Glee/Characters/Headscratchers

Discuss any issues with Glee's Characters, where your issues are spread across several episodes here.

You may also be interested in... General, Characters, Season 1 by Episode, Season 2 by Episode, Season 3 by Episode.

Rachel

This is kind of a minor thing, but it has bothered me for the entire show: If Rachel is so incredibly focused on becoming famous, why does she insist on dressing like, as one character put it, "a toddler and a grandmother at the same time"? If she wants to be a star, wouldn't her MO be to dress fashionably?
- Actually it was a plot of one of the episodes. She hired Brittany to make her dress style popular, but Brittany ended up stealing all the credit. My guess is she simply likes dressing that way.
- It could be to prevent her "normal" clothes from getting hit by a slushie. I wouldn't want my good clothes slushied, and seeing that it seems that she gets slushied A LOT, she would probably not wear her good clothes. It is remarkable that she dresses better - in my opinion - as the seasons progress. It does seem that she doesn't get slushied as often as in the past, so I always thought that there should be a connection between the two.
- This is more of an informed ability anyway as outside of the mentioned episode with Britney and a few references by Quinn, it's not really clear that Rachel dresses differently from any of the other girls (largely because for a very long time the other main female cast members lived in their "Cheerios" uniforms - and had no regular clothes for the comparison)
  - I disagree. Yes, Quinn sometimes dresses horrible, but when you compare Rachel and Brittany/Santana (and especially Britt), you WILL see difference. Rachel wears mostly one great thing (for instance a great dress) and messes the great thing up with something HORRIBLE (like knee-high white socks which would make anyones legs look fat, or black/white (where does one get white ones anyway???) tights under a dress that would be awesome without any or skin-coloured tights). It is getting better through the seasons, though.

Probably rule of drama or something, but I like to hear other opions about it because it bothered the hell out off me. Why did Rachel not just slap Quinn back in the Prom episode? She says she isn't even mad! Then she says she thinks it's called for with all the drama...
- Maybe because she was trying to avoid even more drama and/or she genuinely likes Quinn and holds no grudges against her, sympathizing with her situation (she'd probably heard about Lucy Caboosey by then).
  - OP: The symathy thing might be true, though now that I'm thinking about it, she seems to worship Quinn strange enough - look at what she and Finn talked about befor she burst out in 'Firework' (pun intended), so maybe that is part of the reason too.
- Because she loves Quinn.

Rachel, throughout the series, is consistently shown to be incredibly self-aware of her irritating and overwhelming personality flaws. She also continues to act in a way befitting these irritating and overwhelming personality flaws. But one of her driving motivations in a few episodes seems to be being liked, or at least not being so disliked she gets slushied. So, being by her own admission very-goal oriented, and demonstrated on multiple occasions to be willing to work hard to achieve these goals, why doesn't she put more effort into changing her behavior towards people?

And, on a similar note, everyone around her is aware of her arrogance and so forth. Why do they keep talking her up when it's clear a primary reason she acts as she does is she feels her skill makes her entitled?

Finn

So is Finn supposed the best or the worst male performer in the club in-universe? Different characters say different things so it's a bit confusing.
Why is Finn, who according to Word of God is a sophomore during the first season, a starting quarterback? It's assumed that he's on varsity, and the position of starting quarterback would be like having a sophomore being the senior class president.
- Probably because Mckinley's team sucks so hes the Best of a bad bunch.
- At my high school, we had a freshman as starting varsity quarterback in my sophomore year. Granted, it was a small school and our team sucked, but it happens.

Finn and Mrs Hudson's Finance

In Season One, Finn says that since his dad is dead, money is always pretty tight for him and his mum, a situation I assume continues until he and Carol move in with Burt and Kurt. So... money's tight, but his mum can afford to buy him a drum kit and get him lessons? Even second hand, these things cost a lot. And music lessons are very expensive.

