Glee Funeral Episode – Who Dies on Glee?

SPOILER ALERT!

In this week’s episode of the TV show Glee, amidst the drama of preparing for show choir Nationals, the students of the glee club decide to take on an unusual task: planning a funeral. Rumors of a death in the series have been swirling around for some time, and that was confirmed recently by actor Matthew Morrison.

“The episode right before the finale is called ‘Funeral’. We were actually at a funeral home yesterday, shooting all day,” said Morrison, who plays Will Schuester, the glee club’s director.

When Will approaches cheer coach Sue Sylvester to find out why she had cut one of her students from the team, she reveals, “She reminds me of my sister.” The unexpected death in the series turns out to be Jean, Sue’s sister, who had been living with Down’s Syndrome.

“I don’t know how to deal with this. I can’t go back into that nursing home and start sorting through Jean’s things, and I won’t plan a funeral,” Sue admits to the two glee club members who approach her to offer to plan the funeral.

Throughout the series, Coach Sylvester has been billed as the insensitive one, the enemy of the glee club. The episode plunges her into the unexpected position of dealing with grief.

Despite her hatred of the glee club members, Sue accepts their offer because, “I was afraid no one would come. Jean didn’t know a lot of people. I figured with the glee club there, at least she’d have a full house.”

The cast’s entire day of work on location in a funeral home culminated in a short, but beautiful, scene in the episode. It opens with Sue walking into the funeral home to see the arrangement the glee club members have created around the casket. Earlier in the episode, she revealed that Jean was a huge fan of the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, so, rather than traditional flower arrangements, the casket is adorned with the playful gumdrops and candies from Wonka’s factory.

The emotion portrayed in the funeral scene is enough to draw at least a few tears from any viewer, and it is made all the more powerful coming from the made-to-hate Coach Sylvester.

“I miss my sister,” Sue says simply as she stands at the podium at the head of the funeral home. Too choked up to finish what she had prepared, she hands the podium over to Will, who is brought to tears himself as he reads Sue’s surprisingly honest words about the loss of her sister.

The scene in the funeral home closes with the glee club singing a touching rendition of Willy Wonka’s “Pure Imagination”.

Glee’s juxtaposition of Coach Sylvester’s loss with the glee club’s rigorous preparation for Nationals reminds us of the unexpected nature of death. Bringing in the glee club to help out the woman who had been plotting to ensure their failure positions death also as a universal truth. The characters are able to come together out of respect for the life of a loved one, a simple need that we all inevitably feel in a time of loss, an act that transcends the other differences the characters face.