When Rachel Berry (Lea Michele) lost the love of her life, Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith), and returned to McKinley High to put him to rest, the episode honestly and powerfully reflected her deep grief and the grief of the entire Glee cast.
One of the things that makes Glee such a wonderful show is that it doesn’t just pick up an emotional issue in one episode and then drop it for good, as if it had never happened.
Instead, the show allows itself to explore feelings and relationships in a natural time frame, as if it was real life.
In the case of Glee, the personal lives of Lea Michele and Cory Monteith completely merged with their characters’ fictional lives when the two stars fell in love, off-camera as well as on.
That’s why when Cory died of a tragic drug overdose on July 13, 2013, the Glee producers and writers had to handle his death in the most sensitive and delicate way.
And they did, in a creative process that culminated in the sweetest, most touching moment in last night, Nov. 14’s episode, in which Rachel and Kurt both try to work through their paralyzing grief.
The friends decide that they need to upend their lives — do something crazy — in hopes of being able to cope better with Finn’s loss.
“Diving into life” again, becomes Rachel’s new direction as she tries to manage living while also grieving for Finn. She and Kurt decide to get tattoos — something that is totally out of their comfort zones.
Kurt forges ahead with his tattoo, but Lea tells him that she has decided to back off. “I don’t think there’s anything that I would love enough that I would want to get on my body for the next 50 years,” she confides to Kurt.
However, it turns out that Rachel wasn’t being honest with Kurt — but it was for the best possible reason.
Rachel had in fact gotten inked, but she wanted to have a private experience that only she, and hopefully Finn’s spirit, would be privy to.
As she lifted up her shirt in the bathroom of her loft, she revealed a simple, delicate, single word on her side: “Finn.”
It was a perfect moment and a perfect tribute to both the fictional Finn and the very real, late Cory Monteith.
Rachel will now symbolically carry Finn’s memory with her every day of her life, with his name literally written on her skin.
This symbolic and permanent commitment of his memory to her body is clearly already a comfort to Rachel.
What we don’t know is whether art imitated real life in this case, and if Lea has secretly inked herself with Cory’s name for the very same reason that Rachel did on Glee. We do know that she already carries Cory’s last words to her, “If you say so”, on her body in a tattoo.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she has secretly added a tattoo of his name. What about you, HollywoodLifers? #1) Did you think that a totally private tattoo was the most loving way for Rachel to honor Finn’s memory? And #2) Do you think Lea has tattooed Cory’s name on her body in real life? Let me know.
— Bonnie Fuller
© 2024 Hollywoodlife.com, LLC. All rights reserved.