Kids Today Don’t Understand The Tragedy Of The Very Problematic Glee

By Jonathan Klotz
| Updated 6 minutes ago

I was never a theater kid. I was friends with a lot of theater kids (Hi Mark!) and attended every single play to show my support for them. Which is why, when Glee hit Fox before my 10-year High School reunion, I tuned in and recognized a lot of my friends and classmates in Glee Club. Since going off the air in 2015, after the conclusion of Season 6, Glee faded from the public consciousness, only to be dredged up after the far too early death of Naya Rivera, and the conviction of Mark Salling.

Glee Was Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Today, in 2026, it’s coming back up for a great reason: Harry Shum Jr., underutilized on Glee, is part of Dancing with the Stars Season 35. Well, that, and the “Gleeks” coming out in force to defend the series from Gen Z by accurately pointing out that, for its time, Glee was as much a revelation as it is problematic.

In the never-ending quest to find things problematic or cringe, Gen Z turned their ire to Glee, which, by today’s standards, isn’t the most sensitive series and is guilty of a lot of tone-deaf storylines. It hasn’t aged well at all. What’s lost in the discourse is that Glee aired in 2009, and it was considered, at the time, progressive. Notably because it featured gay high school characters outside of “a very special episode,” which, even in 2009, wasn’t common.

Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer) and Blaine Anderson (Darren Criss) were openly gay characters from the start, eventually joined by Santana (Naya Rivera) and Brittany S. Pierce (Heather Morris). While the storyline that outed Santana was horrendous since it wasn’t her choice, what came after was praised for Rivera’s portrayal of a high school coming to terms with their identity. To give you an idea where society was at the time, the writers managed to get an unsubtle “scissoring” joke right past the network censors. Progressive for making the joke on a broadcast network, and also problematic for making that joke on a broadcast network.

Glee Fell Into A Progressive Trap

Glee wanted to be inclusive, but fell into the same trap as most well-meaning progressives by missing the mark worse than if they had never tried in the first place. For one, Artie Abrams, the paralyzed, wheelchair-bound member of the club, was played by Kevin Mchale, an able-bodied actor. At the time, progressive for including the character; today, problematic for not getting a wheelchair bound actor to play the part when they are already struggling to find decent roles in Hollywood.

The multi-ethnic Glee Club never found anything for Harry Shum Jr’s Mike to do until the third season, when he’s saddled with a story about his Asian father wanting him to become a doctor and not a dancer. He’s also dating Tina (Jenna Ushkowitz), after the two had bonded at “Asian Camp.” 10 points for including two Asian-American characters, minus several thousand for generic stereotype storylines. Jenna would go on to win two Tony Awards for her work in Broadway, while Harry won multiple awards for his work on Shadowhunters.

Lauren Potter, an actress with Down syndrome, played Becky Jackson, a recurring student on Glee in what was, again, a progressive role, giving someone who had overcome Down syndrome a real role and a real character. Up until the episode “Shooting Star,” where she brings a gun into the school and it accidentally goes off. All of the character development was tossed out the window for the shock reveal that it was Becky with the gun. It’s classic Ryan Murphy, who would go on to cast Lauren in multiple seasons of American Horror Story, including Coven, the best of the series.

For all the ways that Gen Z is completely correct to call Glee problematic, it comes out of a desire to be progressive, and failing. Sometimes horribly. At the time, Glee was an acquired taste, having started out as a dark satire of teen comedies, before becoming one after resonating with teenagers and 20-somethings. We had debates and discussions about if it was really progressive or simply regressive and offensive in a new way. Over the years, Glee hasn’t aged well at all, making it a full-blown millennial tragedy that, despite the talented cast, it’s best left forgotten.