Meta: Silence, Solitude, and Sidekicks: Blaine in the Wake of the Breakup
Title: Silence, Solitude, and Sidekicks: Blaine in the Wake of the Breakup
Author: purplehrdwonder
Fandom: Glee
Word count: 2,100
Spoilers: Episode discussion through 4x06; discussion of promo images, preview for 4x07
Summary: Blaine's reaction to the breakup has been particularly telling as to his state of mind and where he needs to go in the future.
Author's note: This is a follow up to "Inadequacy, Identity, and Isolation: Why Blaine Cheating Is a Symptom Rather Than the Problem." It's not necessary to read that to understand this meta, but it does inform this one.
Silence, Solitude, and Sidekicks:
Blaine in the Wake of the Breakup
Now that we’ve had two episodes since “The Break Up,” I thought I’d write a little follow up to “Inadequacy, Identity, and Isolation.” Blaine’s and Kurt’s individual reactions to the breakup and their meeting in “Glease” were particularly telling, as were a few spoilers for what’s coming next, especially for Blaine.
Blaine Is Still Being Gagged
Blaine’s reaction to the breakup has only served to solidify my previous thoughts on his state of mind. In the wake of the breakup, Blaine continues to be gagged when he reaches out for help, first when he tells Sam just how badly he’s spiraling. He says at the beginning of “The Role You Were Born to Play” that he’s not eating, sleeping, or even gelling on the weekends. Definitely not healthy behavior-he’s not taking care of himself and is losing interest in the things that were once important to him.
Even his outward appearance betrays his emotions. His eyes are red when he talks to Sam, his posture is slumped, and his movements are slow. He’s absolutely crushed on the inside and out, and Sam pretty much just tells Blaine that he’ll get over it. That’s the last thing Blaine needs to hear. He’s looking for help from the few people he thinks might listen and is once again shut down; the pattern of forced silence continues.
Now, I don’t think Sam’s being purposefully neglectful. He just doesn’t get it. Sam’s a good guy with a good heart, but he’s also a bro, and bros don’t just go around talking about their feelings. They’re not made that way. Sam’s also had relationship drama with Quinn and Mercedes, but those relationships were never on the same level as Kurt and Blaine’s. “He was my soul mate,” Blaine says by way of explanation for how long he’s been upset, but Sam hasn’t had that type of connection with another person. He’s simply not emotionally capable of helping Blaine here.
Blaine, for his part, continues trying to express his problems. His rendition of “Hopelessly Devoted to You” is a clear cry for help as he loses his composure during the number, as he is near tears and raw from emotion. But Artie and Finn clap at the end of his performance. These boys, who Blaine had been on fairly good terms with, applaud as Blaine falls apart in front of them.
“I’ve never see him so Masterpiece Theater,” Artie comments after Blaine runs off the stage in tears before turning to bigger worries, like who will play Danny in Grease if Blaine can’t. Finn has his own mini breakdown over his ability to direct the play and the boys’ attention turns to Finn’s self-esteem instead. While Finn likely has more of an understanding of what Blaine’s going through because of his breakup with Rachel, he’s never been good with dealing with his feelings-plus, he’s Kurt’s stepbrother, which leads to some mixed loyalties. Once again, Blaine’s is cut off and he is left alone to deal with his pain.
After his breakdown, Blaine is not seen again until the end of the episode when he resignedly sees that he has been cast as Teen Angel, giving Finn a look that to me says, “I warned you that I’m a mess right now so if I have a breakdown on stage, remember that I warned you.” Blaine knows he’s not in a good place but hasn’t figured out how to get anyone to help him, so he takes this moment in silence. As is often the case with Blaine, looks say more than words, but no one around him is good at reading this silent Blaine language, so once again his pain goes unnoticed.
In “Glease,” Blaine is further gagged when he is confronted by Kurt. He is surprised and visibly upset to see his ex-boyfriend backstage at the play without warning after weeks of no contact. Finn and Rachel hold an awkward conversation as neither Kurt nor Blaine seems able to speak. Blaine ends up walking away without a word, though he obviously has a lot he wants to say to Kurt.
He gets his chance after the performance when he tracks Kurt down in the hallway and asks to speak with him. He wants to explain himself and what happened with Eli, but Kurt doesn’t want to hear it. Kurt is (understandably) still hurting and seeing Blaine in person has reopened the wounds that were starting to scab over. But Blaine is once again stopped short of saying what he needs to say, to get the words off his chest to make someone-in this case, the most important someone-understand what he is feeling and what happened.
Kurt simply isn’t ready to hear it, and Blaine is yet again gagged.
Blaine’s Isolation
Blaine’s isolation has also continued since the breakup. He’s been isolated from Kurt, as Kurt refuses to return his calls or texts and even Blaine’s gift of a Gilmore Girls boxset is returned unopened. Kurt is not ready to talk, leaving Blaine in limbo as they never made their breakup official, not having spoken since Blaine’s disastrous trip to NYC.
When they run into each other backstage before the play, Kurt is unable to make eye contact with Blaine, and in the hallway after Grease Kurt walks away from Blaine and shuts down any attempt at explanation. Blaine is left alone in the hallway after Rachel and Kurt depart, a shot that echoes that one with Kurt running away from him in Battery Park after he confesses to cheating.
