Top ten insane storylines from Glee’s first season

Glee fever is back, ladies and gentlemen. The US comedy-drama musical series won our hearts back in 2009 and had that god-awful cover of ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ playing on a loop. It’s now up on Netflix UK to binge re-watch at your leisure. Praise the show choir gods for bringing its divine light back into our lives. Following the day-to-day happenings of one of the most dramatic show choirs in the great state of Ohio, we meet Will Schuester as he tries to revive William McKinley High School’s glee club. The show sparked a musical revolution bringing ‘Don’t Rain on my Parade’ back into the charts and had choirs all over Britain trying their hands at the hits of the day as well as throwback bops.

Having sat in for a slovenly afternoon of vegetation in front of Glee’s first season, it all came quickly flooding back. This show is WILD. Like, Move 43 levels of “what the hell is going on!?”. Between prolonged fake pregnancies and a plethora of poor-taste “cripple” jokes aimed at the Glee club’s disabled member Artie, the plot comes at you like a bulldozing train straight from Crazy Town. Here are ten of the wildest we bore witness to: 

10. Rachel falsely accuses a teacher of sexual assault

The show’s Pilot comes in all guns blazing. When the current teacher of the Glee Club gives a solo to one of her fellow students instead of her, Rachel Berry takes the issue straight to the principle’s office. After witnessing the balding teacher touch the student’s belly, Rachel lands in Principal Figgins’ office in a flood of tear hurling accusations. All over a solo. Though Sandy proves to be one of the show’s more sketchy characters, persistently denies this accusation which is baseless as far as we know. Sandy’s life falls into disarray after the accusation leads to his dismissal, and is even issued with a restraining order, resulting in him having to become a drug dealer to make ends meet. 

9. Suzie Pepper – a relatable queen

We STAN a relatable queen with her own passion for peppers. In the ‘Ballad’ episode, her tragic tale is recalled by Will Schuester. One of the students in his Spanish class, Suzy asks him how to conjugate the verb ‘to love’ with an exhilarated tremble in her voice. She gifts him with tokens of her love, all chilli pepper-themed. She gets ahold of his phone number and calls him at all hours of the night just to breathe down the phone. When Will turns her down, she doesn’t take it well. In a haze of a complete emotional breakdown, she attempts to off herself by eating the world’s hottest pepper which the school were completely okay with her keeping in her locker. The survives thanks to a medically-induced coma and an oesophagus transplant. To be fair, Will was one hot-as-hell teacher. Maybe not quite as hot as Suzy Pepper’s deadly pepper though.

8. Will Schuester’s wife gives drugs to the Glee kids

Ahh, the wild episode that gave us the frantic ‘Halo/Walking On Sunshine’ mash-up that we never asked for, and never want to hear again. In ‘Vitamin D’, attempting to keep her husband in check after rumours that he’s straying, Will’s wife Terri picks up a few shifts as McKinley’s school nurse despite not having a single medical qualification. When Glee Club frontman Finn visits her hoping to get a nap to treat his exhaustion, she hands him pseudoephedrine so he can keep up with his busy schedule. Finn feels re-energised by the drug and gives them out to his fellow Glee guys so they can slay a sing-off against the girls. The girls then also take the drug thanks to Terri so they can level the playing field. Pseudoephedrine is used to produce methamphetamine as we later learn when Terri’s co-worker is arrested after trying to buy it in bulk. Thankfully she didn’t administer it to student Quin who’s carrying the child which she plans to steal later on. Cute. 

7. An adult alcoholic joins the Glee Club so they can make regionals

What do you do when you need one more member to compete for a competition? Get a washed-up homeless ex-member in her 40s with a drinking problem to join of course! April Rhodes was a star member of the Glee club back in her day, but life hasn’t been kind to her. Will enlists her as a member of the Glee club having seen that their competitors were stopping talented students from graduating to continue competing as part of the troupe. Since April didn’t graduate, she was the perfect candidate. Except, when asked to try and bond with the Glee members, she gives Kurt a flask of alcohol, teaches Mercedes and Tina to shoplift, and has a shower orgy with three of the club’s male members. Yikes. 

6. Will Schuester seduces Sue only to humiliate her

Things get really funky in the ‘Funk’ episode. Having grown tired of accomplished cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester’s sustained attacks on his Glee club, he takes a seriously low blow. Having already seen her romantic struggles prior in the season, we know that Sue is a strong woman that struggles to find a partner. Her loneliness and dissatisfaction with her personal life are presumably what fuels her hatred for Will Schuester and the glee club. Wanting payback, Will lures Sue to the rehearsal room where he grinds up to her while performing Chaka Khan and Rufus’ ‘Tell Me Something Good’. He then asks her on a date, only to stand her up. The humiliation puts her in a depression where she withdraws her team from their national competition and becomes bed-bound. 

5. Sue date-rapes Principal Figgins to get her job back

Before you start feeling sorry for Sue, you remind yourself of all the terrible stuff she keeps doing. A bunch of them she could actually be convicted in a criminal court for doing. After being suspended as cheerleading coach for leaking the glee club’s set-list for an sectionals, in ‘Hell-O’ we see her get re-instated after  slipping the principal a date rape drug during a dinner and taking an incriminating photograph of them together in a motel bed, threatening to send the pictures to his wife and church. The blackmail pays off and Sue is back to terrorise the glee club. Geez. 

4. Rachel visits a paraplegic to make her feel better about her laryngitis

We all know that star of the glee club Rachel Berry is self-centred, but things reach peak narcissism in ‘Laryngitis’ when she momentarily loses her singing voice. She goes into panic mode and spends the episode moping and groaning. To give her some perspective, Finn is forced to introduce her to his friend Sean who was paralyzed from the neck down during a football game. Rachel’s reaction? Offers to give him singing lessons once she’s recovered from her laryngitis. Come on, Rachel. 

3. Olivia Newton-John asks Sue to be in a music video remake of ‘Physical’

When this episode came around, we weren’t sure if we were hallucinating or not. So, an Ohio high school cheerleading coach gets a video of her working out to ‘Physical’ leaked online, then Olivia Newton-fucking-John reaches out and the two arrange to re-create the original video in a high-budget production just… because. To evoke Samantha in the second Sex and the City movie when seeing Liza Minelli officiating Stanford and Anthony’s wedding, “Why would Olivia say yes to this?”

2. In love with Fin, Kurt tries to become his brother

A classic love story: gay boy falls in love with the quarterback, befriends quarterback through a mutual love of show tunes, boy tries to get his father to marry quarterback’s mother so they become step-brothers and get involved in a semi-incestuous love affair. As a shining beacon of style and common sense for most of this first season, it comes as quite the shock in ‘Home’ when he tries to get his dad and Finn’s mother together so he can then make his move. When the two finally live under the same roof, Kurt lays it on thick now that the two sleep in the same room. 

1.Run Joey fucking Run

Rachel Berry gets three of her ex-boyfriends together to appear in a video for the musical abomination that is ‘Run Joey Run’. This was by far the darkest moment of the first series. 

Roll on Season 2… 

 

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