Why ‘Glee’ should have ended sooner

If, during the lockdown, you’re thinking about binge watching Glee to pass the time, here’s some advice. When you finish season five, stop. Pretend it was the last season. It should have been – if there was even a need for that season in the first place. 

Regardless of when the musical comedy drama should have sang its swan song, it definitely should have been before its sixth season. Frankly, it’s a complete joke. While already being known for its far-fetched storylines (seeing the face of Jesus in a cheese toastie, anyone?), the final season pushed the boat out even further. Think of a scene with two characters trapped in a lift in a parody of Saw, and one character discovering her father is Stephen Hawking. It’s that cringeworthy. There’s also a ‘hurt locker’ and an egotistical thirteen year old musical theatre prodigy. It only gets worse. 

While already being known for its far-fetched storylines, the final season pushed the boat out even further

It is blindingly obvious that by season six, the writers had run out of any decent ideas and were grasping at straws. The characters’ trajectories were also disheartening to watch. Rachel (Lea Michele) returned to Lima from New York hanging her head in shame after throwing away the career of her dreams, while Kurt (Chris Colfer) and Blaine (Darren Criss) broke up for the second time after calling off their engagement. It’s a good writing technique to give characters obstacles, of course, but to give them what they’d wanted since the pilot and take it away felt depressing and needless. It was a cheap way to drag the show out for another thirteen episodes, down from the usual twenty-two episode run. Even the shorter season speaks volumes about how the writers had taken the show as far as it could have possibly gone. 

There are arguably multiple points where the show could have taken its final bow. The earliest of these is season three, which concludes with the glee club finally winning Nationals and Rachel leaving for drama school in New York, leaving Kurt and ex-fiance Finn (Cory Monteith) behind. It’s an emotional, surprising yet satisfying finale in which not everyone gets what they want, but it could have easily concluded the show at an apt point where most of the main characters graduated. 

The new characters joining New Directions weren’t quite so memorable, being both too stereotypical and too similar to the original characters

Even if season four wasn’t wholly necessary, however, it wasn’t altogether a bad run. Watching the main characters’ lives play out beyond high school was interesting and provided great storylines, such as Rachel’s clash with her dance teacher (Kate Hudson) and the struggles of long distance love faced by Blaine and Kurt and Brittany (Heather Morris) and Santana (Naya Rivera).

On the other hand, the new characters joining New Directions weren’t quite so memorable, being both too stereotypical (we have a classic hot bad boy and mean cheerleader) and too similar to the original characters. I have a particular grudge against Marley (Melissa Benoist), who is essentially every protagonist in any YA novel published from 2009-2013: sweet, naive and infuriatingly perfect. She even has to choose between two adoring love interests, to reinforce comparisons even further – how original. 

I like to think a nice place to end the show could have been season five, episode seventeen

Glee could have even come to an end after season four – following Cory Monteith’s tragic death in July 2013, creator Ryan Murphy was prepared to end the show if Monteith’s fiancee Lea Michele felt like she couldn’t continue with it. However, the season four finale left too many open ended questions to be a satisfying ending. I like to think a nice place to end the show could have been season five, episode seventeen.

After overcoming some uncharacteristic stage fright, Rachel makes a successful debut in her dream role in a revival of Funny Girl, celebrates with her friends and stands up to bullying cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch). It’s a jubilant episode that hopes to prove that dreams can come true, and possibly the last properly good episode on the series. Beyond that point, things begin going downhill – it would have been an ideal cut-off point. And of course, it would have stopped sixteen mediocre episodes ever seeing the light of day.