Falling Into Glee

            It started a few weeks ago, when I mentioned Glee in a class (Talking Shpilkes), and talked with my students about the way they used to use mashups in the show, combining two songs from different genres to bring something new out of the combination. A student asked me for concrete examples, and I dutifully typed Glee into the search bar on YouTube, but was interrupted by the dismissal bell. I forgot all about it, but the YouTube algorithm remembered, so among the videos about places to visit in Israel, and Israeli music, and instructions on how to pack for an international trip, I started to see a few songs from Glee here and there. I had watched Glee when it aired originally, about fifteen years ago, and enjoyed it a lot, but I hadn’t spent much time thinking about it in the interim. So, I thought, I’ll just watch one video, one song, to remind myself of what the show was like, especially because I couldn’t remember which songs they’d used for mashups, and I was starting to worry that I’d imagined the whole thing. Almost immediately, I fell into a black hole of Glee videos: the top 100 songs on Glee, and then the top 200, and then the best mashups, and the saddest songs, and the best duets, and on and on.

Each day, I assumed I’d watched as many videos as I could stand, and I’d just watch one more, and then the binge would start all over again. I tried to understand I was getting so sucked in, especially when I couldn’t even find full episodes of the show, just short clips of the musical numbers. I thought the timing of the binge might be significant, because here I was watching scenes from a show about high school the week before a planned visit to Israel to see my best friend from high school. There was also something about the way the actors sang and danced full out, every time, pushing the emotions out to their fingertips, that was cathartic for me; because that’s how life feels, even if it doesn’t look that way from the outside. Each song seemed to crack me open and tap into emotions I’d long ago learned to contain, or repress.

            On Glee, as opposed to in my real life, they were able to find the right songs to express everything that needed to be said, and watching one performance after another, I felt like I was connecting to those lost or hidden parts of myself. But while watching these “kids” (the actors were mostly in their twenties) perform was cathartic, it was also bittersweet, because all of the old expectations and comparisons came rushing back; all of the feelings of not being good enough or talented enough or brave enough. And I remembered the anxiety that came with performing, too; it wasn’t just a little stage fright for me, it was crippling.

            I did my best to overcome my fears. I took voice lessons, and I went to a musical theatre camp. I wrote my own songs and poems and plays. I used to sing and dance in the halls in elementary school, and for a long time I would dance around the kitchen while Mom was making dinner, telling her about my day. But when I tried to perform in public, the anxiety got in the way.

            And then, as I continued to watch more and more videos from Glee, I started seeing the videos about the death of Cory Montieth, the male lead on the show. I don’t even remember how I reacted at the time of his actual death during the run of the show, but now it was tapping into my grief at all of the things I’d lost, or never had in the first place. I started to think that if I just watched one more video, Cory would come back to life. Or maybe it was a mistake, and Cory Monteith didn’t actually overdose, they got it wrong, and he was still alive, somewhere. But each time I watched, the tribute episode replayed, and no amount of watching or hoping could bring him back to life.

            I couldn’t understand why his death was hitting me so hard, so many years later, or why the reality of his death was so hard for me to accept. I didn’t have the same reaction to his co-star Naya Rivera’s accidental drowning a few years after the show ended.

In a way, Finn, Cory Monteith’s character on the show, may have represented that one person I was waiting for, the man who would make me feel acceptable and loveable, and the grief at never having found him, and never having found that feeling of acceptance internally. Or he could represent someone who was willing to try and fail; because he wasn’t one of the musical theatre prodigies on the show, competing for the number one spot. He was just loving the work, and putting everything he had into it. He was the cast member I would have wanted to know, and hang out with. It would have been a joy to make him laugh. And yet, he must have been struggling, fighting old demons, all along.

After he died, from an accidental drug overdose just before shooting for the fifth season was supposed to begin, it became clear that he had been the heart of the show. He must have been such a relief to be around, after the constant competition and backbiting of the showbusiness life many of them had been living since childhood. He was the one who made Glee accessible, and made the audience feel like we could be part of things, even if we didn’t have Lea Michele or Amber Riley’s voices. And he was having so much fun!

