Few shows have felt more like a fever dream than Glee. Co-created by Ryan Murphy in 2009, the TV series followed a group of misfit teens who join a failing show choir to sing their troubles away. It ran for six mind-boggling yet immensely popular seasons, exploring everything from gay rights to teenage pregnancy in the most unhinged way possible.
Now, they’re picking up where they left off – or are they? A reboot of the insane musical comedy-drama has been greenlit by Disney. Lea Michele is reportedly reprising her role as the unbearably fame-hungry Rachel Berry. Not much is known beyond that, but one thing is certain: it will be divisive.
Reporters Nell Geraets and Bronte Gossling have strong opinions on the matter – and they couldn’t agree less.
Nell Geraets: Glee is coming back … May the earth swallow me whole. My abhorrence of this reboot has nothing to do with how I felt about the show back in its heyday. I ate it up in the early 2010s, catching every episode and pirating its mash-up medleys on LimeWire. I even began rewatching Glee last month.
But it was during the rewatch that I realised how much we don’t need a “Gleeboot” (shudder). Few shows could be more 2010s-coded – it’s like a time capsule for a period when Tumblr and iTunes ran supreme. Glee was unhinged because our pop-cultural lives were unhinged then. Lady Gaga wore a meat dress, Rebecca Black became an overnight sensation with a song about Fridays, and everyone was chucking ice water over their heads for some reason. Pop-culture operated with reckless abandon, and Glee fed into that. Today, it’s all about curation and “what works best on the algorithm”. Glee could never. I fear I manifested this reboot by rewatching the series. For that, I am sorry.
Bronte Gossling: The 2010s certainly were “a time”. But a reboot could mean we might finally see Dianna Agron employed, and meaningfully so if the show picks up with a 16-year-old Beth, the daughter William McKinley High School students Quinn Fabray (Agron) and Puck (Mark Salling) gave up for adoption. The narrative hasn’t been confirmed, and Agron has not publicly acknowledged the reboot, but this would be a logical way to keep the storyline going while tapping into old fan favourites.
NG: But I’m sick of seeing the same characters return to our screens, only older and slightly sadder. I had the same issue with the Girls reboot, announced just last week. To me, these nostalgia grabs read only as low-risk cash cows.
Also, have we forgotten how weirdly problematic Glee was? One character is tricked into going to a crack house to keep her away from glee auditions, another is encouraged to develop an eating disorder to fit a costume. And Mr Schue had no reason to be dancing up on 16-year-olds while singing Toxic.
The show became known for its blunt, off-kilter take on sociopolitical issues, combining satire with saccharine sincerity, and that absolutely wouldn’t work today. But without it, is it really Glee?
BG: It’s hard to picture a coach Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) who could pass muster today. Comedy can be a great equaliser when it punches up, but Sylvester did not do that.
Even her least diabolical moments – we last saw Sylvester as the Republican vice president of the United States, with, heartwarmingly, the student she covered up an accidental shooting for as her head of security – are probably too politically incorrect to be aired in good faith in these fractured times.
She was Donald Trump before Donald Trump. At the time, it was a novelty. Now, do we really need another absurdist to “flood the zone”?
NG: It’s time to address the elephant in the room: The Glee curse.
Three cast members from the show, which ended in 2015, have died. Cory Monteith (Finn) died of an accidental overdose in 2013 at the age of 31. Naya Rivera (Santana) drowned in a tragic lake accident at 33. And Salling pleaded guilty in late 2017 to possession of child pornography and was awaiting sentencing when he died by suicide in 2018. That’s a very complicated legacy, one some actors may think twice about before signing up.
Also, Michele is supposedly coming back, but wasn’t she kind of the problem child?
Former cast members previously alleged bullying from Michele on set. She even reportedly threatened to defecate in one of her former co-star’s wigs. Granted, Michele apologised for her behaviour in 2020. But if any of those past (alleged) instances still sting for her former cast mates, a full-on reunion may not be on the cards.
BG: Maybe her co-stars take the view of one Kurt Elizabeth Hummel (Chris Colfer): She may be difficult, but boy can she sing.
On that note, the inevitable Olivia Rodrigo/Sabrina Carpenter episode will slap. I need a drivers license x because i liked a boy mash-up pronto. Could the former Disney stars and (speculated) love rivals actually make cameos and sing it themselves? Anything is possible on a reboot of a show that had Britney Spears, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ricky Martin, Kate Hudson and Olivia Newton-John among its guest stars.
NG: You want modern mash-ups, I’d prefer horror. Why not lean into the curse rumour and turn Glee into a twisted haunted school nightmare? That’s not even as deranged as some of the actual plot points in the original series – remember the episode where there was a gas leak, and they all sang What Does the Fox Say? with their puppet doppelgangers?
BG: Wild. At least a reboot means I can listen to the Glee version of O Holy Night year-round without judgement. I’m on 1795 streams on Spotify and counting!
NG: But that basically says it all: They’ve already perfected the Christmas playlist – along with many other classic and contemporary hits – there’s no need to rehash it. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.
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