An Open Letter to Glee
Dear Writers of Glee,
It has come to my attention that you are wasting Quinn Fabray.
'Wasting'!, some of you must be saying now, with your noses turned up, My goodness; what a horrendous word for something we aren’t even doing.
Well no, my fellow slightly-more-fortunate writers; that is exactly what you are doing.
Allow me to explain.
We open on Quinn Fabray, a young and feisty head cheerleader, president of the celibacy club and dating the quarterback of the football team. Life is good, and life is easy. All at once, her world is thrown off kilter when she’s pregnant. In an instant she loses her cheerleading spot and Finn, her name is ruined, and life is hard when your own parents kick you out of their house. Quinn falls. She falls from her pedestal and hard on the concrete, and life beats the daylights out of her. She loses her popularity, she loses respect from students, she loses her boyfriend, her parents. She goes from having everything to having nothing but something weighing her down in a town she’d tried so hard to get away from.
Quinn Fabray is the definition of Glee. She is an outcast, she is misunderstood, she wants the now suddenly forbidden fruit of acceptance that she’d once tasted and relished. Quinn finds a home in glee club. Quinn finds friends, real friends, who stick by her through thick and thin, willing to support her through her good times and bad. She finds herself, her voice, her innermost wants and shameless desires. You want to write a story? A television show, about a glee club helping its members understand themselves? See the joys in their lives, in their hearts through song? It’s Quinn. It’s Quinn who sees the most: In herself, and in others.
The thing about Quinn is she is this incredible series of binaries. She’s the head cheerleader and yet overshadowed by Santana. She’s president of the celibacy club and yet pregnant. She’s dating Finn and having Puck’s child. She hates losers and yet can’t stay away from glee club. Quinn is constantly at crossroads; Quinn is the embodiment of a crossroad. And she chooses the glee club. She chooses it over high school, chooses the music and the friendships she’s developing. She’s learning to see past the dorks, past the stereotypes, learning to see who they really are, and in that way discovering herself. Yes she is pregnant, but that's who she is, too.
She chooses music over cheerleading. And so she chooses her inner voice over her body.
Quinn is Glee. She has nothing left, and yet she has everything in front of her, if only she could be brave enough to reach for it.
So please.
Please.
Come to your senses and write her some more scenes.
Regards,
Me.
P.S. Admittedly off-topic: Quinn/Rachel. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for, either, considering Finn and Puck are inconsistent, unreliable, and poor excuses for suitable mates.