The ripples of outrage coming from across the pond after the latest Glee episode aired there in the early hours had reached us at DS long before we sat down to watch it. If you too got wind of its content, you could probably predict our immediate reaction to the news - "Glee did a school shooting episode? Are you kidding? And it's called what? 'Shooting Star'? Seriously?"
But we didn't want to prejudge Glee. We wanted to see what was the justification for including such contentious subject matter, even if it meant we approached the episode with dread. Sadly, we believe that all the ill feeling coming from both Glee fans and non-fans in the US is entirely justified. This is Glee at its lowest.
In retrospect, all the vapid stuff that comes before the shooting doesn't feel like it warrants a mention, but it's important to note that for the first 20 minutes or so this is your typical stupid, light and fluffy Glee episode with no hint of what's to come next.
Brittany tells the rest of the glee club her theory that an asteroid called 'Tubbington-Bop' is about to hit the Earth, inspiring Mr Schuester to get the group singing their feelings to each other as if it's their final moments alive. Soon after Brittany discovers the 'asteroid' is a dead lady bug on her Pringle can telescope and that's... kind of that.
Meanwhile, Ryder has fallen in love with the 'katie_xoxo' girl he's been chatting to online and decides to track her down. He spots a sweet blonde he believes to be Katie and drags her off to the choir room to serenade her with Elton John's 'Your Song'. It's only at the end of the performance that he discovers he's been 'catfished' and that someone's used the girl's identity to chat Ryder up, a revelation that leaves him heartbroken and humiliated.
He's got company though, as Coach Beiste has her romantic advances rejected by Mr Schuester after organising a Lady and the Tramp-esque romantic dinner for him in the school locker room. Schue invites her to the choir room to make amends via the means of song, but when he claps his hands to start the performance a gunshot goes off. Then they hear a girl scream and a second gunshot.
Immediately the terrified glee club rush for cover, turn out the lights, close the blinds and barricade the doors as outside screaming students run for their lives.
Before we get to the ethics of the shooting plot, we do have to appreciate just how astonishingly well acted and frighteningly authentic the pertinent scenes are. It's an absolutely terrifying segment.
The kids scramble into the shadows and prepare for the worst, every little sound - be it the buzz of a phone, the tick of a metronome or everyone's traumatised sobs - reverberating around the crushing silence. As they sit with nothing to do but contemplate their situation and pray, the realisation dawns that Brittany, Tina and Marley's lunchlady mother are all trapped outside.
With the knowledge that they could be moments away from the end, all the petty stuff melts away - Kitty confesses to tricking Marley into her bulimia, and any split second of anger on the latter's part melts away in a unit of time too minuscule to see. Sam forgets about his resentment for Brittany for not considering his feelings and has to be wrestled to the ground to stop him stepping out into the shooter's path to find her. Ryder no longer cares about the lies 'Katie' told, only that she's safe. He calls her number and a phone in the choir room goes off.
Eventually the club are all reunited, with the exception of Tina, who's safe outside, and the all-clear is given by the SWAT teams in the corridors. When the lights are turned back on and the kids dare to climb back onto their feet, you will feel something give in you - your stomach may unknot, you make take a breath for the first time in five minutes, you may let your body slouch back in its chair. Whatever you do, you will not simply shrug.
After that you kind of don't want there to be an aftermath, especially one that's speckled with Janet Jackson 'boob-gate' jokes. But again this is, for the most part, tackled well. Students begin to trickle back into the school through metal detectors and Sue Sylvester confesses that the gun belongs to her. It accidentally fired when she was performing daily safety checks in her office.
In a sombre sitdown with Principal Figgins, both reluctantly accept that Sue's time at McKinley is over, and she gives a powerful speech about how for all the good she's done in her life and career, this thing will be 'the first line of her obituary'. Here's the thing, Sue Sylvester is a pivotal character in Glee and her being fired from McKinley would be a major, gamechanging direction for the show to go in. There is no need to wrap that plot point around something that is going to upset people unnecessarily. She could have had a whole episode or two dedicated to building up an exit and that alone would have been strong enough.
Also - and we know it's a lesser point - but it feels as if a disservice is being done to this great character by quickly shoving her off. We presume this isn't Sue done for good, but that's what we're led to believe. After all, the theme of redemption is a fitting one for any departing character, and Sue has certainly redeemed herself by sacrificing the job she devoted her life to in order to protect Becky, the real owner of the gun. If this really is Sue Sylvester's swan song, it's just not enough.
There's also the question of what happens to Glee now? The fact that happily there was no real disaster here means that, yes, the glee club can process what happened and get on with their lives soon enough, but still, their emotional recovery maybe could have taken longer than a third of an episode. Do we really want to hear about Coach Beiste signing up to online dating, Sam giving Brittany a new cat or Ryder ditching 'Katie' after everything that's happened? And are the effects of their scare ever going to be addressed again, or just quietly forgotten about?
You just have to ask why did Glee decide to enter this territory? Why do this? Why bother? This is primarily a show for kids and teens, the same people who are going to have to go to school the next day having been blindsided with images showing just how easy it could be for their whole world to come crashing down, and how powerless they'll be to stop it. The show obviously has a point that it wants to make, but this is pretty close to fear mongering.
We're sure Glee will argue that they're trying to do good by digging into America's biggest open wound and helping heal things by forcing people to witness the grotesqueness of it all. But the thing is Glee has shamelessly used issues that are - not lesser, of course, but perhaps not as viscerally tragic as a school shooting - for shock tactics before. In the last episode they touched on Chris Brown's domestic abuse for a sloppy five minutes just to set up a pathetic joke - so why would we assume they're treating this issue any more seriously? There is topical and then there is exploitative.
It's disrespectful enough to the victims of actual shooting sprees that a plot point like this was included, but stir that in with the fact that just a few minutes before this episode featured a moving, candlelit tribute to a cat, and you've got something really unpleasant. You could argue that the light stuff that comes before is just to provide contrast to the shooting and heighten the horror, but isn't that just proof of how manipulative it was to include it? And did we mention the bloody episode is called 'Shooting Star'?!
The shooting scenes themselves are very powerful and impressively done, there's no denying that. They just shouldn't have happened. This entire episode is an extremely reckless and insensitive and irresponsible move by Glee and, in our opinion, all the backlash is well justified.
What do you think of this week's Glee? Was the shooting plot a step too far? Leave your comments below!