Single parents often overcompensate. This troper does it a lot. Or perhaps Finn's father played drums and it was his set that Finn learned on. Finn has shown to be rather attached to anything involving his dad. Just a guess.
- Even poor families can afford a few nice things.
  - Agreed. She could have been saving for it. Purchasing things isn't the only way to get them either, they could have been traded for, handed down by a family friend etc. The lessons are harder to explain away, but in most budgets there is some wiggle room if not much. Mom could have taken some extra hours at work to fund them.
You don't need lessons to learn to play the drums. You're not dealing with notes -- as long as you have a decent sense of rhythm (which lessons probably won't teach you) all you have to do is start hitting things until you have it memorized which one makes which sound. From there you create beats. This is all there is to drumming, mentally. The reason it's so difficult/everyone doesn't do it is because it is physically exhausting in the extreme and you need to practice to sustain it more than a few minutes.
Perhaps Ms. Hudson sucks at budgeting and the drums and lessons bankrupted them?

Quinn

In the pre-hiatus finale, when Rachel finally suspects that Puck is the father, she fools Quinn into spelling it out for her by mentioning the issue of genetic diseases potentially being passed down by a Jewish father- Quinn's motivation for getting Puck tested is that she's worried Terri won't still take the baby. Has the rest of the Glee club not yet worked out that Schue knows Terri faked her pregnancy? Finn, for one, clearly knows. Why would Quinn still expect Terri to take the child?
- Because Quinn can give up the baby for adoption at an orphanage? And it'll be much harder for a baby with a genetic disease to get adopted by parents?
  - Would make sense except she specifically names Terri.
    - Yeah well Will didn't leave Terri YET.
    - Yes he did.
    - Well, I thought he left her before Emma's wedding, right? Well I didn't see "Mattress" yet (although I saw Sectionals) so I'm not sure.
    - He discovered Terri had been lying about the pregnancy in "Mattress." He discussed it with various people and suggested that he was considering leaving his wife. The actual leaving part didn't happen until "Sectionals."

What's going to happen to Quinn?

Is Finn still going to take care of her, even after he found out the baby wasn't his or is he going to kick her out? Is she going to move in with Puck? Is she going to live on the street?

- That's what the second half of the season is probably for.
- "Laryngitis" confirmed that she's living with the Puckermans now.

Baby Bump

The visibility of Quinn's pregnancy seems to be constantly going back and forth. In the dance sequence with the girls in the Madonna episode, it wasn't even there. It's rather inconsistent.
- Diana (who plays Quinn) said that she was definitely wearing the baby bump for that sequence, it's just that the corset the girls were wearing made it seem like it wasn't there.
  - What is a pregnant girl doing wearing a corset.
    - What is a pregnant girl doing on the Cheerios squad? What is a pregnant girl doing jumping around on mattresses? What is your statement doing with a question mark? Quinn has obviously demonstrated poor choices in her treatment of her body while pregnant (though based on an above section it really isn't that bad; as a male I have no idea). Also? She has no money and is getting no support from her parents; has she been seeing doctors who will tell her "Don't wear a corset"? None of us know. It is completely reasonable to accept her doing something this silly. Also? She's wearing a corset during a SONG AND DANCE NUMBER with an INSTANT COSTUME CHANGE. Dianna Agron isn't really pregnant.
      - No shit the actress isn't pregnant, genius. But she has been seeing doctors. This is shown to us. It's been shown that she is taking extreme cases during her pregnancy to be incredibly careful. When she became too pregnant she was thrown off the cheerios. Then she stopped doing extreme strenuous and dangerous dance moves when she got too pregnant. And during the mattress scene she was only sitting on the mattresses or basically just standing on them, she wasn't doing extreme stunts and flips on them with everyone else. when you're seven months pregnant and you can't even fit into a pair of jeans anymore, it should be a little more than common knowledge to anyone with a set of lungs to not wear a corset.
        Fun fact: Pamela Anderson wore a corset during the filming of Barb Wire while pregnant. She later had a miscarriage. The two incidents may or may not be related.
- What seems odd is that I couldn't even tell she was showing until "Funk" (where it was fairly small), and moreover the camera seemed to be deliberately avoiding showing us the bump. In fact I spent the majority of the second half of the season wondering why she wasn't showing.

Kurt

"I have exactly the same vocal range as the famous 16th-century castrato Orlando di Lasso."

