What was the most embarrassing moment ever to happen on Glee? Ask anyone who watched Ryan Murphy’s musical comedy between 2009 and 2015, and they likely have a list of cringey musical numbers or WTF-worthy plots ready to go. The high-school quarterback seeing Jesus’ face in his grilled cheese, culminating in a dramatic rendition of R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion”? The Spanish-teacher-turned-glee-club-leader singing “Blurred Lines” with his students? Sarah Jessica Parker popping up for a Thanksgiving-themed mash-up of “Turkey Lurkey Time” and the Scissor Sisters’ queer anthem “Let’s Have A Kiki”?
Every month, a TikTok video, Twitter thread, or Reddit post goes viral listing the show’s most ridiculous moments. A few weeks ago, it was the scene in the pilot where the shy Tina (Jenna Ushkowitz) signs up for glee club New Directions and writes her name with a stutter as “T-T-T-Tina.” The screenshot was shared on Twitter/X, declaring it “one of the most unhinged things” the Glee writers ever did. It’s a big claim. The show had an extensive back catalog to choose from.
There are legitimate reasons to look back on Glee with anything other than rose-tinted glasses. In 2024, the show can’t be separated from the tragic context surrounding it—namely, the deaths of three key cast members and the alleged toxic conditions on set. That’s the subtext when stupid moments are pulled out, usually with comments of “I can’t believe they were allowed to do this” or “This has aged poorly.” By the end, Glee was a mess. But believe it or not, Glee was once pretty self-aware. When the internet lumps all these moments in together, it misunderstands one crucial fact: While Glee is easily mocked and memed, it was also in on the joke. At the beginning, at least.
There are a lot of things you can blame Glee for (inflicting “mash-up culture” on the world being its most heinous crime). But there’s also a fair amount of revisionist history around the show. When the series first arrived on the scene 15 years ago (on May 19, 2009, to be exact), it was well received. The pilot introduced us to William McKinley High School, an Ohio education establishment where jocks and cheerleaders, naturally, ruled the roost, under the watchful eye of cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch, in a career-best performance).
At the bottom of the food chain, usually wiping a slushie from their eyes, you’d find the show choir, or titular “glee club.” Headed up by Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison), a Spanish teacher with a penchant for white-guy rapping, they were a ragtag group consisting of Kurt (Chris Colfer), Mercedes (Amber Riley), Tina (Ushkowitz), Artie (Kevin McHale), and Rachel (Lea Michele). “There is nothing ironic about show choir,” self-proclaimed future star Rachel declared in that first episode.
It’s one of the funniest moments of the installment, because the pilot was packed with irony, the script dense with jokes. Say what you want about Glee, but that pilot stands up on a rewatch. It was well-reviewed at the time, too. The A.V. Club’s Emily St. James was quick to praise the “terrific” cast, calling the opener “the best network pilot in a good long while.” In the months after it was released, the episode’s big musical number, a cover of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” was ubiquitous and unavoidable, the first of Glee’s many chart hits.
When most people talk about the Glee pilot now, however, it’s in reference to one particularly outlandish plot. Yep, it’s the one that saw Mr. Schuester blackmail popular football player Finn (the late Cory Monteith) into joining the New Directions by planting weed on him. Stripped of context, it’s a ridiculous moment, but the shaky camera that zooms in dramatically shows that it was deliberately silly and soapy, not to be taken seriously.
The same can be said of the plot where head “Cheerio” Quinn (Dianna Agron) convinces Finn she’s pregnant after they dry-humped in a hot tub. Critics can say that this was totally unrealistic, but it was never meant to be a naturalistic portrayal of high-school problems. In a world where people can burst into song at any moment, all bets are off; you can’t hold the show to the same standards as a straight-up drama.
The misunderstanding stems, I think in part, from the show’s musical-comedy genre, which placed the emphasis heavily on the “musical.” People assumed, and still assume, that the show fit the theater-kid stereotype it parodied: serious, cringe, without an ounce of self-awareness. In reality, this rather literal reaction lit a fire under the show. It couldn’t afford not to be funny and self-aware.
And to be clear, the songs were embarrassing, and the plots were stupid. But in those early years, it was clear that the show knew that, with the most unsubtle musical numbers often intercut with the horrified side-eyes of the students of William McKinley. Mr. Schuester, with his fondness for rapping, might have been cringe, but that character could have been a lot more excruciating. In an original version of the script, the teacher was written to also be a meth addict. Yeesh.
Still, a lot of the plots that did remain were undeniably questionable. From the beginning, the casting of able-bodied actor Kevin McHale as wheelchair user Artie felt like one of the most egregious, especially his “Safety Dance” dream sequence where, with the lyrics “We can dance if we want to,” he just…got out of the chair and danced. Further salt was added to the wound when Quinn ended up in a car accident that left her using a wheelchair for a mere few episodes before she could walk again—not before she could perform an equally offensive seated rendition of Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing,” though.
As the show progressed, the funny-to-terrible ratio became a lot more unbalanced. There was Blaine’s (Darren Criss) bisexuality being downplayed until he dated his ex Kurt’s homophobic bully Karofsky (Max Adler), which Criss himself recently declared the show’s most “unhinged” moment. Coach Beiste (Dot-Marie Jones) coming out as a transgender man felt equally shoe-horned in. (The handling of transitioning through the Glee Project finalist and future Tony winner Alex Newell’s character Unique felt more tactful).
As the show kept going (and going and going), the plots got more ludicrous. It felt like the writers were running out of ideas and throwing whatever they could at a wall to see what stuck. In 2024, when shows get canceled after one season, few programs are afforded the opportunities to mess up that Glee was.
If your introduction to Glee came from TikTok compilations or Twitter threads, it’s easy to ask how on Earth this show got made. But while Glee’s six-season run wasn’t unusual at the time, the combination of its knowing cringe-ness one moment to a total lack of self-awareness later on has undeniably contributed to its impact long after cancellation. You’ve got to hand it to Glee: Rarely has a show been both in on the joke and so far removed from it.