#ikag

Season 3 is my favourite season of Glee, just to set the context. I’d say that’s a controversial opinion, but from what I can gather Glee fandom doesn’t actually agree on anything, so hey. Every character gets something to do beyond sit in the background, there’s a lot of good arcs, good ship content, fantastic songs, better jokes, stronger pathos, better ongoing storylines... 

And then Santana gets outed. The one saving grace is that it just lasts for an episode, so you can grit your teeth and not need to deal with a long-term mess. But yeah, here we are. 

The Beginning

So let’s set the stage. Santana is, admittedly, harsh to Finn for an episode, and he retaliates by outing her. I’ve seen some commentary trying to downplay this and... eh, no. “Everyone already knew,” clearly isn’t the case when there were actual, direct consequences to Finn yelling that in the hallway. So, that happens. 

I... don’t hate the idea of that storyline, but there’s context, and that context is that it’s 2022. I watched Glee this year, not when it was first on. I’m existing in a time where if I want to watch a show with queer characters, I have options. So tackling a more serious, dramatic topic is not outside of Glee’s wheelhouse, and nowadays that being dealt with as a plot, and not put out of reach, feels reasonable. 

But at the time? I cannot comment on that, just by my perspective, but having one of the biggest, and only, lesbian characters on a mainstream show outed feels like it carries significantly more weight that I simply cannot grasp. It goes from being ‘one story of many’ to ‘the story.’ 

So, we’re on dicey ground to begin with, though ground that will inevitably lack the same impact to me. 

The Problem of Finn Hudson

So, Finn outs Santana. A lot of what I’ve seen indicates this made the character irredeemable in a lot of people’s eyes. I want to try and slowly untangle this. 

So, in a vacuum... okay, he messes up here, but so does every character in Glee. This is the same season where Quinn tried to steal a baby. If it was just this, maybe in a better-handled episode, would people react the same way to Finn, or would he be forgiven in the same way Santana seems mostly to be forgiven for threatening to out Karofsky in season 2? Brushed off as ‘They matured’ or ‘Glee continuity is a mess and I do not acknowledge the bits that interfere with my enjoyment of the characters.’ 

Maybe, maybe not, that’s going to be personal. For me, like I said I inevitably lack the level of reaction to the plot that original viewers would have had. So, sure, for the purposes of this essay, let’s say I could forgive Finn if it was just this. 

It’s not just this. And that’s where one problem really begins to rear its head. 

In season 1, Finn hurls a slur at Kurt. And sure, Kurt wasn’t exactly coming off great before this, but it sets the tone. When Finn’s angry, he’ll cross lines there’s no need to cross - he could have yelled any number of insults, called Kurt a creep, but no, he went for a homophobic slur. But okay, jock teenager in a small town, it’s a mistake that can be made without active malevolence. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. A week later and he could have learned.

First of all, context. In season 1, Burt chews out Finn for this. In season 2,  Burt walks it back and brings up Kurt’s dubious behaviour, as though that somehow implies ‘Yeah, he got mad, used a slur, it happens.’ And in season 5, rather than not bring it up at all, it’s mentioned again as ‘oh, no, Finn was completely in the right to act like that.’ We’ll get back to this in a second. 

In season 3, Finn outs Santana - he gets angry, and uses her sexuality as a weapon against her. He says the one thing he knows could hurt her, and it does. 

Which sets this in stone as not a one-off ‘mistake,’ but a pattern of behaviour from Finn. 

Finn faces no consequences, not in-universe, or in the narrative. When Finn messes up, the narrative will bring up said mistakes and walk them back, treat them as less of a big deal - some of this, I imagine, is dealing with fan reaction as Glee was clearly aware of its fanbase. Kurt comes off unsympathetic in S1? Okay, call that out. That’s good, so what happens when Finn messes up? 

In season 4, Santana calls up Finn to help deal with concerns regarding Rachel’s boyfriend. (Also Finn assaults a sex worker, smooth. Yes there’s context, I don’t care I’m being petty right now). This would be a good time to have Santana maybe be wary, a quiet “Look, I still have issues,” a follow-up in the same vein as Burt walking back his comments on Finn’s slur-usage. But nope, nothing, Santana and Finn are friends apparently. No complication, no drama, no acknowledgement of fan outcry. 

