Season 4-New Characters:
With the graduation of eight core characters, McKinley High desperately needed some fresh faces. And of course, living in New York after Ohio wouldn’t be complete without some distracting new faces.
Cassandra July: Welcome to Glee Kate Hudson, and please, please, don’t ever leave us. Cassie July is a bitter, alcoholic dance professor at NYADA who has one goal in mind: torture Rachel until she can’t take it anymore. She even snarls to Rachel in early episodes that she isn’t just “on her list,” she “IS her list.” Ouch, poor Rachel—or maybe not. Cassandra is incredibly hard on her, but as the season progresses, it becomes more evident why she really is. She just wants to make a student she saw who had obvious talent, even better, by forcing her to work for what she wanted. And she really does hope Rachel wins the role of Fannie Bryce. She’s supportive! Hopefully, no matter how Rachel’s audition turns out, we’ll still see some of Cassandra next season. It’d be a shame to see her give up on pushing Rachel to improve each day.
Brody Weston: Dean Geyer is hot—without question. And Brody Weston is definitely the most eligible bachelor at NYADA—evidenced by the fact that everyone wants him. Rachel is intrigued by his interest in her, and eventually succumbs after she figures out her Finn drama. But even before they get together, they suffer a setback, when Brody sleeps with Cassandra. (Side note, I realize it’s college and it is technically legal if students are at least 18, but don’t most colleges still have codes of conduct that state Professors cannot sleep with students—even if said student is their TA?) Well, Brody turns on the charm and gets Rachel to forgive him, and soon the two are not just dating, but living together. But Brody has his own secret—he’s a prostitute, which is how he pays for his NYADA tuition. Santana is the one who figures it out, and gets Finn involved by bringing him to New York to secretly kick Brody’s ass, which he does, even snarling at him to “Stay Away from his future wife.” (Another side note: How much sadder does this storyline seem now?) In the next episode, Santana finally reveals the truth to Rachel after Brody suddenly dumps her, Rachel confronts Brody, and the two officially end their relationship with Radiohead’s “Creep.” Is it the end of Brody for good? It doesn’t seem like there’s a way to really work him back into the storyline for the show, but hey it didn’t seem like there’d be a way to work Jesse St. James back into the equation either, and he was back for at least one episode every season except this last one. It would be interesting to see if both of them (Jonathon Groff could be very likely since he is Lea Michele’s real-life best friend), come to New York in later episodes of Season 5—not to be romantic interests (that wouldn’t be right), but to just be extra supportive forces in Rachel’s life as she deals with Finn’s death.
Isabelle Wright: Sarah Jessica Parker is a high-end fashion editor at a big magazine in New York City? Carrie Bradshaw is back ladies and gentlemen! Only now, she goes by the name Isabelle wright, and she is Kurt’s supremely fun boss at Vogue.com. She isn’t in many episodes, and sometimes her storylines felt a little forced (the Kiki party she throws at Rachel and Kurt’s for Thanksgiving, as well as being the voice of reason who encourages Santana to figure out what she wants from life come to mind), but overall it’s great to see her.
Adam Crawford: I really wanted to like Adam, because he actually seems like a really nice guy, and if we had never had a universe where “Klaine” was the most adorable couple on the planet, I would have gladly accepted him as a new love interest for Kurt. It’s nice to see Kurt have someone new in his life, and having him be with at least one other person is a much more realistic way of treating a high school/college kid and the typical relationship trajectory at that age. So Adam was a nice brief treat, but hopefully Kurt and Blaine will find their way back to one another soon. But there was also never any resolution on the “Kadam” affair. It was clear at one point that Adam knows Kurt still isn’t over Blaine, but there was never a break-up of any kind that fans saw. So who knows who Kurt will be with when Season 5 starts?
Wade ‘Unique’ Adams: Welcome back Alex Newell. One of the runners-up from Season 1 of the Glee Project, the ‘Unique’ character was first introduced at the end of season 3, when she was the star of Vocal Adrenaline. In season 4, as hinted at during Nationals, Unique is an official McKinley transfer and new member of New Directions. Most of the season viewers watched as Unique dealt with how Lima kids handled the Wade/Unique persona. In truth, it didn’t go over well. Unique was bullied on the way home from school and a little bit by Ryder as well. Unique also didn’t get to be Rizzo in Grease, as hoped, because Wade’s parents decided it wouldn’t do their son any good. And after it’s revealed that Unique is the one who has been Catfishing Ryder….it doesn’t go very well. In fact, Ryder says he’s never going to speak to Unique again, and at the end of the season finale, it’s unclear whether or not Ryder’s promise to quit Glee Club after Regionals is one he intends to keep.
