ohgeeitskerie replied to your post: Do you think they’d actually have Finchel, Klaine, Brittana have their happy ending and make them all end together. It’s just not realistic to have all of the high school sweethearts end up together. I always thought Brittana would break up mid season for good and Santana find someone who is a true lesbian like her. But now I’m thinking its Klaine that won’t end together. Finchel I know is. Just along journey to go.
I’ve always thought they’d pull a Gilmore Girls and end up with no one but their dream coming true like Rory but then I think that isn’t what Glee is about- it’s about having it all, the brass ring. I feel like we HAVE to see Rachel have it all.
Exactly. That's pretty much the biggest point.
I didn't watch GG, so I don't have much of a point of reference outside of the brief conversations I've had with Shanny about it, so I don't know if a romantic endgame was set up for Rory in the first episode or first season. My two best points of reference are Dawson's Creek and Friends and I think they work for the sake of this comparison.
With regards to Dawson's Creek, while Dawson and Joey were always the perceived endgame, they weren't the endgame set up in the series premiere. The endgame set up in the pilot was Dawson/Hollywood and Joey/out of Capeside. The pilot vaguely established Joey having feelings for Dawson but it moreso established this connection between two people who were just absolutely and undoubtedly soulmates. And that's where we kind of have to end it because of all the offscreen stuff that muddled up the story in the final season.
And then we have Friends. Friends didn't hint at any individual endgames or potential individual endgames in their series premiere. What they did establish and plant the seeds for? Ross and Rachel. Ross had this conversation with Joey and Chandler about the idea that there's only one woman for everyone and he was worried that he'd had his (with Carol...whom he was divorcing...because it turned out that there was only one woman for his woman...) and Joey tells him that there's all different flavors of "ice cream" out there and that Ross needs to just grab a spoon. Later in the episode, Ross has a conversation with Rachel where he confesses that he had a major crush on her in high school and asks her if it'd be alright if he asked her out sometime. Rachel says yeah and then goes off to bed and as Ross is leaving, Monica comes out of her room and asks Ross what's up with him (and his improved demeanor) and Ross says he had just grabbed a spoon. And in that, they established what would become that Ross/Rachel push-and-pull back-and-forth that spanned ten seasons and would ultimately and undoubtedly become one of the most epic television ships ever. Nothing was established in the Friends pilot except that something was *there* for Ross and Rachel. Something that would unfold for a long time to come. Something the audience should invest in.
So then we have Glee, which kind of did both -- they established individual endgames for the three main characters in the premiere just like Dawson's Creek did (Rachel/Broadway, Finn/Out of Lima, Will/Teaching and impacting kids on a larger scale than he could comprehend), but they established an endgame for Finn and Rachel in their second scene together. "I think the rest of the team expects us to become an item -- you, the hot male lead, and me, the stunning young ingenue everyone roots for." In their first, they started a duet that they have yet to finish -- You're the One That I Want. The reunion song of Grease's endgame -- Danny and Sandy. Two people from different worlds that found each other and fell in love and learned to reconcile their worlds to be together. And then to hammer that home, we see Finn and Rachel really connect through song for the first time at the end of Pilot when they sing a song that's literally about two people trying to escape the circumstances that confine them and find each other in the process.
And your point is the most valid of all -- Rachel has NUMEROUS times brought up the idea of that brass ring. How she never thought she'd be the girl to have it all because aside for a few scenes in Goodbye, she never did. The boy she always wanted, the friends she tried so hard for and the spotlight on the biggest stage she can find her way to. If Rachel doesn't have all three of those things when the series ends, I'll feel incredibly dissatisfied because from the very beginning, we weren't supposed to root for Rachel to find one of those...we were supposed to root for Rachel to have all of them.
Brad Falchuk used to say that the Finn and Rachel relationship was a metaphor for the entire show. A show that said in the very first episode that metaphors were important. And up through the last episode before this hiatus we're in, they've continued to plant those seeds that Finn and Rachel are not only it for each other, but that one day, they'll figure out their shit and finally be together and both have it all.
It's entirely possible this show will do away with all romantic endgames (save for Wemma), absolutely, but if in that last episode, Rachel isn't on a Broadway stage or accepting her first Tony, with Finn sitting in the front row and all her friends cheering for her? I think this show will have failed in a really disappointing way. Things can change, but Rachel finally firmly grasping that brass ring is the premise of the entire show and there's only really one acceptable ending there.
