Why “Glee” Stars Hate This ‘Very Offensive’ Christmas Episode: ‘It's Supposed to be Controversial’

Fans might love a Christmas episode — but they’re not all created equal.

Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz, who played Artie and Tina on Glee, respectively, opened up about the show’s season 5 Christmas episode “Previously Unaired Christmas Episode” on the Dec. 15 episode of their recap podcast, And That’s What You REALLY Missed. And the pair were definitely not fans.

The episode, which aired in December 2013, is introduced at the beginning by Jane Lynch — who played the show’s mean-spirited cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester — claiming that it was originally filmed for season 4 but was banned by Fox. But now, the network has allowed them to air it, she explained.

“So they’re prefacing this basically in this meta way of being like, it was crazy,” Ushkowitz, 38, explained on the podcast. She noted that their “expectations” for these season 5 episodes were “quite low” and she gives everyone “grace” because they filmed not long after star Cory Monteith died. Still, she and McHale, 36, were not impressed.

McHale said that when they started doing the podcast, they knew some portions of the show hand't aged well. But, Ushkowitz added, when they were filming this episode 11 years ago, “We knew it was very offensive.” The point was to be funny, but neither thought the episode actually worked. 

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The most questionable part, they said, was a sequence at the end of the episode in which the cast performs an over-the-top disco nativity with the song "Love Child" in order to convince Kitty (Becca Tobin) to play the Virgin Mary in the real nativity. “I just remember shooting this number being like, ‘Wow, we've really hit our bottom,' " Ushkowitz said.

“You had to commit so hard because it was so bad,” she explained, remembering that she thought at the time, “If I don't commit to this, it actually will make it worse.”

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But McHale pointed out, "That's the thing. I don't think it's supposed to be bad. It's supposed to be controversial ... Bad is good when it’s funny ... This just felt like being controversial for controversial sake.” And even though the point of the number was to offend Kitty, neither thought it worked. They also pointed out a storyline with Lea Michele, Chris Colfer and Naya Rivera, in which they wore tight elf costumes and were scammed by a con artist.

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And That’s What You REALLY Missed is Ushkowitz and McHale’s second podcast. They also talked about Glee on their old show, Showmance, but on the new pod, they told PEOPLE in 2022, they dive a little deeper and feel more free to be honest.

Still, McHale said, the positive memories outweigh the bad ones. "Actually, I think Jenna said this. She said, 'For every one bad or negative thing that happened, there were a hundred positive and joyful things that happened,' " he explained.

"I think just being able to look back, it's sort of like, if you can look back at high school or college. You look back on that experience in your life, whatever it may be, and you're like, 'Oh, you know what? It was an incredible learning experience for myself. I made a lot of incredible friends,' " he said. "And I think that the biggest thing for us is to be able to look back on it in a positive way."

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