But Blaine is not only isolated from Kurt. “Hopelessly Devoted to You” features a montage of an isolated Blaine walking down the hall, sitting in the choir room looking through a scrapbook of pictures of Kurt (not of Kurt and Blaine together), sitting in the stands at the football field, walking through the tackling football players completely untouched, and finally alone on the stage as the scene transitions to his audition. Never does Blaine interact with anyone during this song. He’s pouring out his feelings for Kurt but does so in a vacuum.
Kurt also continues to have a support system, as Rachel holds him steady after their run-ins with Blaine and Finn, telling him that they won’t let their exes see them sweat. They sit together in the audience and leave together after the performance. Blaine, though, does not have that support. I’ve already touched on his lack of support on the home front, but he’s also alone when among his peers. He is not shown rehearsing with the other cast members, as he has a single scene in the production. He has friends at McKinley, yes, but most are also friends with Kurt and they don’t quite know what to do with him. Blaine is left feeling more alone than ever.
With these things in mind, it should come as no surprise that Blaine is tempted by the Warblers’ invitation to return to Dalton in “Dynamic Duets.” We see in the preview that the Warblers don Blaine in the familiar blazer and he ends up performing with them-a revelation that Finn reacts to in horror in the preview.
Dalton was the place Blaine found himself after he was bulled and beaten in public school. Dalton was the place Blaine was listened to, both as a performer and as an individual. His opinions were always taken into consideration by the Warbler council even if they weren’t agreed upon. Dalton was, in essence, the place he had a voice and a support system, both of which he is currently missing at McKinley.
Cracks in the Armor
Blaine is so wrecked in the wake of the breakup that he doesn’t even intend to audition for the musical. This is particularly telling since if Blaine is anything, he’s a performer. If he’s going to find any solace in his heartbreak, it’s going to be through music and putting on a show that he can lose himself in. But he doesn’t want to, once again showing a lack of interest in things he was once passionate about.
I’ve discussed the idea of Blaine the performer having his own persona: Blaine Warbler. Blaine's walls, such as the Blaine Warbler identity that he wore like a second skin at Dalton, have come down so thoroughly they’re nearly impossible to rebuild again. But that confident stage persona still exists. We’ve seen multiple times that Blaine is able to pull that identity over himself like armor even when he is hurting and lose himself in the performance.
So it is the moments that we see cracks in Blaine Warbler, the stage persona, that we really know something is wrong. This is how Kurt realizes something is seriously wrong in “The Break Up,” as Blaine’s voice cracks during his acoustic performance of “Teenage Dream.” Blaine also nearly loses it by the end of “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” though the worst of that breakdown comes after he’s finished the song.
And during “Beauty School Dropout,” his only scene in Grease, Blaine makes eye contact with Kurt in the crowd and his face slips. Kurt looks away and Blaine visibly recovers himself as he continues the song. But for Blaine to be fully removed from his performance, even for a split second, indicates that his thoroughly worn armor is cracking from the many blows it’s taken in battle. His last defense is falling, leaving nothing between him and the gaping chasm that was Kurt’s place in his heart.
No Longer Just a Sidekick
We’ve gotten some spoiler pictures from “Dynamic Duets” showing the glee club’s superhero-themed week. Blaine has taken on the guise of Nightbird, which is a Nightwing-esque costume. I think this is particularly telling in light of his Robin-esque costume from The Superhero Sidekick Club in “Makeover.”
In the Batman comics, Dick Grayson was originally Robin, but he eventually stepped out from Batman’s shadow to become a hero in his own right, taking up the mantle of Nightwing and protecting his own city the way Batman looks over Gotham. Perhaps this progression indicates that we'll finally see Blaine defining himself as his own person at McKinley rather than as Kurt's "sidekick."
We know that a big issue for Blaine has been that he’s found validation through Kurt, so in Kurt’s absence, he lost that and ended up looking for it in other places, leading to a ultimately hollow hook up with another boy. Since his introduction, Blaine has always had some connection to Kurt’s storyline, making him simply half of Kurt-and-Blaine, both when they were just friends and after they started dating. However, there’s no longer a Kurt-and-Blaine for Blaine to obtain validation and identity from.
So, just as Dick Grayson stepped out from being defined as one half of Batman-and-Robin to become his own hero, perhaps Blaine is finally going to step out from Kurt’s shadow and become his own person-to become Blaine Anderson in his own right.
Enter the Warblers
I also think it’s particularly important that the Warblers are in “Dynamic Duets,” trying to lure Blaine back to Dalton. Blaine is at a crossroads, having just had a disastrous run-in with Kurt. He’s hurting, lonely, and gagged, so when the Warblers, who represent the place Blaine felt welcome and appreciated, actively seek him out, it has to be a temptation for him to return despite any bad blood over the slushie incident in “Michael.”
But Blaine is no longer the boy that sought refuge in the halls of Dalton to rebuild himself after the traumatic Sadie Hawkins dance. Blaine, in some ways, is stronger than that boy because he has faced the demons that sent him to private school in the first place. But Blaine he has also lost his sense of self in the halls of McKinley. It would be incredibly easy to fall back into old patterns, taking up the mantle as a Warbler once again and finding a sense of self through his old school.
However, that would be a giant step back for Blaine, giving him simply a new, if familiar, set of armor to wear. For Blaine to truly move forward and work through the issues that led to him cheating on Kurt, he can’t return to Dalton. Dalton was a crutch that Blaine needed for a time to rebuild himself in the wake of a hate crime, but he needs to stand on his own two feet now. He needs to find out just who Blaine Anderson is outside of Dalton and outside of Kurt. He needs to become his own hero rather than a sidekick.