MsMojo Can Fix It: Rewriting Quinn Fabray's Story on Glee

MsMojo Can Fix It: Quinn Fabray

Welcome to MsMojo. There’s nothing worse than seeing a good character kept down by bad writing, but fortunately, we’ve got the bullhorn, and we can do something about it. In our own head canon anyway. So today we’re going back to high school, and boosting one, Quinn Fabray, to the top of the pyramid, where she so rightly belongs.

The Character You Know

Quinn Fabray was introduced right from the start of “Glee” as the stereotypical high school queen bee. She’s a gorgeous cheerleader, she dates the quarterback, Finn Hudson, and she’s…not very nice. However, Quinn has a problem. Despite her role as president of the McKinley High Chastity Club, she succumbed to a drunken hook up with Finn’s best friend, Puck, and found herself pregnant out of wedlock. Almost overnight her perfect life falls to pieces. Her parents kick her out, and she loses all her social status at school. But Quinn goes on to find acceptance among the New Directions, and grows into a better version of herself during her time there.

Throughout the first two seasons of the show Quinn was the main obstacle in the love story between Rachel Berry and Finn Hudson. However, she also ran a gauntlet of her own in a series of plotlines that gradually revealed her to be one of the strongest characters on the show, in spite of significant flaws in the material she was given.

Where It Went Wrong

It’s hard to dispute that “Glee”’s writing declined exponentially with each season of the show. Though it had introduced a large ensemble cast of characters bursting with potential, it struggled to use most of them effectively. As the series started to rely more and more on jukebox episodes and pop culture fads, the Glee Club itself suffered. Instead of getting satisfying story arcs or even consistent characterization, they were reduced to one dimensional cut outs being plugged in however it was most convenient for the story of the week.

Quinn’s prominent role in the first season made it harder to shove her to the sidelines than some of her fellow New Directioners. But it was pretty obvious that outside of a love triangle, the writers weren’t sure what to do with her. Season Two alone put her in three of them. Quinn alternated between being rivals and frenemies with Rachel as she bounced between relationships with Finn and new arrival Sam Evans. Then Santana eventually targeted Sam both out of spite for Quinn and as a cover for her true feelings for Brittany. All this relationship drama was the backbone of every plot Quinn had across the season.

In Season Three, the writers took an opposite approach and threw numerous ideas at the wall to see what would stick. Quinn starts out with a new look and a bad attitude that she uses to mask the deeper feelings she’s repressing. When Shelby Corcoran, the adoptive mother of her baby, Beth, returns to Lima, Quinn cleans up her act on the outside while she spirals further emotionally. She fixates on getting her daughter back, even going so far as to try and frame Shelby as an unfit mother. It could have been compelling, but the plot resolves before mid-season. Quinn goes on to rejoin The God Squad, with Mercedes, Sam, and newcomer Joe. While rehabbing from a car accident, she and Joe get closer, but a full fledged relationship never takes off.

Does it seem like we rushed right past that last bit? That’s because the show kind of does as well. The entire storyline unfolds over four episodes, tying up in a neat inspirational bow at prom. Something that should realistically be a major life event is never mentioned again, and doesn’t have any lasting impact on Quinn. Its inclusion starts off feeling like a PSA for texting and driving, morphs into another means to explore her love life, and finishes by seeing her use her injury to service her worst impulses.

Honestly, there’s no reason this even needed to be Quinn’s plotline. If “Glee” wanted to have a serious conversation about coming to terms with disability, there are other characters who could have taken up the mantle. Putting it on Quinn after everything else the character goes through feels like tragedy dumping, and it’s only made worse by how inconsequential it ultimately is. Unfortunately, it was also the last significant plot arc Quinn had.

She goes off to the Ivy League, making a few trips back to McKinley in Season 4 before returning the next year with a snooty boyfriend in tow, and doing her best, once again, to pretend away her past. Of course, the truth eventually comes out. However, Glee’s resolution is not to give Quinn a growing moment, but rather the complete opposite. They put her back with Puck, regressing her yet again. And that’s pretty much it for Quinn. She cameos in the finale, but unlike the other main characters, we don’t get any indication of where her future took her. As far as we know, she and Puck are still making out in the choir room.

How Do We Fix It?

The most frustrating thing about Quinn’s storyline across “Glee” is how little intention seems to be behind most of it. The pieces of a good arc are there, but so much of it is haphazard, and relies on the viewer to do the mental work themselves to make it fit together. We don’t mind a little mental workout around here. Overthinking pop culture is kind of our thing, actually. But what Quinn’s plot really needs is a more focused perspective.

Given that the most significant element of Quinn’s journey is her pregnancy in Season One, it’s only natural that everything after would build off of that. Season 2 is mostly about Quinn trying to pretend that it didn’t happen. We see her putting all her energy into returning to her old life as Captain of the Cheerios and hottest girl in school. In that context it makes sense that she’s so focused on her love life. It all feeds into rebuilding the pedestal she fell from in her sophomore year, and allows her to aim all her energy at goals that are inextricably linked to high school, to the exclusion of anything outside.

