Things We Saw Today: Glee’s Rachel Berry Could Have Been so Much More

In a recent article for the AV Club, it was suggested that Rachel Berry was Glee‘s villain, and that her potential was ultimately wasted on the show. As someone who related a lot to Rachel Berry in Glee’s early days, I never saw her as a villain. Instead, I saw her as a character on Glee who just knew what she wanted and didn’t care how she got her own version of success. There was something refreshingly ambitious and uncompromising about Rachel.

The AV Club tells us:

Glee, in its brief explosion as a cultural phenomenon, was packed with contradictions and paradoxes and evidence of laziness about its tone, style, intent, characterization, habits, and tropes. But its most startling flaw and source of frustration was in Rachel: ravenously spotlight-hungry, egotistical, victim and villain.

For me, Rachel was a character who was grossly misunderstood, not the big bad. First of all, she’s just a teenager when we first meet her. She doesn’t understand that life is more than just the dreams we lay out for ourselves and that, sometimes, those dreams shift and change.

Maybe I learned that because I watched Rachel Berry struggle in the same way I was struggling. I think that to label her as a “villain” isn’t the best word choice. I do agree with the idea that she was the show’s version of wasted potential because she did, at the end of the day, lose herself for years because of boys. Rachel can be seen as an example of what society tells us “not” to do. But I think we should look to her as what can happen when we let society’s standards about how we should react shift us and our own personal goals.

• One of the best battles of all time? Obi-Wan and Darth Vader! (via Pajiba)
• A YA novel that will keep us singing? Somewhere Only We Know seems like quite the fun time! (via A Love So True)
• See more

  pic.twitter.com/zfICH1XDCJ

  — James Cameron (@JimCameron) May 9, 2019

• Don’t worry, our love of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt can continue, because she’s coming back to Netflix in a special. (via Jezebel)
• Vaccines are sorcery now? Wonderful. Now we are all witches and wizards! Hogwarts, here I come! (via Boing Boing)

(via: AV Club; image: Fox)

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Rachel Leishman

Rachel Leishman (She/Her) is an Assistant Editor at the Mary Sue. She's been a writer professionally since 2016 but was always obsessed with movies and television and writing about them growing up. A lover of Spider-Man and Wanda Maximoff's biggest defender, she has interests in all things nerdy and a cat named Benjamin Wyatt the cat. If you want to talk classic rock music or all things Harrison Ford, she's your girl but her interests span far and wide. Yes, she knows she looks like Florence Pugh. She has multiple podcasts, normally has opinions on any bit of pop culture, and can tell you can actors entire filmography off the top of her head. Her current obsession is Glen Powell's dog, Brisket. Her work at the Mary Sue often includes Star Wars, Marvel, DC, movie reviews, and interviews.

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