Oh, hi, Glee, how are you? Happy New Year. Come in, come in. Have a seat. It’s cold out there today, huh? Can we get you a mug of hot chocolate? A cup of tea? Pardon? Of course it’s not poisoned. Why would it be – oh, that’s right, we keep forgetting. You think lesbians are hyper-irrational girl-kissing hulks who mutilate the faces of men who fall in love with bisexual women. Well, friend, you are as wrong today as you ever were. You’re shivering. Here, have a cup of warm apple cider. Would you like a splash of cinnamon whiskey? It’ll warm your bones right up.
So what brings you by today? Ah, the AfterEllen Visibility Awards. You heard that voting ends tonight and Glee is on track to get shut out of every award for the first time ever? Yes, yes, you’re right. There was a time when your show and your characters and your actresses seemed invincible, but it does seem like the tide has turned.
What does “tide turn” mean? It’s a nautical idiom. It means, well, just as an example, let’s pretend you are frolicking in the ocean, just body surfing and bobbing up and down and having a gay old time, waving to us on the beach while we gaze at you adoringly. And let’s say you aren’t paying attention to anything but how cute you look in your swimsuit. Well, tides change with moon cycles, right, and so if you don’t adapt to it, you’ll end up stranded on a sandbar or swallowed up by a tidal wave. And that – forgive me – is basically what has happened to you.
Yes, it is a shame, especially because your queer female audience were some of the only people still smiling while you splashed around in the waves.
Is there a way for you to get back into our good graces? A way to turn the tide again? I don’t know, Glee. I just don’t know. We were willing to embrace the Brittana long-game, weren’t we? Willing to cheer despite the fact that you never treated them with the same kind of respect as you gave your other couples. We stuck with you through Finn coming out for Santana, stuck with you through Naya’s basic departure from the show, stuck with you even when your creator singled out the lesbian fandom on Twitter with mocking derision. What more could you have asked from us? To tolerate the double standard of screentime and physical affection between Brittana and Bram? To clap and cheer as you devalued Brittany and Santana’s relationship by having Brittany marry Sam one episode after kissing him? To laugh as you invoked our name on national television and made us out to be hysterical monsters?
You’re right, I am getting upset. Maybe I’ll have a splash of that cinnamon whiskey too.
I’ll be honest with you, Glee. Even our seemingly infinite patience is at its breaking point. I don’t know if the tide will truly ever turn in your favor again. But here are some suggestions if you really want to try:
1. Grovel. We mean really get in there and feel terrible and apologize. It wouldn’t hurt for your creator to reach out on Twitter to try to right some of his wrongs. And since you’ve proven that you don’t mind breaking the fourth wall to speak to us, an on-air apology would also be a good place to start. Drop the hubris and acknowledge how horribly you’ve treated us. Abject pleading covers a multitude of hard feelings.
2. Bring back Santana. We don’t mean bring her back to McKinley for a solo or two. We mean bring her back to the show and give her a storyline worthy of Naya Rivera’s talents. Move her to New York, send her to NYADA, give her a roll off Broadway, employ her at a coffee shop. Do it and mean it and commit to it and deliver.
3. Extend the same courtesies to your lesbian and gay relationships as you do to your straight ones. Yes, we’re talking about Kurt and Blaine too. Forgive us for saying it, but you have a pretty nasty habit of trying to pit us against our brothers, but we’re not falling for it. Let Kurt and Blaine express their physical affection the same way you let Rachel and whatever boy is validating her existence at the moment express their physical affection. And when you give Santana a girlfriend allow them to do all the kissing also.
4. Give Santana a girlfriend.
5. Learn the word “endgame” and apply it to Brittana. Anything else rings false to us and not just because we loved them long before you did. We’ll buy a story where they need to figure out who they are without one another. But we’ll never believe their paths don’t end up intertwined for all time.
You’re right. It doesn’t seem like that much to ask for. Just, well, the thing about the world right now is that gay people are done being second-class citizens. We want equality all the way around. We’re not demanding to be treated like princes and princesses; we just want to be treated like human beings.
Oh, you’ve got to get going? OK, well, thank you for stopping by. Bundle up, it’s frigid outside. Would you like a piece of coffee cake to go? Sure, I’ll just wrap one up for you. All right. Here you go. Stay safe. Stay warm. Try harder. Maybe we’ll see you again soon.
