RIP Naya Rivera

[Drunk Monk]

'Glee' Actor Naya Rivera's Body Recovered From California Lake 
The Ventura County Sheriff's Office confirms it has recovered the body of Naya Rivera from a California lake. Divers have been searching the lake since shortly after Naya Rivera disappeared on July 8 while boating with her 4-year-old son. 
Best known for her starring role on the Fox show Glee, the actor is presumed to have drowned on Wednesday while boating on Lake Piru in the Los Padres National Forest, not far from Los Angeles. Rivera was 33 years old.
Sheriff William "Bill" Ayub says Rivera was not wearing a life vest, though one was found on the boat. 
For six seasons, from 2009 to 2015, Rivera played the role of an unexpectedly popular television antihero. Glee's Santana Lopez was a cynical, initially closeted high school cheerleader with charisma to burn and an ax to grind. "The only straight I am is straight-up bitch," Santana announced in Season 2. But the character's bullying eventually yielded to team spirit and a tender romance with another cheerleader, the sweet natured but dim Brittany.
Glee fans pushed for the storyline, which became one of the most popular arcs on the show. "Who knows if the writers would have taken that relationship so seriously if there hadn't been such an outpouring for them to get together," Rivera told The Los Angeles Times in 2011.
A child actor and model, Rivera was barely more than a toddler when she played Redd Foxx's granddaughter on the CBS comedy The Royal Family. More television work followed, with appearances on such programs as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Baywatch, The Bernie Mac Show and CSI: Miami.
Her breakthrough character, Glee's Santana, was originally conceived as a minor role, but Rivera brought swagger and unexpected sensitivity to the spiky character. Although some critics at the time complained about seeing yet another traditionally beautiful queer femme of color, the character has also been celebrated as an outspoken, charismatic Latinx who pushes back against stereotyping.
"Honestly, I never thought I'd actually be playing a teen lesbian," Rivera said in The Los Angeles Times interview. "I didn't think it was going to go this far. But I'm glad that it did, because there have been a lot of fans who have expressed that they've been going through similar situations in their lives. I've heard from girls that are in high school — they're 16, 17 — and they're like, 'I came out to my mom,' or 'I came out to my friends, and thank you for helping me do that.' "
Rivera was not gay in real life; she was engaged to the rapper Big Sean, with whom she recorded a single in 2013. She later married the actor Ryan Dorsey, whom she divorced in 2018. After Glee ended in 2015, Rivera appeared on the Lifetime show Devious Maids and the YouTube Red series Step Up: High Water.
Rivera rented a boat on the afternoon of Wednesday, July 8, with her 4-year-old son. The boy was found safely in the boat and told authorities that his mother had gone swimming. She is the third regular cast member of Glee to have died tragically and unexpectedly in the past five years. 

We were huge Glee fans. We watched it was a family. Now it seems the cast is cursed. Naya’s story arc was amazing - the gay relationship between Santana & Britney was wonderfully groundbreaking.

[King Bob]

My wife was very upset about her death. We stopped watching Glee sometime in season two, but just started re-watching.

I don't think the Santana and Britney relationship was totally groundbreaking; that was 2010, and Willow and Tara got together on Buffy in 2000. And Ellen came out in her show in 1998. And I remember at the time feeling like it was somewhat arbitrary in the story line, that it happened because the writers decided it should, not because they developed it organically.


That aside, it is a tragedy.

[Drunk Monk]

Is anything 'totally' groundbreaking anymore? Santana was a lesbian of color, so there is that, but then so was Lucy Liu when she kissed Calista Flockhart in Ally McBeal. I didn't watch that show or Buffy, truth be told. But you gotta give Santana some cred being Latinx lesbian and paving the way for Rosa in Brooklyn 99. Plus Santana & Brittany were my fav characters of the show, so it really worked for me. But I hear what you're saying about it being arbitrary. I'd blame that on the general soap opera nature of the show in general. 

Glee was an easy way for Tara to learn a lot of pop music that predated her. I'm grateful for that. And it turned me on to a few songs that I knew but didn't get into at the time. Somehow, hearing those renditions made me hear them anew. Like Radiohead's 'Creep' - I wasn't that into that tune until after Glee did it. 

We watched the entire series. It falls apart when they all graduate and a new cast is brought in, while the old cast is left to try and make it in the real world. The last season is really bad. But we saw it through nonetheless. The series finale was super weak, very disappointing.