How does Kurt know this if standardized musical pitch scales have only been around since the 1700s, and even then there wasn't an actual standard until the early 19th century, and audio recording devices have only been around in the last couple of hundred years (even more recently when it comes to any medium with decent staying and playback quality)? If he was just bragging, you would think someone who cares enough to actually research individual castrati would know better than to use such a ridiculous boast. Was it a joke that just didn't land?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the Did Not Do the Research was on purpose. After all, the Finn getting Quinn pregnant one was.
- I thought it was hilarious because of all those things. Fact: male singers back then were often castrati. Fact: Orlando de Lassus was (and is) a famous musician. I took it as Kurt trying to make himself sound smart and failing.
- Or an honest mistake on Kurt's part, given that di Lassi wrote quite a lot of music for castrati - he may simply have assumed that that meant di Lassi was also a castrato.

Puck

This is just a small thing, but whatever happened to Puck being into MIL Fs?
- I would pretty much suggest that he's into females, milf or not. He just branches out to MILF's occasionally.
- It's not important to the storyline, so it's ignored. Presumably, Puck does a lot of screwing around with older women, but that has nothing to do with glee club, or any of the high school drama, so there's no relevance, so it's offscreen.
  - As of Pot O Gold, it's back.
If Puck is so irresponsible when it comes to his schoolwork, how does he keep up good enough marks to stay on the football team?
- It's possible that the administration just chooses to look the other way, the way they do with almost all of the Cheerios.

Sue

What exactly is Sue's motivation for destroying the Glee Club? The Cheerleaders have a massive budget as it is and the Glee Club don't seem to have or even require much in the way of funding.Sue so often goes out of Her way and uses so many sources and connections but for what? That has pissed Me off since the start
- Her motivation wasn't against the Glee club. She seemed to have some (unfounded) hatred against Will.
- Sue is completely obsessed with being the center of attention. The New Directions started to steal her Cheerio's thunder, and that's what fueled her hatred. Honestly, if it wasn't Will it would've been someone else, which actually did occur with Coach Beastie.
So, Glee Club throws Sue's deceased sister a funeral and as of the new season, she's back to trying to destroy the club again? What? I know Status Quo Is God, but that is just plain ridiculous.
- Before it was personal, she was out to destroy the Glee Club because they were taking her funding. Now it's just business, part of her campaign strategy. It used to be For the Evulz, now... it's just Tuesday.
Does anyone else think that Sue's schtick has become an Overly Long Gag?
Sue's motivation is just all over the place, which bugs me for a number of reasons, but I think her speech at the end of "Journey" sums it up pretty well--she likes playing the bully, and Will's an easy and reliable target.

Tina

Tina's last name is Cohen-Chang, implying that her father is Jewish while her mother is Chinese, but in Theatricality she scares Principal Figgins by saying that "Asian vampire dads are the worst" or something along those lines. Shouldn't that sound odd to Figgins? And this troper just finds it weird that she'd talk like that if her father was Jewish.
- No, the name Cohen-Chang suggests that her mother is Jewish, and her father is Asian. In the Jewish faith, religious identity is generally passed down by the mother. Cohen also comes first in Cohen-Chang, implying that her mother's maiden name is Cohen. Her mother is Jewish, and she was raised in the faith as well. Chang comes second in the family name, as the "real" last name, and would generally be the family name of the father.
  - or her dads last name was always cohen-chang and both her parents are Jewasians.
- Simplest explination: it's not "dads who are Asian vampires", it's "vampires who are dads of Asians."

