‘Glee’ Podcast ‘And That’s What You REALLY Missed’ Will Validate All Your Most Secret Theories

Glee is a song I can’t get out of my head. Every time I think I can let it go, Journey plays or a bizarre Lea Michele article emerges, and I’m pulled right back in. For these reasons and so many more, I knew I would be listening to Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz‘s Glee podcast as soon as it debuted. What I never could have predicted was how strangely cathartic that experience would be. Only one episode in and And That’s What You REALLY Missed isn’t just a good pop culture deep dive. It’s a refreshingly honest reexamination that refuses to sugarcoat or dismiss one of the most controversial pieces of pop culture from the 2010s.

And That’s What You REALLY Missed is technically McHale and Ushkowitz’s second Glee podcast. In January of 2020, the pair’s Showmance podcast started to recap Fox’s musical dramedy. But there was always something a bit lacking to those episodes. It’s a trait most behind-the-scenes podcasts share. The on-set memories were a bit too bright, the praise too glowing, and the criticism too shallow. Even the consistently excellent It’s Aways Sunny podcast has fallen into this trap, alluding to questionable creative choices without explicitly explaining or defending them. Showmance‘s episodes about Glee gave the sense that McHale and Ushkowitz wanted to talk about this huge part of their lives, but they didn’t know how to honestly address it, warts and all.

That’s not the tone of And That’s What You REALLY Missed. Instead, the podcast shares a view of Glee that feels closer to my truth as a decade plus fan. Yes, Glee was riddled with controversies. And yes, it led to some of the most embarrassing musical numbers, plot lines, and news stories of the 2000s. But this show was always special.

To the people who watched it and loved it, it meant something. It was a naive promise that no matter how much you felt like a weird outsider, there was a group of people who would accept you. It was a TV show that nurtured universal hope that your biggest sources of shame could one day make you great, and it made that argument through every casting choice, musical number, and brutal Sue Sylvester monologue.

That’s the duality McHale and Ushkowitz’s new podcast seems to understand. It doesn’t pretend that Glee was flawless, and it certainly isn’t here to ruthlessly mock it for internet points. Instead, both McHale and Ushkowitz seem far more interested in exploring the gray areas that have come to define this show. That balance comes out immediately in And That’s What You REALLY Missed’s opening episode, the first of a two-part interview with series creator and executive producer, Ryan Murphy.

In many ways, the episode is a confession. Murphy compares himself to an “absentee father” for later leaving his cast so that he could pursue other projects like American Horror Story and The Normal Heart. To their credit, McHale and Ushkowitz don’t cover up for the super-producer and instead admit that they did feel abandoned. He apologizes for agreeing to a truly staggering number of Glee events right out of the gate, from Hot Topic tours to performances at the White House. He admits that Cory Monteith’s death broke him in some way and that he didn’t know how to run this show without its quarterback. Murphy even addresses his King of Leon feud and agrees that some of Glee‘s most infamous moments truly were embarrassing. As McHale rants about how much he hated Glee’s puppet-filled version of “The Fox”, Murphy joyfully calls the whole experience “a fever dream.”

It’s because that this podcast is neither pro- nor anti-Glee that these conversations can happen. And due to this honesty, a new, more understandable narrative begins to emerge. Repeatedly, Murphy emphasizes that no one thought Glee would be as big of a hit as it was. An unnamed executive used to refer to it as the f-word show, and it scored terribly with test audiences. Yet Glee burst onto the scene as one of the biggest shows of 2009. That success didn’t stop with episodes that doubled audience numbers night after night. It extended to Billboard charts, iTunes numbers, and touring offers. Overnight, Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Ian Brennan became the heads of a major Fox brand and a billion-dollar industry in its own right.

“I was very overwhelmed by the three-headed hydra element of it because, again, I knew nothing,” Murphy says in the episode. “This is the thing, I think, that’s very f-ed up about Hollywood, right? You can be a person who is writing a script. You are sitting in a room, by yourself, with your Starbucks and a sad broken-down laptop. You can write something. You can turn it in. And then you can have a corporation say, ‘Here’s a billion dollars. Go have fun.’ And you’re like, ‘I don’t know how to hire people. I don’t know how to manage people. How am I supposed to do all of this while working on the creative element of the show?'”

Under this lens, all of those bonkers plot twists and questionable interviews start to make sense. Deep down and at least in the beginning, Glee was as special and remarkable as its stellar first episode. Yet over time it became a runaway train led by a conductor who was  forced to make things up as he went along. Mistakes were certainly made, and there was indisputably bad behavior on set. For example, the podcast has yet to touch upon the many racist accusations against star Lea Michele. Becoming too famous too quickly is not any acceptable excuse for any of these sins. But this middle-ground approach feels like the beginning of an answer Gleeks have been struggling with for years.

At the end of the day, Glee was both good and bad. But more than anything else, it was complicated. That base level of honesty shouldn’t feel refreshing. Yet in a pop culture age defined by listicles confidently tallying bests and worsts, it does. Here’s hoping that And That’s What You REALLY Missed will continue to chisel away at this complicated legacy in a way that encourages other shows and fandoms to do the same.