Marley Rose: Marley is clearly supposed to be a replacement Rachel Berry for Lima (good voice, body insecurity issues, tangled in odd love triangles, and the brainchild behind doing original songs again). And Melissa Benoist is definitely talented (she’s no Lea Michele though). Marley is the daughter of the new lunch lady, Millie, who is obese and the target of taunts from the student body, which mostly stops when Marley reveals the truth. She catches the attention of both bad-boy Jake Puckerman, as well as sweet and endearing football stud Ryder Lynn, although in a departure from the expected path for her character to follow, she chooses Jake instead of Ryder. She’s also the target of mean girl Kitty, who convinces her she’s gaining weight, and as a result Marley’s tragic flaw that makes her a mis-fit (and perfect for Glee Club of course), is that she becomes Bulimic. Her eating disorder doesn’t quite get the focus it deserves though beyond the Christmas episode, and the writers instead focused on her relationships (just because she chose Jake doesn’t mean Ryder isn’t still trying there for a while), and friendships. One thing very un-Rachel like about Marley is that she cultivates her strong friendships in the very beginning of her Glee Club days, and stays loyal to them throughout. Specifically, her friendship with Unique is one which remains true, as she sticks up for her all the time, and even tries to cover for her when the Catfishing scandal hits its boiling point. The only thing really missing from Marley that could turn her into a new Rachel (besides the just not quite as powerful voice), is her lack of drive and determination to be the best, so it’s something to look for in season 5. If the writers decide to infuse some of that Rachel Berry attitude into an otherwise boring Marley, then the new crop of New Directions kids will officially have its leader.
Jake Puckerman: “Just Jake,” knows he has talent and decides to audition for New Directions, but his bad attitude causes him to storm out of his audition. Soon, his secret is revealed—he’s actually Noah Puckerman’s younger half-brother. After a pep talk from his newly found brother, the two forge an instant relationship, ones which surprisingly sets Jake up on the right track to being the sensitive guy Puck often was not. It took a lot more for Puck to show his sensitive side: specifically a teen pregnancy, getting arrested, falling in love with a plus-sized girl, getting his heart stomped on by a teacher, and almost not graduating from high school, before glimpses of that side of Puck came to light. Jake has it much more naturally, eventually ending his toxic relationship with Kitty (quickly, actually), and starting to turn his attentions on Marley. And he’s actually a sweet guy with good intentions. Sure he screws up sometimes (he has no idea how to treat a girl for Valentine’s Day, and during guilty pleasures week he intends to do a Chris Brown song, then performs a Bobby Brown number—both pretty unpopular choices considering both Chris and Bobby Brown’s tumultuous lives outside of the studio). At the end of the season though he is poised to become a Glee club leader, and he and Marley are in love. I’d cue the chorus of AWWWWWW’s but come on, it’s Glee. No couple weathers the dramas of high school unscathed or without at least one break-up.
Kitty Wilde: Cue the screeching noises cats make when they’re ready to battle and you have the most fitting name possible for McKinley’s new “it” girl. She never really seems to have pure intentions, much like Quinn in the beginning of the show, and like Quinn, she delights in making her Glee co-lead’s life miserable, though she definitely takes it to a whole new level of mean that Quinn never could quite reach. The worst Quinn really did to Rachel was rubbing her relationship with Finn in her face. Kitty encouraged Marley right into an eating disorder—and suffered no consequences as a result. However, as the season went on, she did start showing some aspects of a softer side, mostly after the school shooting episode that affected everyone. First, during the episode, when the Glee kids were all huddled together in the choir room crying and hoping they wouldn’t just become statistics in another school tragedy for the history books, she came clean to Marley about making her costumes for Grease too small. Then, in the episode “Lights Out,” after Ryder confesses a big secret that serves as his second tragic flaw, her actual flaw is finally revealed, making her someone to feel more empathy for. She was molested in sixth grade when her best friend’s brother climbed into her sleeping bag during a sleepover. That could explain why she’s generally such a bitch to everyone. But her shining moment that shows she does have a soft side appears in the second to last episode of the season, when her meddling helps convince Artie that he can handle New York after he’s accepted to the Brooklyn Film Academy. Hopefully more of this side will appear in season 5, because if she’s supposed to be the new Quinn, then she needs to start having some of these moments mixed in with her terrible ones.
Ryder Lynn: The new Finn is none other than the second season winner of the Glee Project. He’s immediately thrown into the mix of Glee club after Finn recruits him for Grease, and becomes involved in a true to form love triangle when he falls for Marley. This fuels a bitter rivalry with Jake, one that disappears (tentatively) after Jake helps him come to terms with his Dyslexia. Those two eventually form a pretty good friendship, and Ryder does eventually move on from Marley when he meets “Katie,” a pretty cyber girl he can share his deepest and darkest secrets with (he was molested too, by his baby-sitter, which gives him and Kitty something very real to bond over). But Katie doesn’t really exist, and Ryder realizes he’s being Catfished. He realizes during the school shooting that the person doing this to him is someone in the Glee Club, but by the season finale, still no one had come clean, and after a Finn-style freak out, Marley confesses that she was pulling a prank on him. But further confrontation reveals the truth—Unique was the one who was Catfishing him, and not as a prank. There were genuine feelings there. Alas, it backfired, and Ryder is currently debating whether or not he wants to even be in Glee Club anymore.