
Another concern I have is the writing. Because many people forget that it is a satire, Ryan Murphy’s writing went over a lot of heads. I think that the show would be deemed utterly offensive if it were to air in today’s day and age, and I fear that Murphy won’t be able to authentically create the charm and wit of Glee while still being appropriate to the times. There are also many questions surrounding real-life circumstances of the cast: will Artie Abrams still be part of the show, and will he be in a wheelchair, even though the actor himself has recognized that he shouldn’t have played that role as a nondisabled person? Will Kurt and Blaine still be together despite the rocky relationship we witnessed over the course of the show, and despite the fact that Kurt’s actor, Chris Colfer, is focusing now more on writing than acting? And perhaps the most important of all, can Lea Michelle read? And can her character, Rachel?
I have my concerns, as I think any true Glee fan does. The show means so much to me; it gave me a sense of belonging in middle school as a weird theatre kid. Its core themes of friendship and found family led me to find my people in high school theatre and beyond. And when high school was a mess, it still gave me a sense of purpose in that it led me to become a musical theatre major here at Chico State.Â
I think the world needs a little weird right now. I think we need pop covers done by rising stars— I want the Olivia Rodrigo episode; I want the New Directions to cover Hamilton. I want to see Matthew Morrison on my screen rapping, to see the characters that got me through some of the toughest times of my life singing “Don’t Stop Believin’.” I think the world needs a little Glee right now, even with my concerns about the reboot.
So, I’ll leave you all with this: my real, honest-to-God senior yearbook quote:
“The show’s gotta go… all over the place… or something.”
— Finn Hudson, Glee