In 2019, the ultra-popular teen comedy Glee largely exists in the public consciousness as the punchline to a joke. The subject of monthly Twitter threads lamenting its best worst moments, it is pretty easy to forget just how popular it once was.
Bringing musical theatre to the small screen, Ryan Murphy’s comedy follows the New Directions, an Ohio-based, high school show choir. Initially made up of a small group of students at the bottom of the food chain, the club is turned upside down when quarterback Finn Hudson (the late Cory Monteith) is blackmailed into joining by teacher Will Schuester (a perma-smiling Matthew Morrison) who plants weed in his locker. With Finn’s fellow football players and cheerleaders following, Glee Club becomes temporarily cool.
Best known for its campy musical numbers, the show’s numerous spin-off soundtracks – featuring a mix of classic rock (along with the Sopranos, the show gave Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ a second wind), “jazz hands” musical theatre and pop covers – briefly dominated popular culture, with a record 207 singles in the US charts in its six years.
The self-referential jokes and witty one-liners – mostly from Jane Lynch’s savage cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester – made the bizarre storylines easier to swallow, and a cast of arguably unlikable characters easier to root for.
But with the majority of the actors edging closer to their 30s with every season, it was clear that obnoxious Streisand wannabe Rachel Berry (Lea Michele) and co couldn’t stay in high school for ever. And, when they finally graduated, all sense of self-awareness exited stage left.
Awkward rap segments aside, Glee had never tried to be cool and had always accepted that, like the New Directions themselves, its lovably cringey charm was what made it interesting. But as the new cast failed to captivate the audience’s interest and ratings drastically dropped with the third series, the writers decided that focusing on the issues of the time was the way to keep things fresh, via storylines about trans politics, gun violence and catfishing that had all the subtlety of an all-singing, all-dancing, 10-tonne truck.
Speaking of which, perhaps the defining shark-jumping moment came after head cheerleader Quinn Fabray (Dianna Agron) somehow survived a run-in with a much less metaphorical vehicle, leading to her temporarily using a wheelchair, and a chance for a cringe-inducing duet with Artie, who was paralysed from birth. The song? Elton John’s I’m Still Standing.
While Glee sometimes still got things right (notably a well-handled tribute to Monteith after his death), for the most part its approach to covering a sensitive topic in its later years was to dedicate an episode to it, have a teary moment, sing a vaguely relevant but always awkward song and then never mention it again. Entire storylines and characters were discarded in this manner without a hint of the knowingness the show had once had. By the time the final series aired, the audience had simply stopped believin’.
