Dear Glee,
Thank you for keeping pop culture interesting. You’re, like, the new Charlie Sheen – totally unhinged but always compelling, both on screen and off. We’ve been huge fans of the show from the very beginning, and we have the angry letters complaining about our constant barrage of Glee covers to prove it. During your summer break, you’ve given us not only a reality competition show, a concert tour, and a 3-D movie (Glee stars apparently have an amazing ability to go three straight months without sleep) but also weekly waves of captivating craziness – thanks to a series of contradictory, loose-lipped statements from Glee producers about the future of the cast and direction of the show.
To recap:
First, co-creator and executive producer Ryan Murphy gave an impromptu interview saying that the characters played by Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, and Chris Colfer would graduate at the end of the upcoming third season and would not be around for season 4. Such huge, surprising news! It was apparently even a surprise to Colfer, who said he found out about his exit via Twitter. But not so fast. At Comic-Con, Glee’s other co-creator and exec producer Brad Falchuk tried to clarify, saying that Rachel, Finn, and Kurt would not be leaving the show. In fact, added Murphy a few days later, they were originally going to get their own spin-off! But not anymore. Have we got all that?
We are fairly certain that all this nonsense is incredibly annoying to your colleagues at the Fox network and studio (you’re lucky Rupert Murdoch doesn’t send Wendi over there to swat you down like a pie-throwing malcontent). We, however, really enjoyed the backstage drama for a while… but now, frankly, we’d like to see it end. You see, we really adore Chris Colfer (congrats on the Emmy nomination, Chris!), and when we tune in to the show’s new season this fall, we don’t want to be thinking about how Chris is walking on eggshells around his boss, constantly worrying about what bombshell Murphy might drop next in the press. We’re also rooting for the show to win an Emmy, and we don’t think all this back-and-forth is helping your case. Awards voters are partial to humility and gratitude – two qualities that seem to be in very short supply in the ranks of Glee’s management. (Good news: We asked one Emmy insider about it and were told that it probably wouldn’t hurt the show’s chances – after all, if Melissa Leo can win an Oscar after those weird, cleavage-y for-your-consideration ads, there’s definitely hope for Glee.)
Listen, folks, we love your show, and we just want you to regroup, keep your sausage-making to yourselves for a bit, concentrate on making Glee a little less uneven and more consistently great week after week, and think very seriously about this spin-off idea. It’s a good one – and since Lea, Chris, and Cory all have four more years left on their contracts, there’s no reason for it to be dead in the water. In short, we’d like everybody over there to stop behaving like teenagers. And say hi to Gwyneth.
Sincerely,
Entertainment Weekly
