GLEE: Will (Matthew Morrison) addresses the new and old kids in the glee club in the “100†episode of GLEE airing Tuesday, March 18 (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2014 Fox Broadcasting Co. CR: Adam Rose/FOX
The 100th episode of Glee airs tonight, and while the show’s most lasting legacy will likely be its music, it’s important to remember just how unafraid of tackling issues the show has been — any issue! All issues! No social problem is too large, no interpersonal conflict is too small, and no feline behavioral issue is too ridiculous. These are the 294 issues that have ensured that each and every Glee is basically a Very Special Episode.
- Getting molested by your choir director
- Education budget cuts
- Getting slushied
- Getting cyberbullied
- Fitting in, belonging, and acceptance
- Giving up your craft room to make room for a family
- Attempted bulimiaÂ
- Celibacy
- Premature ejaculation
- Accidentally hitting a mailman with your car
- Only being able to prevent premature ejaculation by remembering the time you hit a mailman with your car
- Hysterical pregnancy
- Choosing between your boy band and your show choir
- Coping with a verbally abusive show choir dance coach
- Falling in love with your gay best friend
- Rage-shattering the windows of an Escalade
- Coming out
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder
- Teen pregnancy
- Lying about who your baby daddy is
- Attempted fetal kidnapping
- Stuttering
- Accepting your child’s sexuality
- Fear of becoming a “Lima loserâ€
- The relative merits and ethics of enrolling a 30-year-old ringer in your high school to participate in glee club
- Supplying alcohol, skin mags, and shoplifting lessons to minors
- Performing Carrie Underwood songs while drunk
- Dropping out of high school
- Pseudoephedrine abuse
- Hiring people with no medical credentials as school nurses
- Racial diversity and inclusion
- Bribing ultrasound technicians
- Trading your underwear to prevent sensitive information from being blogged
- What happens when your secret pregnancy is no longer a secret
- Finding a Jewish girlfriend to appease your mother
- Coping with a decrease in popularity (mechanisms include: sunglasses, crying)
- Dating and being cheated on by a local television news anchor
- Admitting you faked your stutter
- Wheelchair access in public schools
- Selling weed cupcakes to pay for ultrasounds and buses
- Spending a week in a wheelchair to learn a valuable lesson about people in wheelchairs
- Living with Down syndrome
- Caring for an aging sibling with a disability
- Guys singing “girl songsâ€
- Protecting your parents from your sexuality
- Falling in love with your glee club instructor
- Getting an esophageal transplant because eating a hot pepper was your way of coping when your Spanish teacher didn’t reciprocate your love
- Telling your parents you’re pregnant
- Getting kicked out of the house
- Accidentally revealing to your mother that you’ve gotten a girl pregnant when she walks in on you singing to a sonogram picture
- Having a crush on a straight boy
- Using your hair to get what you want
- Interrupting a deaf choir while they’re performing
- Sexting
- Getting a makeover from a gay man to impress a boy
- Illegally participating in and accepting payment for a mattress commercial
- Discovering your wife’s fake pregnancy
- Appearing in a defaced yearbook photo
- Losing (and then regaining) your ability to compete in show choir sectionals
- Having your sectionals set list stolen and distributed
- Learning that you’re not your girlfriend’s baby daddy
- Rising above the fact that you’re not your girlfriend’s baby daddy in order to compete in a show choir competition
- Getting dumped because your boyfriend needs time with his “inner rock starâ€
- Falling in love with a competing show choir’s lead singer
- Mysophobia
- Losing your virginity
- Taking someone’s virginity
- Opting to keep your virginity
- Getting boys/men to take you seriously
- Living life as the mistress of a roller rink tycoon
- Body image and acceptance
- Setting up your father with the mother of the boy you have a crush on
- Coping when video of you lip-synching to “Physical†is leaked to the internet
- Offending three boys when you triple-cast them as the lead in your rendition of “Run Joey Runâ€
- Creating and posting a list (“glistâ€) ranking people by promiscuity level
- Losing your voice
- Losing the ability to move from the neck down
- Pretending to be straight to please your father
- Realizing a career in the arts is impractical
- Finding and singing along to a cassette tape from your birth mother
- Trying to dance as a paraplegic
- Being forbidden to dress as a goth
- Meeting your birth mother
- Trying to seduce your future stepbrother
- Being kicked out of the house by your future stepfather for saying “faggyâ€
- Vandalizing rival show choirs’ auditoriums or cars
- Egging your ex-girlfriend
- Confining yourself to bed after being stood up
- Giving birth
- Having your baby adopted by a rival show choir director
- Losing Regionals
- Luring a potential glee club member to a crack house instead of to auditions