Quinn, however, does have very complicated emotions that she is running from. There’s anger, guilt, depression, self-loathing, and it all inevitably comes boiling up to the surface. Though we see Quinn crack a bit in the New York episode, her radical change in Season 3 still feels abrupt. It would be better if we could build more organically. For one thing, Beth is only mentioned a few times in passing during Season 2, and whatever feelings Quinn is having in those moments, they’re not strongly linked to Beth herself. Just a few tweaks making a stronger connection between Quinn’s behavior and the baby would help this storyline seem more thoughtful. Then after most of a season laying subtle groundwork, Shelby would return from New York.

In the show, Quinn’s bad girl phase is unrelated to Shelby. She doesn’t discover the Show Choir coach is at McKinley until the second episode of Season Three, when she’s already deep into her delinquent phase. This should be the incident that pushes her over the edge though. Shelby should make the decision to move back to Lima late in season two, maybe helping Vocal Adrenaline in their final prep for Nationals. After spending the school year furiously trying to reset her status quo, to have Shelby, and by extension, Beth, back in Quinn’s immediate reality would make it impossible to pretend her pregnancy away.

As originally written, Quinn’s all-consuming campaign for Prom Queen is about fear of the future, and general self image, especially with the sublot about her past insecurities over her appearance. Adding Beth into the mix would make it a last desperate attempt to maintain an illusion of teenage perfection. Then when Finn rejects her to get back with Rachel, that carefully reconstructed facade would crumble. Rather than playing like wounded ego, this moment could become the inflection point when all of Quinn’s repressed feelings come crashing in on her. As she realizes that she can never be who she was, it would directly propel her to create an identity as different to the old Quinn Fabray as possible in response.

Season Three should be wholly about Quinn’s personal journey to come to terms with all of this. No romantic subplots, no car accident. And again, the foundation exists. It makes sense that Quinn would throw off her punk persona and obsess about Beth instead. If she’s looking for identity, then ‘Mother’ is one that seems pretty cut and dried. At least from the outside. As a bonus, she sees it as a way to absolve her guilt, and provide her with a permanent source of love and validation. The measures she takes to get that role back, though extreme, are also believable for an emotionally unstable teenager who feels lost. But all of that turmoil is mostly resolved after one heart to heart with Shelby.

That’s the part that doesn’t ring true. It speaks more to “Glee”’s tendency to introduce difficult subjects but then fail to give them the weight or complexity they need. Quinn’s recovery should have been a process, not a pivot. And it would have helped if she could have had an adult figure in her life to lean on. Season One showed us that her parents aren’t reliable. Sue is…hit or miss. Will has good intentions, but, let’s face it, his judgment is pretty questionable. Shelby can offer some wisdom, certainly, but her personal stakes in the situation make her unable to invest fully in what’s best for Quinn. If only there were a mental health professional around somewhere…

Yup, this would be a great opportunity to loop in the ever-under utilized guidance counselor, Emma Pillsbury. It would also be nice to see her get to do more than pat Will on the back. While her endless litany of pamphlets are played for laughs, Emma cares deeply about her job, and always gave good advice when she was allowed to. Plus, she has grounds for a pre-existing relationship with Quinn from her tenure as Celibacy Club sponsor. In Emma, we think Quinn would have found someone capable of helping her navigate her emotional journey, while also showing the importance of asking for professional help when it’s necessary. And in building a relationship with Emma, Quinn might find some inspiration for her path forward.

Quinn has a compassionate streak that asserted itself pretty early on. Back in Season One, before she was truly friends with most of the New Directioners, she still made an effort to help Mercedes through her issues with food. In the seasons that followed, Quinn repeatedly went out of her way to help the people around her, even ones she wasn’t always the most fond of, like Rachel. At her core, she is shown to be a deeply caring individual. Having been helped through her own doldrums by Emma, we think she would see how valuable it is to develop those instincts in lieu of giving in to self destruction.

In the show, Quinn goes off to the Yale school of drama, but we imagine her making a change in majors early on. We think psychology would have a particular draw for the reformed mean girl. And because she is nothing if not a high achiever, post-graduate work seems inevitable. We envision Quinn excelling in graduate school, finishing with honors and a PhD. Or maybe she could even get a divinity degree, and merge faith and counseling as a pastor, which, frankly, she would be great at. In our prologue, she’s happily single for the moment, but open to finding love in her own time and on her own terms. She stays close with some members of Glee Club, notably Mercedes, and the rest of the Unholy Trinity, but she has mostly grown beyond her life in high school. When she does go back to McKinley to visit, it’s for career day, when she shares with the students how she is in the process of starting a program that integrates traditional forms of counseling with art expression, including, and especially, music.

So what do you think? How would you change the story of Quinn Fabray? Let us know in the comments!