#cohenberry

I like them in a season 1 kind of way where they’re both original glee club members which means they both have this desire to perform and sing, enough to join the club that might as well be social suicide, but while Rachel basks in the spotlight, Tina runs away from it. Canonically because she’s painfully shy and literally made up a stutter so people wouldn’t talk to her…or in the au in my head because sometimes I like to imagine a glee where they actually committed to Tina having a stutter, because she’s afraid of messing up due to something she can’t control. But that’s so interesting to meee, despite that she wants to be someone like Rachel.

It kinda annoys me that that the issue in Acafellas is that Rachel is upset Tina got a solo over her and while we get Tina briefly saying she’ll just let Rachel have the song and Will commenting that she stutters less the more confident she gets, it doesn’t really go anywhere for her/them because the next episode is all about April and Rachel, and Rachel gets April’s part like it’s nothing with no mention of Tina’s solo. Like we can assume they just performed the song to an audience of no one immediately after Rachel left and now that that’s over it’s not about Tina anymore but damn I would have liked for her to be treated less like a plot device and for there to be even one Tina Rachel moment lol like at least let Tina have a line in somebody to love since Mercedes and Artie were on it, so it’s not like it was strictly a Finchel song…(and if my head if this had happened, Tina and Rachel would have looked at each other with acknowledgment…a look of understanding…)

I would’ve loved to see Rachel teach Tina how to be a diva in season 1 while Tina could have eased Rachel into being more of a team player…I love Laryngitis but I wish that plotline had happened between Rachel and Tina or Rachel and Artie (I also think a Rachel and Artie friendship should have been explored more, I like their storyline in New New York) instead of Rachel and some guy we’ll never see again. I think that episode could have been a great to give Tina (or Artie) more depth instead.

And I know I’m describing what they tried to do with Mercedes and Rachel, but I feel like it would’ve been more effective with Tina since Mercedes was already established as someone who wanted the spotlight as much as Rachel did, and so it came off as patronizing because we know Mercedes has advocated for herself before, but nobody listens to her when she does? Idk but my problems with the hypocritical way the show treated Mercedes is probably better left for another post...though I’m also under no delusion that if it was Tina it would suddenly be well written either lol it would probably still suck a little

But anyways with s1 cohenberry, I’m really intrigued by their differences while still both being loser outcast girls….