Ryan Murphy Says "Glee"'s Bullying Storyline Is More Than a Very Special Episode

Sometimes saying "Courage" isn't enough.

The reactions to Glee's "Never Been Kissed" episode have been decidedly mixed. Viewers love Blaine (Darren Criss), but the reaction to Dave Karofsky (Max Adler) being a bully have been more measured with many worrying about Blaine's telling Kurt he needed to stand up to his tormentor. This isn't th first time Glee has faced some criticism for how it has handled bullying. Many thought the show had made light of the subject ever since Kurt (Chris Colfer) was first tossed into the first dumpster.

The New York Times recently sat down with creator Ryan Murphy to talk about all those issues and more.

On whether this was a "Very Special Episode" now that bullying is in the news:

We had planned on doing that all long. We’ve been building to it for the past season and a half. You’ve seen him thrown in Dumpsters, you’ve seen him get slushied. We wanted to do a story line where the abuse pushed him to the edge and he was like, “That’s it, I’m not going to take it any more,” and fight back. It’s a big story that we’re following through the whole year, and it has tentacles that will touch on all the characters.

As to whether introducing a strong gay character like Blaine is a cop out, when so many gay teens are isolated:

I also think that he’s tormented because, as he says to Kurt in the storyline, “I ran.” I put my tail between my legs and I left my situation and I regret it. I don’t think he’s some big white knight who walks in and does the “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it,” thing. He has great self-loathing and wishes he would have handled himself differently, and those things will play out over the course of the season – trying to rectify what he perceives as weakness and wrongdoing on his own part. I didn’t write some sort of heroic, Clark Kent-like character.

As to whether Karofsky turning out to be struggling with his sexuality is too simple and fails to address true hatred:

I will say that’s not the only bully or homophobic character that will arise from that storyline this season. I don’t think you can just present the person picking on somebody else because of their own secret, sad agenda. There are just people who hate gay people and pick on them because of their prejudice and hatred, and those characters need to be explored as well.

In what be the most maddening question asked to readers of AfterElton.com, Murphy is asked if focusing so much screen time on a gay character isn't going to alienate his straight audience:

There’s one gay character in that group and when we’ve chosen to concentrate on him in the A story, there are B, C and D stories. There’s been a lot of heterosexual love stories told on our show this year. In fact, 90 percent of the story lines are about those characters – Finn and Rachel, or Chord [Overstreet] and Dianna [Agron], or Tina and Artie, or Artie and Brittany or [John] Stamos and Jayma [Mays].

You should check out both part 1 and part 2 of the interview for details on how the bullying will expand beyond Kurt, to Artie, to Rachel and the other characters.

In other news, new fan favorite Darren Criss is in negotiations to go from recurring status to series regular, though probably not until the start of season three.