‘Ryan Murphy weighing up Glee revival,’ headlines this week announced, hinting that the high school singalong show might be heading back to our screens.
I read them and groaned.
Uber-producer Murphy, who seems to roll out a new show each time I finally catch up on the last one, says he has seen Gen Z’s recent embrace of the show as a potential reason to bring the dysfunctional choir group back.
‘It’s come back around. So many young people now watch it. And I’m like, “Maybe we should revisit that show”,’ he told People at the premiere for his latest TV effort, The Shards.
‘My nostalgia and love for that show is enough that I’m like, “Well, maybe people would like to see a new incarnation of that in some capacity.”’
In many ways he’s right – despite my feelings now, I still hold plenty of nostalgia for Glee.
When it first aired in 2009, it was a high school misfit revelation. It inverted the pyramid where the theatre kids were at the bottom and the jocks and cheerleaders ruled the roost.
The cultural earthquake was such that when Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill’s characters returned to high school in 21 Jump Street, they pointed to the jukebox musical as the reason students were more tolerant, liked comics, and cared about the climate.
But the place Glee finds itself now, over a decade after the finale, is a far cry from that cultural supremacy.
I was among the ten or so other Gleeks who stuck it out to the bitter end, through successive terrible seasons where the shadow of Cory Montieth’s untimely death hung over everything and rumours of on-set toxicity had started to seep out.
That’s not even counting the ludicrous storylines in that final season.
There’s Brittany’s biological father being tactlessly revealed as Stephen Hawking; Coach Sue going to work at Fox News before becoming Vice President to Jeb Bush; while the entire penultimate episode flashes back to the pilot.
That’s not to mention piss-poor song choices, like Frozen’s Let It Go, years too late; and a dance number to Hey Ya! when it felt like every show had featured a cover of it, and a white character, Kurt, does a tasteless Atlanta accent for the rap.
When it finally bowed out, nobody, including me, was sad to see it go.
Then the drowning of show standout Naya Rivera, as well as Mark Salling’s suicide, after pleading guilty to possessing child sex abuse images, made Glee’s brand of zany camp difficult to enjoy and it’s more problematic elements harder to ignore.
But, like Sex and the City and The Sopranos, younger audiences in the UK have started to discover Glee since it began streaming on Disney+.
A 2022 podcast with co-stars Jenna Ushkowitz and Kevin McHale (Tina and Artie) recapped every episode. Clips started to filter through TikTok, while Matthew Morrison carved out a niche on Cameo performing Mr Shue’s cringey raps.
However, much of the Glee conversation now points out that it would never be made today and that’s why Murphy should leave it well alone.
There’s the musical episode about a school shooting, inspired by Sandy Hook.
Mr Shue’s predecessor is fired for being a sex pest and it’s played for laughs. Coach Sue briefly takes over the glee club and divides them on racial and other grounds.
Everyone uses wheelchairs for an episode to try to relate to Artie and at the end they perform Proud Mary, with the lyrics ‘rollin’, rollin’ on the river’. There’s a tribute episode to Michael Jackson.
And so much more I could mention.
One of the chief reasons Gen Z has embraced Glee, aside from its so-bad-it’s-good appeal, is the same reason Murphy’s recent show Love Story was popular: it’s a nostalgia bomb.
The 2010s don’t feel like that long ago, numerically, but culturally they are a bygone age.
But the reasons Glee was culturally relevant and boundary-breaking back then no longer apply – for good reason.
The strides forward the show made for LGBTQ+ representation (albeit, with plenty of bi erasure in there) are no doubt part of the reason we can go gooey for the likes of Heartstopper and Heated Rivalry.
I can’t see Murphy being able to tackle the rise of far right young men, or any of the other myriad problems affecting Gen Z, in a way that isn’t reductive and offensive. All I can envision is a clunky rendition of some Morgan Wallen track mashed up with Chappell Roan as a means of healing.
I am glad the pall that hung over Glee, for events on and off the screen, has started to lift. In part because I can feel less embarrassed about having watched all six seasons of a thoroughly unhinged TV show.
I understand that in this infinite moment of reboot, revival and rehash, the Gleenaissance might seem like cause for further exploration. But some things should be left in the past.
So Ryan Murphy, please, enjoy the TikTok edits and the bump in royalty checks, but let’s leave Glee well enough alone.
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