Blaine

How old is he supposed to be anyway?
- He's a year above Kurt. And since Kurt was retconned into being a sophomore this season that would make him a junior and thus 16-17 years old.
  - (OP) Wait, Kurt's a sophomore? Then what was he doing in the other gleeks' classes? Junior prom? Winning prom queen?
  - There's no way Kurt's a sophomore. He drove last year, and Glee is at least good with timing everything so that it's as close to in-universe as possible. Jeremiah was probably just lying or misinformed about the underage thing. Though if he transfers to ND next season as a senior now... then I have no clue.
- Well, as far as Kurt's age goes, it's safe to assume he's a junior-- Burt explicitly says that Kurt's sixteen in Theatricality (during the infamous scene, if you feel compelled to check). Since it's just before regionals, relatively close to the end of the year, Kurt has presumably already had his birthday this school year, making him a sophomore. Therefore, the grade bump makes him a junior. As far as Blaine goes... I don't know, maybe he'll use magic or something.
- Kurt was definitely retconned to being a sophomore, Chris Colfer mentioned it in an interview with him and Jane Lynch towards the beginning of the season. As for what Kurt is doing in junior classes, blame the writers and their seeming They Just Didn't Care attitude towards internal consistency.
- I'm just getting into the show, but it's high school, aren't classes mixed up between the years because of grades or classes taken? Most of my classes have sophomores mixed with us juniors, and a few seniors thrown in as well.
- Kurt is written as being very intelligent, no? Not all classes in high school are segregated by grade--at this troper's high school, the only ones that are are English and History. It makes perfect sense that Kurt might be in classes with students a year older than him.
- If you watch Silly Love Songs carefully and listen to what Wes says before giving Blaine the floor, he addresses him as 'Junior Member Blaine Anderson', thus confirming that Blaine is a Junior.
- Actually, this only confirms that Blaine is a junior member of the Warblers - that is, either an ordinary member and not one of the council, or one who's only been a member for a certain (relativbely short) amount of time. It's a common term for limited/relatively new membership of an organisation that's used around the world and is not tied to US school system year names.
  - I'm pretty sure Ryan Murphy stating Chris will be leaving along with with Corey and Lea after season 3 has confirmed that Kurt was a junior in season 2 and was never retconned into being a sophomore
Apparently Blaine is a junior now. It makes the thing with Jeremiah make a little more sense... and a lot creepier, and it makes the warblers and Kurt going along with it make no sense at all.
- Some schools I know of won't let people transfer in for senior year; if you want in, you go back to third year. Blaine could be a junior in McKinley, but old enough to be graduating.
  - That just makes his transfer itself worse. Kurt pressures him into leaving the school and group he loves and losing an entire year of his education? Personally, I can believe that Blaine is a year younger than Kurt. It's easy to be blinded by how much of an emotional rock he is for Kurt and how easily he handles pressure (this troper definitely was) but if you consider his actions, he's actually pretty retarded about basic social mores.
  - Kurt didn't pressure him into anything. It's not like he told Blaine, "Leave Dalton and the Warblers or we're done."
    - Pressure doesn't have to take the form of an absolute ultimatum. Just asking is a certain level of pressure (and I'd say a relatively high one in this case, given the history involved). Asking repeatedly, possibly after being told no more than once, is a lot more pressure. Manipulation takes other forms than hardcore bullying.
- A lot of fans actually theorize that the bullying Blaine experienced when he was younger reached an emotional and/or physical point where he couldn't deal with school and he was held back a year.
  - Everybody actually wins with this theory, because we don't have to wrap our heads around the notion that Darren Criss is younger than Chris Colfer, but we avoid the Unfortunate Implications of Kurt pressuring Blaine to transfer. This troper really wishes the writers would come out with something like this--it would add to Blaine's backstory, increase believability, and add more depth to his character.
    - ...how does this avoid Unfortunate Implications?
  - Instead of being forced to stay back a year when he transferred, he would have already been a junior.
So... are we all just going to forget the fact that Blaine basically slutshamed his boyfriend? Regardless of how you feel on the Chandler issue, Blaine used "It's Not Right But It's Ok" to give the Glee club the gist of things without context. He basically called Kurt a cheat in a situation where Kurt was unable to defend himself, completely ignoring Kurt's argument that he did nothing with Chandler that Blaine wasn't doing with Sebastian earlier in the season. I'm not saying Kurt is innocent of any wrongdoing, but Blaine's actions were out of line.

Brittany

If Brittany has slept with (literally) every single person in the school (her words, not mine, and on many occasion), to the degree that she tries to jump on Kurt during the brief moment he experiments with heterosexuality so she "can have a perfect record", then does that mean she has already gotten with characters like Mercedes, Rachel, Quinn, Tina, Mike... etc. Even if it were just a kiss, this would seem strange...
- I think it's just dudes she has a perfect record with. Mike wouldn't surprise me, he was on the football team before Glee Club after all.