DEDICATED
Vegan Meatballs for Rachel Berry
‘Glee’ is far from perfect, but its earnest, complex protagonist is a maligned vegan who deserves these perfect tofu-based veggie meatballs
The third installment in DEDICATED — a column devoted to creating new recipes dedicated to famous people who are vegan or who seem to be considering a vegan lifestyle. Because we care!
If Glee had ended after its first season we might now think of it with the same critically-acclaimed wistfulness we apply to Freaks and Geeks or My So Called Life. Instead, the show bloomed hard and quickly rotted, the televisual equivalent of drinking a gallon of sugar syrup then running into a mirror maze.
And yet, I’ve found myself binge-watching it again. Rewatching Glee in 2019 can be fairly distressing on several levels — character development changed at whiplash speed; the in-universe logic went from darkly satirical to cartoonish; continuity was traded for contradiction; the increasing autotune often made it hard to tell who was actually singing. Several plot points have aged very badly, and some cast members’ own lives played out in horribly sad ways.
But just when I think I’m burnt out by Glee’s unearned sentiment, baseless moralising and irony…