Finn messes up, does something awful, and the narrative refuses to call him out on it, and yet it will acknowledge other fan complaints if it means Finn gets to look better. 

So, yeah. I was pissed off even with all my context thrown in. I cannot imagine what this must have been like at the time. 

There’s a clear double standard here, and it’s a problem. It’s hard to really engage with the plot without noticing a major disconnect between not just how the characters react vs how they ought to, but between how each character involved is treated by the narrative. Santana deserved and deserves so much better than she gets here. 

The end result, even if we ignore the character favouritism, is a lack of closure - and while that may not be inherently a bad thing, in this case I feel it very much is. It feels unintended, and it feels like anyone frustrated or angered by this decision goes ignored because with no consequences and no resolution, there’s nowhere for that anger to go. 

And for the final cherry on top of context, I Kissed A Girl is episode 7 of season 3, in which a character gets outed. Seven episodes later, episode 14 of season 3, is On My Way, in which Karofsky deals with the consequences of being outed with significantly more gravity. Yeah. Not something you can just brush off, Glee. 

It’s Not About You

I Kissed A Girl, the episode tackling the fall-out of Santana being forced out of the closet, is not about Santana Lopez. 

That’s baked into the episode from the get-go, and it means it’s dead on arrival as a compelling story. I wish I knew what the heck they were thinking. But yeah, that’s where we are, so let’s look at it.

The titular storyline is one of several in the episode. We have the student council storyline continuing, more of Puck and Shelby, and then we have the Glee club facing up to what happens. And it’s Finn insisting everyone sing a song to cheer Santana up, despite her evident discomfort, so 10/10 there for ignoring her boundaries twice over. 

But yeah, it’s about Finn. Everyone comforts Santana, and we get none of her reaction, none of her thoughts, just her eventually accepting the comfort - naturally, Finn’s comfort - and happy ending? Somehow? 

Santana’s subject to homophobic harassment, and we get the title song sung by the Glee club, and it’s one where Rachel headlines because it’s about the club’s reaction to having a lesbian member. Yeah, the lead up isn’t even Santana getting a biting remark, it’s the Glee club banding about her. It’s not about Santana’s reaction to living with this, it’s about how good everyone else is to help her. 

There’s not really any denying that Glee is heavily inspired by the kind of inspiration porn rep of, for example, disabled characters in other media - that kind of thing runs throughout all of Artie’s story and the initial depiction of Becky, and there was a Rachel episode in season one, etc. It’s one of the throughlines, and it’s hard to not see the similarities here - when a character departs from the ‘typical,’ the plot isn’t about their life, it’s about how everyone around them reacts and deals with having them as a friend. Glee has rep, and in a lot of ways it is groundbreaking rep especially for the time and honestly, to a degree, even nowadays. But that comes packaged with the fact it’s representation from an outside perspective. 

This isn’t about the outed lesbian, it’s inspiration porn for the people around her, convincing them all to come together. The parallels stick out to me. Rather than give her a story, she’s used for the benefit of others, from Finn, to the rest of the club. 

And it’s a genre that has been rightfully criticised time and again as ultimately just using the people it professes to lift up. 

Okay sure, let’s talk about song choice

Glee recontextualises songs all the time. One of the highlights of season 1 is Kurt’s rendition of Rose’s Turn, a song from a musical whose title is a slur and isn’t that just on-brand for Glee at this point? In the musical, it’s sung by an overbearing mother whose daughter’s basically had enough of her. In Glee, it’s sung by a gay kid scared he’s not enough for his dad. Totally different context, and meaning... and it works. 

So taking Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed A Girl,’ a song about kissing girls for the attention of boys, surely this is something Glee could put in a new context? The lead-in to the song is the Glee girls defending Santana, and responding with “We don’t care if you think we’re gay, that’s not a bad thing,” and the show at least is conscious enough to keep the ‘Hope my boyfriend doesn’t mind’ lines out of Santana’s mouth (and in Rachel’s which is. unintentionally hilarious but hey). So that’s that, right?

God, I wish. For starters, it just feeds more into the issue of ‘the episode is not about Santana.’ The focus is so completely on the rest of the club and how they deal with being friends with an out lesbian and, y’know, not the lesbian herself. And even without that not-so-minor detail... Yeah, this song has way too much baggage in the queer community to ever use in this context, god no. 