- Losing the arts budget to the football program
- Getting kicked off the football team
- Being demoted as head cheerleader after your coach finds out you have breast implants
- Poor dental hygiene
- Hallucinating at the dentist’s office
- Getting caught masturbating in the school library
- Causing a riot by sexually exciting the student body by performing “Toxic†at an assembly
- Asking your boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend to try to seduce him as a fidelity test
- Finding Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich
- Faith/atheism
- Your father having a heart attack
- Going to juvie for trying to steal an ATM
- Being afraid to sing a duet with another guy
- Having a crush on a straight guy
- Trading sexual favors for partnership in intra-glee club competition
- Putting on a production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show with a cast of children to win back your ex-girlfriend
- Being forbidden by your parents to play a transvestite in The Rocky Horror Picture Show
- Male body image
- Suspension from school for walking around the halls wearing only underwear
- Gay bashing
- Spying on rival show choirs
- Forcible first kiss from football player in locker room
- Sneaking into your ex’s house to have sex with him while he sleeps
- Unconventional show choir coaching methods
- Tater tot addiction
- Receiving death threats after discovering a football player is gay
- Giving your girlfriend a promise ring
- Confronting bullies
- Being expelled (and then reinstated) from school for bullying
- Being afraid to slow dance with your soon-to-be stepbrother
- Getting married to yourself and inviting your former Nazi-hunting mother
- Being saved by a female wrestler after you get locked in a Porta-Potty
- Boosting your confidence with a magic comb
- Making out with your boyfriend’s best friend to make him jealous
- Having fruit and shoes thrown at you while Christmas caroling
- Keeping your (17-year-old) girlfriend’s belief in Santa alive
- Getting a ReWalk mobility device from Santa
- Recovering after a faculty member dressed as the Grinch steals your glee club’s Christmas tree and gifts
- Quitting the cheerleading squad after your coach wants to fire you from a cannon
- Football/glee club/cheerleading scheduling conflicts
- Having a crush on an older boy
- Performing for your crush in a flashmob at the Gap, and subsequently getting him fired
- Figuring out a way to incept a boy with mono to prove he’s cheating on his girlfriend
- Staging your own fake suicide by gummy vitamins
- Questioning your sexuality
- Throwing a party with drink tickets
- Sustaining a weeklong buzz
- Projectile vomiting on the stage during a school assembly
- Drunk dialing
- Banning sex ed
- Being told by a teen that it’s time to give your son the sex talk
- The sex talk
- Waiting until marriage as an adult
- Being in love with your best friend
- Secretly getting back together with your ex
- Pet canaries dying of strokes
- Writing a song about your boyfriend’s fishlike mouth
- Coping with hecklers
- Elective rhinoplasty
- Becoming a beard
- Making posters exposing your rival’s pre-plastic surgery face and weight
- Creating an anti-bullying club as a part of a prom queen election platform
- Teen homelessness
- Insulting your girlfriend’s intellectual disability
- Going to prom with your ex
- Being elected prom queen as a gay man
- Getting kicked out of prom for fist-fighting
- Coping with the death of your sister
- Planning and performing at a funeral
- Losing a Nationals competition (mainly because two of your glee club members starting making out mid-performance)
- Piercing your tongue, dyeing your hair, and becoming a Skank
- Running for Congress on an anti-arts campaign
- Arson (piano-related)
- Being mocked when your West Side Story audition isn’t “masculine†enough
- Spending time with the child you gave up for adoption
- Being forbidden to see the child you gave up for adoption
- Getting an A- on a chemistry exam
- Clashing with your parents about whether you should become a doctor
- Parents who mock their child’s OCD
- Framing the woman who adopted your child for abuse and neglect
- Initiating a sexual relationship with the mother who adopted the child you gave up for adoption
- Being bullied because you’re Irish
- Believing all Irish people are leprechauns
- Questioning whether you can play a romantic lead even if you’re a virgin
- Accepting the fact that you won’t get a football scholarship
- Going to a gay bar for the first time
- Pressuring your boyfriend into sex
- Getting disowned because you want to become a professional dancer
- Attempting to get dodgeball banned
- Being outed in a political attack ad
- Getting shunned by your grandmother because you are gay
- Rigging the student body president elections and getting suspended
- Teen strippers
- Debate about whether “sex sellsâ€
- High school fight clubs
- Choosing between serving the homeless or appearing in a public television Christmas special
- Questioning the ethics of sleeping with an underage girl with Down syndrome
- Joining the Army
- Learning the truth about your deceased father’s postwar PTSD and death from drug overdose