I don’t think Finn resonated for me the first time I watched Glee, ten to fifteen years ago. I would have been much more focused on the Lea Michele/Amber Riley rivalry, or the love story between the teachers, Mr. Shue and Miss Pillsbury. But it all hit differently this time. And my favorite moments weren’t about the best vocals, or the most dramatic or comedic scenes, it was all about the duets between Cory and Lea Michele, and the way he seemed to love and respect her (you can see it in the show, and in interviews. It pours off of him). While there were a million things the other cast members could do that he couldn’t, his great talent seemed to be his ability to create believable relationships. He made each relationship on the show feel real, and heartfelt, and reliable. And then he died.

            There’s been a lot of behind the scenes gossip about Lea Michele (the female lead on the show and his real-life girlfriend), about how she treated other actors disrespectfully; that she was a bully, or even a racist. My own sense was that she was very much like her character on the show: single-minded about her goals in life, and unaware of how her behavior impacted other people. And then Cory died, and she shut down. It seemed like a lot of the worst stories about her came from those years, after his death. And I kept thinking about how much Cory seemed to love her, and how Jonathan Groff (her best friend and another extraordinary triple threat Broadway actor) loves her, and how she can sing in a way that breaks my heart open, and it made me want to give her the benefit of the doubt.

            Also, watching some of the behind-the-scenes videos of Ryan Murphy (the creator of the show) made me think that a lot of the drama among the actors came from the way he led them at the time. He created a beautiful, if imperfect show, that inspired an enormous amount of people to be more fully themselves, but he often did it through manipulating and exposing his actors’ inner lives, unintentionally causing harm.

            The genius of the show is also the most painful thing about it: it feels real. It’s a heightened, melodramatic, glorious, and heartbreaking trek through the growth process, and inadvertently, it created a vivid picture of how grief can shatter people. They did their best to wrap up the show neatly, but at the heart of it all is the reality that the story didn’t get to finish; the dramatic arc broke when Cory died. And something about that brokenness just kept sticking with me and echoing.  

I thought the binge, and the resonance, would end once I got to Israel, with so much to see and feel, but it continued. And one thing I realized, as my high school friend and I spent hours traipsing across Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and reminiscing about the past and catching up on what we’d missed over the years, was that my friend also has a talent for relationships, just like Cory Monteith. She has the ability to make all kinds of people feel comfortable and welcome. She is full of curiosity, and open about her own struggles, and generous to a fault with her time and attention: offering to take a picture for the group of tourists at Caesaria; offering to watch a guy’s double-parked car while he helped his girlfriend move in Old Yafo/Jaffa; willing to take in an old friend for more than a week and show her around Israel.

I wish I could say that I’ve unraveled the whole Glee mystery for myself, and figured out what I need to learn from it, and figured out how to tolerate knowing that this man I never knew really is gone, but that would be a lie. It will take me a while to process the impact of my Glee binge, and the impact of the Israel trip. But don’t worry, I’ll get to the details of the trip in my next blog post, with plenty of pictures, and maybe I’ll even get some things figured out. Eventually.

Songs to get you started on Glee:

(The song that started it all) “Don’t Stop Believing” – https://youtu.be/1FaJshIWdpU?si=aIf5vvYV0pcHaK1n

(The crush) Cory Monteith – Jessie’s Girl – https://youtu.be/6twI8pyeRF0?si=ZlkvnjJVgCW9KEkC

(The Love) Pretending/Light Up the World –https://youtu.be/0j5wIDfYNB8?si=VGPkr1yhJ3MOmOgT

(The loss) Lea Michele – Make you feel my love – https://youtu.be/z-uLll_cZHs?si=DdrUIus25tAjKQz_

(Just a great song and performance from Lea Michele) To Love You More – https://youtu.be/hQQT49lEM7I?si=CWQSN3qOetxRm544

There are so many more, but these should get the binge rolling.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?