I don’t know what was happening behind the scenes. I want to say it was the network pushing them to include a massive pop song with a sapphic title, there’s definitely a lot of points where the network clearly pushed for a chart-topper, but I can’t say for sure. 

This is not a song Santana should ever have sung. 

And it’s not even my least favourite in the episode. For that, let’s check in again with one Mr Hudson. 

I can mount a half-hearted, not-remotely-sufficient defence of the thought process behind I Kissed A Girl. I cannot even begin to fathom how ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ not only made it into the episode, but got treated somehow as an emotional moment, or even somehow Finn’s apology. Full props to all the actors involved for somehow staying in character. 

(Tangent: props to Blaine and Kurt. Perfect both fills the role of being a comfort-song, and “Welcome to my silly life,” is a great lyric for the situation). 

But no, it’s this song that somehow has Santana feel touched, somehow? The song that offers no comfort, has no relevance, and if you try to make it relevant it just comes off as Santana just being belittled for several minutes straight. ‘Having fun’ is not the turn of phrase to use. 

Which exposes the flaw of the episode all over again - Finn shouldn’t be the one to reach her. People talk about Brittany needing more of a role, and yes that as well, but Blaine and Kurt feel like a good choice as well. Kurt left the school because of the homophobia, he’s maybe not going to know exactly Santana’s experiences, but he’d be in her corner. There’s a lot of people it could be. But no, it’s Finn, the one that outed her, because it’s his story - it’s his ‘redemption’ arc, with Santana as a mere step on the way. 

I guess, for completeness’ sake, I should talk about Constant Craving. It’s a fantastic cover, and I know some people object to it being juxtaposed with Shelby, but my take is more than it’s Santana’s midway point. I think it’s easy to view her as still not completely sure or comfortable yet - she’s had a heck of an awful episode, being forced out the closet isn’t going to make anyone comfy, and ‘craving’ isn’t necessarily the word one goes for when one is totally confident and content with one’s own desires. From that perspective, I have no issues with it. I just wish Santana got a follow-up. Plus, y’know, an episode of her own. 

The saving grace isn’t so good

As I said at the start, the saving grace is that this is only there for one episode. You can forget it ever happened easily enough. In the long run, this isn’t even the arc that bothers me the most in the show - because it’s one episode. Bingewatching, as I did, it occupies such a small amount of my overall time with the show. 

As an episode, there’s plenty of stuff that isn’t dealing with the mishandled plot, good song covers, fun character beats for everyone else. It’s just that none of it has anything to do with Santana. As an episode, on its own merits, it isn’t my least favourite of the show at all - but that storyline, and how it’s handled, is undeniably one of the nadirs of Glee. 

Which for me, is kind of the whole problem. I like this season, and part of the reason I do is that the worst parts, for me, occupy so little time. And at the same time, part of what makes the worst parts as bad as they are, is precisely because they occupy way too little time for the show to do them justice. 

You can forget it ever happened, if you want. That’s the honest truth. Glee, as a show, often does use its heightened nature to get away with ‘Don’t necessarily take this literally.’ If you did, I’m pretty sure every character ought to be in prison. There’s a wealth of things that don’t get treated with the seriousness they really ought to be - let’s not forget Sue threatening to pull out Artie’s teeth at prom, that happened. The show will take physical violence seriously sometimes, and not at all others, and that’s just part of Glee. So if thee’s a scene or stretch that genuinely makes you feel uncomfortable, Glee brings with it the easy option to just deny it and file it away with the crack houses and sex tapes and supervillain cats. 

If you treat the episode as nothing but a bad taste Tina dream sequence, absolutely nothing about the rest of Glee is affected. 

That’s what makes S3 still bearable, to me. And it’s also the biggest condemnation you can give it - this isn’t a one-off joke, this is a major point in Santana’s arc, a topic Glee itself acknowledges later can be life-ruining especially in a town like Lima, and it’s brushed over. Forgotten about. There’s no closure for viewers that identified with Santana, no sign of this being acknowledged as the big deal it was, and ultimately it gets treated with as much significance as that time Blaine made a sentient puppet. 

Santana can be cruel, and she was to Finn. The worst thing she said, he’d likely forget about by the end of the day. The thng he did in response could get her killed - something Glee itself acknowledges several days later. 

Blithely forgetting and moving past this is not something that should be expected. And yet it’s what the show does.