Which is to say, like any Ryan Murphy show, Glee was bonkers and problematic right from the very start.
Can you tell I don’t like Ryan Murphy? Can you tell I think he’s a charlatan who dresses up in the clothes of being ‘other’ while engaging in the very same language and narratives that twist real human beings into representations of their minorities and nothing else? Everyone left high school, the cast ballooned in size, and it went off the rails in a typically Ryan Murphy fashion. The songs were everywhere on the charts, the cast went on arena tours and released concert films, and it even garnered a spinoff reality show where contestants auditioned to be on the show proper. On the back off of one of the best pilots in television history (truly, it is), Glee became a worldwide phenomenon. The show had a simple premise: A bunch of high school misfits were part of a glee club, a club that performs popular songs to choreography. Up until this point, he’d had a minor failure with black teen comedy-drama Popular and a minor success with scuzzy hospital sex drama Nip/Tuck. Ten years ago, a little show from the brain of Ryan Murphy premiered. Ten years on from its first episode, Sam Brooks revisits all the wild, dumb, and plain terrible things that happened on Glee.
