Okay, just to clarify: I don’t hate Blaine. I hate things about him, but I don’t think he’s some raging psychopath without redeeming qualities. He is oblivious, which in a better show would be a character quirk that would actually be commented on and explored. He’s egocentric, and hell, I love Sebastian so obviously that isn’t a dealbreaker.
If Blaine’s flaws were addressed as flaws…jesus, if they were even acknowledged as existing, he might be an interesting character. He is a Nice Guy Asshole, which could be awesome to watch. A well-meaning dick. If they wanted to explore him as that…seriously, I could grow to love the hell out of him. But they don’t explore that. These flaws come through over and over again, but what they’re writing is Blaine as Mr. Perfect.
And if you want to know how they can write flaws for him but still write him as perfect…imagine the opposite of Blaine and it becomes clearer. Imagine if a character on a show was described by other characters as an asshole. They talk about him as being an obnoxious dick, and every main good-guy character on the show despises him. They warn people away from him. Every time he appears there’s ominous music in the background. But every scene that he’s in, all he does and says are nice things. He asks someone how they’re doing, and they sneer at him because he’s such a huge asshole. He puts money in a can for a charity and if anyone even notices it then they say he must be getting rid of money he stole from someone else or something. We are obviously meant to think that this guy is a jerk, because the camera likes to show him in bad lighting, with dark music playing, and every character that we’re meant to sympathize with on the show seriously believes he’s an evil guy. But while they tell us that he’s a dick they show us that he’s the nicest guy around.
The reverse of that is Blaine. He shows up like Prince Charming, we’re told over and over again, by every kind of character, how perfect and talented and special he is, but every time he’s on camera he seems to say or do something so completely dickish, and either no one notices or people excuse it away for him.
That is what I can’t stand about Blaine. I don’t hate him as a character, but I wish they would treat him as the character they’re writing him as. If they did that, if people called him out for being a tremendous chode and made that an actual aspect of his character, he might be an interesting guy.
Now! That being said…
Will is…ugh. Will was doomed from the start, because he’s the adult character in a teenager show. You can get away with having adults and kids in focus on the same show, but not one adult and a pile of kids. Because what you have to do is have Will’s plots revolve around the kids (hence his inappropriate amounts of friendship with Finn) and he has to play the role of too many adult figures (hence his shift from mentor to tyrant to buddy to teacher in any given episode). Plus he has to be the person onscreen who represents the offscreen decision to have the same two or three people sing over and over again in the name of iTunes sales, which shows through him as rampant favoritism to the point of consciously excluding the same misfit kids that he was so eager to recruit into the group. The offscreen business decision makes no onscreen sense, because a school glee club with weekly song assignments should absolutely stress participation by everyone.
I think that’s a big reason why Will is a mess, because he is the only regular and meaningful adult presence in a sea of children, with occasional Sue or Figgins or Emma showing up when he can’t do everything himself, or when it’s determined that his creeper level is getting too high so it’s time to show him with his adult girlfriend.
No matter the reason why, though, Will is a huge, giant, stinking mess.
For me the quintessential Will-as-glee-coach moment was in Theatricality, right at the end. When the glee club stands together and talks about being freaks together, and Will says ‘good, because I had no idea what the lesson was supposed to be’. That, in a nutshell, is Will. He’s someone who the kids flourish in spite of, not because of. These kids do great things, and since he’s the adult along for the ride he is given credit that he absolutely doesn’t deserve.
This is a guy whose entire focus since day one has been to win Nationals. Yet this same guy has failed to have a finalized set list or choreography or costumes one week before Nationals for two years in a row, despite winning Sectionals weeks and weeks earlier. This guy sent a plane of kids to New York for a national competition saying ‘eh, they’ll write some songs, it’ll be fine’. And if you think a single other club that knew they were on their way to a possible national title handled their performance that flippantly, you’re nuts.
In fact, them winning the title this year almost makes sense, because the glee club that didn’t give a shit about rehearsing were voted winners by judges who didn’t give a shit about judging.
When his incompetence is called out, rarely, it seems to be in that fanservice way that says ‘if we write in a line of dialogue about it, we don’t actually have to do anything about it’. Emma tells him flat-out that he ignores students in favor of others, nothing changes. One of the original members of that club gives her one wish for the future as a request to sing a song, and he laughs. He lets one student get away with murder and then acts shocked when another student attempts to get away with some small slight. He breaks laws to blackmail an innocent student into doing what he wants, but of course when he admits it three years later it’s blown off like nothing.
He is a hypocritical, incompetent, ineffectual teacher who ought to be fired but instead gets awards. Back when Glee was a satire about high school his character worked at least a little. Once the show became serious and his character stayed exactly as he was, the absurdities about him became gross flaws.
So…yeah, upon reflection I don’t really like Will.
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