by Casey DiBari
On January 16th, ID released their three-part documentary series, ‘The Price of Glee’, a show centered around the controversies, deaths, and rumors of Fox’s musical comedy series ‘Glee‘. While ‘Glee‘ ended in 2015, the series was infamous for its backstage drama even after the final episode, something that captivated fans at the time. This also includes the death of three of the show’s biggest stars; Cory Monteith in 2013, Mark Salling in 2018, and Naya Rivera in 2020. ‘The Price of Glee‘ mainly focuses on the lives of these three, claiming to look more into the events leading up to each of their demise, almost as if it plans on going into a deep dive and revealing unknown information on the trio.
Except that’s not what this documentary series does. What it does is spend two of its three episodes covering in depth the life and death of Cory Monteith, and then spending the 40 minutes of its last episode touching on what happened to both Mark and Naya. While there is nothing wrong with this in theory, as some can debate that Cory’s death, while the show was running, is the more “interesting” story, had the network had any genuine intentions with this show, they wouldn’t concern themselves on which was more interesting.
This docuseries had plenty of its own drama and controversy before its premiere too. About a month before the show came out, former glee actor Kevin McHale made his gripes about this shown known in a tweet, saying, “Show me this ‘cast’ you speak of. This is [trash].” in response to another tweet claiming that the cast was involved with the documentary. He continues to say “This was the nice version, ftr. Don’t make me speak on this again.”
McHale’s words are in the forefront when looking to see who ‘The Price of Glee’ invited to speak on the show. While they do have people like Naya Rivera’s father or Cory Monteith’s roommate speak on their story, the cast and crew that they alleged to have are those who worked on the show for limited times, those who worked hair and makeup or even stunt doubles to other cast members.
And there’s nothing wrong with these people sharing the stories. They, much like the cast or directors, knew Cory, Mark and Naya. Some were there when the news broke that Cory passed away right before season 5 started filming. These were just as much friends with the cast as anyone else who worked on the show. However, the lack of involvement from the main cast and crew truly does speak volumes to how much that didn’t seem to want to involve themselves in this series.
On top of the three main deaths of ‘Glee’, the show also touches on the passing of multiple crew members on the show, backstage drama such as star Lea Michele’s bad behavior on set, and the abuse that Melissa Benoist went through with her then husband Blake Jenner, both of who were brought in as main cast members in season four.
‘The Price of Glee’, overall, truly feels like it was ID wanting to go over Cory Monteith’s death once more, about ten years later, but for some reason did not want to, or possibly could not, commit to a full series just around Cory. Where Cory got multiple episodes and crew members speculating what could have happened to him, with several different friends adding in facts about his life, Naya had half an episode with the most significant person speaking on her being her father. On top of there, the show seems to speedrun her life story and even what happened to her, with just a small speculation of what happened on the lake she died on back in July of 2020. Mark got even less time and people speaking on him.
‘The Price of Glee‘ can be watched in full on Discovery Plus, as well as on the ID channel.
Three Shot Media 