- Deciding to what extent your obsessive compulsive disorder should influence whether you have children
- Getting a slushie laced with rock salt thrown in your face
- Eye surgery
- Taking remedial Spanish classes as a Spanish teacher
- Accusing a teacher of presenting negative racial stereotypes
- Writing pamphlets about genital sanitation
- Teen engagement
- Public display of affection rules that are only enforced for same-sex couples
- Having your former bully as your secret admirer
- The God Squad deciding whether to perform singing telegrams for same-sex couples
- Texting and driving
- Attempted suicide, post-outing
- Sibling rivalry
- Post-text-and-driving partial paralysis
- Planning a post-graduation pool cleaning business
- Irregular amniocentesis results
- Accidentally getting a boner while helping your friend do her physical therapy
- Making a sex tape with your girlfriend
- Locking down your life plans at the age of 17
- Text-message-based cheating
- Spousal abuse
- Seeing your estranged father for the first time in five years, who asks you for money
- Propositioning your geography teacher in exchange for better grades
- Coping when your fiancé takes another woman to the prom
- Getting sucked into your cat’s Ponzi schemes
- The ethics of using your (temporary) wheelchair as a means of getting prom queen votes
- (Literal) body swapping
- Being pressured to perform in drag
- Bringing a switchblade to a fight
- Revealing that the switchblade you brought to a fight is actually a prop from West Side Story
- Leaving your abusive husband
- Food poisoning
- Being the first transgender person to win the Nationals MVP trophy
- Losing your virginity as an adult
- Embarking on a long-distance relationship
- Failing to secure your father a posthumous dishonorable discharge from the Army
- Breaking up with your girlfriend so she can achieve her dreams
- The difficulties of “scissoring your webcamâ€
- Trying to protect your overweight, lunch lady mother from taunting
- Adjusting to life in the big city
- Being told you’re not allowed to learn how to tango because you lack sex appeal
- Staging a mental breakdown to have a splashy comeback
- Cheating on your boyfriend
- Secretly attempting to tell your boyfriend you cheated by cry-singing to him at a piano bar
- Ending your first serious relationship
- Joining a club to prepare for the rapture
- Being prevented from playing Rizzo in Grease because you are transgender
- Finding out your new boyfriend is sleeping with your mean dance teacher behind your back
- Dyslexia
- Being pressured into sex
- Having an affair with one of your Yale professors
- Collapsing onstage because of bulimia during a show choir competition
- Internet lesbians trying to get you and your ex-girlfriend back together
- Prostate cancer
- The Mayan apocalypse
- Canceling Christmas to pay for eating disorder therapy
- Love triangles in which none of the participants are of complimentary sexual orientation
- Dating a high school sophomore as a 19-year-old
- Selling semen to pay for a show choir tour bus
- Learning you have more to offer the world than your abs
- Deciding whether to appear topless in a student film
- Non-consensually straddling and VapoRubbing a male friend while weeping
- Accidentally kissing your former guidance counselor
- Leaving a man at the altar
- Deciding to wait for sex
- Taking a pregnancy test for the first time
- Finding out that you’ve been dating a gigolo
- Struggling to accept a transgender person for who they are
- Admitting you have a crush on your straight best friend
- Admitting you love Barry Manilow
- Confronting your gigolo boyfriend
- School shootings
- Finding out you’re being Catfished
- Joining a fraternity
- Quitting a fraternity
- Pretending to be your own identical twin
- Being told to “tone down†your boobs as a transgender woman
- Getting molested as a child by your babysitter
- Getting told that being molested by a female babysitter is “every teenage boy’s fantasy!â€
- Asking your boyfriend’s father for permission to propose
- Finding out the identity of your Catfisher
- Being in a secret relationship with the head cheerleader
- Proposing to your boyfriend
- Getting pig’s blood dumped on you at the prom
- Coping with the loss of a friend, boyfriend, son, and teacher
- Having sex on school grounds
- Getting suspended for dressing like Lady Gaga
- Getting suspended for not dressing like Lady Gaga
- Being forced to use the girls’ restroom as a transgender woman
- Getting fired for twerking
- Exploring college options for people with Down syndrome
- Becoming a male model
- Having stress-induced hallucinations about puppets
- Overcoming gas-leak-induced poisoning
- Enduring abuse as one of Santa’s elves at a New York City mall
- Getting tied up and robbed by a sexy Santa
- Choosing the best virgin to play Mary in the Christmas pageant
- Competing for valedictorian
- Having an understudy
- Acting on unresolved sexual tension at a high school lock-in
- Infertility
- Quitting music altogether after failing to find success as a 15-year-old songwriter
- Having your glee club officially disbanded