Blainetana Forever!

Apparently, Ryan Murphy knows how to keep people talking about Glee even during hiatus. All of the reports about Glee graduating the kids at the end of next season…no wait, they’re actually just graduating Finn, Rachel, and Kurt…no wait, those three are actually getting a spinoff…no wait, actually there’s no spinoff after all!…have been making my head spin.

Now it appears that there’s no spinoff after all, and a lot of Glee fandom has a big sad. I, on the other hand, am relieved. I never liked the idea of a Finn/Rachel/Kurt spinoff. A spinoff with Rachel is only fun if she doesn’t have Finn dragging her down and experiencing New York. A spinoff with just Rachel and Kurt is slightly preferable, but I’m still not overly fussed about the idea for a few reasons: 1) I can’t imagine Ryan Murphy would be able to sustain a “Rachel and Kurt living in New York” premise after, say, three episodes. 2) Too much Lea Michele. I can only handle her in small doses. 3) I enjoy the Rachel-Kurt friendship to a point, but I don’t like that Rachel appears to have taken the place of Mercedes at Kurt’s best friend. 4) Rachel and Kurt are too similar to each other, and a BFF sitcom doesn’t always work when the characters are so similar.

I think best-buddy sitcoms work best when characters are a little more different. That’s why I wouldn’t watch a Kurt-Rachel spinoff, but I would certainly watch a spinoff all about Blaine and Santana.

This might give some people pause, as these characters have had very little interaction on the show, but I want to give them more interaction on the show. I’m convinced magic will happen.

Why?

1) Blaine’s dapper wholesomeness + Santana’s in-your-face bitchiness = comedy gold. Let me be clear and say that I do not want to see Blaine become Santana’s Wise Gay Yoda Who Helps Her Come To Terms With Her Sexuality. I don’t want Santana softening up that much. But I can envision Santana just deciding that she wants to be friends with Blaine because she finds his backwards dapper behavior somehow endearing, if odd and also annoying, and being aggressive in a way that flummoxes him. I imagine Santana demanding – not asking, demanding – Blaine for help with a song to serenade Brittany, and being completely rude about it, while Blaine is taken back, and the idea of Blaine’s utter bewilderment in the face of Santana’s aggressive bitchiness/friendliness just cracks me up. I can see Santana taking interest in becoming friends with a boy who a) isn’t going to ever be sexually interested in her, and b) can’t compete with her divaness like Kurt, but not sure how to become friends with someone without being demanding. And Blaine would just go along with it at first out of amusement, and because he’d be a little scared of her. The idea just plain makes me laugh.

2) A new meaning for “new directions.” I’ve seen the “gay white guy and Jewish girl best friend” sitcom before (even if Kurt is closer in personality to Jack McFarland than Will Truman). I’m fairly certain I’ve never seen a show where the protagonist best friends were a half-Filipino gay boy and a Puerto Rican-American lesbian. Yay for diversity! Okay, so the actors aren’t actually gay, but that character combination still hasn’t been done before.

3) They’re both really good-looking. I can be shallow. I’m okay with this.

4) They sound great together. How would I know? I had the pleasure of seeing Darren Criss’s concert on Irving Street last month, and he brought out Naya Rivera as one of his guests. Behold their duet of “Valerie.”

There you have it. I want to see Blaine and Santana develop a friendship next season on Glee. I’m (half)-joking about the spinoff, but I think it would be much more entertaining than a Kurt-Rachel spinoff. Kurt can still be on Blaine and Santana’s Untitled Sitcom, but the other main romantic relationship on the show would be Santana/Brittany instead of Finn/Rachel. I don’t see any bad here.