User:HorrorFan121/Dave Karofsky

Dave Karofsky
Glee character
First appearance	"Mash-Up"
Created by	Ryan Murphy Brad Falchuk Ian Brennan
Portrayed by	Max Adler
In-universe information
Occupation	High school student
Family	Paul Karofsky (father)

Dave Karofsky is a fictional character from the Fox musical comedy-drama series Glee. The character is portrayed by actor Max Adler, and has appeared in Glee since its first season episode "Mash-Up", first broadcast on October 21, 2009. Initially only known by his surname, Karofsky was introduced as a bully and McKinley High athlete: a member of the hockey team who slushies football captain Finn, and who teams with fellow athlete and bully Azimio to torment various fellow students, usually members of the McKinley High glee club, New Directions. Later in the season, he's identified as a member of the football team, and is a football player in the second season. Karofsky is revealed to be a closeted homosexual early in that season, and is still closeted at the end of the season, though he has stopped being a bully, and has won the election for Junior Prom King.

Storylines

In the first season of Glee, Karofsky makes five guest appearances. He is a jock and a bully, initially a member of the McKinley High hockey team. He first appears in the episode "Mash-Up", where he slushies football captain Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith). He reappears in "Mattress", teamed with football player Azimio (James Earl), writing on Finn's face with black markers to demonstrate how they will deface the glee club's yearbook photo, which Karofsky does at the end of the episode. By "Theatricality" he is on the football team with Azimio, and they shove Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer) and Tina Cohen-Chang (Jenna Ushkowitz) against lockers for wearing Lady Gaga costumes—part of a glee club assignment—around school.

Karofsky appears in the first eleven episodes of the second season, continuing his bullying ways, and in the sixth, "Never Been Kissed", he especially targets Kurt, who is gay. After he slams Kurt into a locker, Kurt chases after and confronts him, and an increasingly agitated Karofsky abruptly grabs Kurt and kisses him. Before Karofsky can initiate a second kiss, Kurt shoves him away, and Karofsky leaves. Kurt and his new gay friend Blaine Anderson (Darren Criss) try to talk to him about being gay and closeted, but he denies that the kiss happened and soon resumes his bullying. He even threatens to kill Kurt if he tells anyone else about their kiss. Kurt's father Burt (Mike O'Malley) finds out about the threat but not the kiss, and Karofsky is expelled, but is allowed to return by the school board because no physical violence to Kurt had been witnessed; Kurt transfers to Dalton Academy to get away from Karofsky.

The football team has clinched a spot in the championship game, but animosity is running high between glee and non-glee members and harming the team's performance, so in "The Sue Sylvester Shuffle", Coach Beiste (Dot-Marie Jones) and Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) force the entire football team to join the glee club for a week to settle their differences and dispel their prejudices. Karofsky is praised by Will as a good performer and dancer, but when the hockey team attacks the football team for their low-status glee club activities, Karofsky leads a walkout from the joint rehearsals by all the non-glee members, and Beiste kicks them off the team. On championship night, the team members—except for Karofsky—relent just before the half-time show, which the team and glee club perform together. Karofsky joins in when he sees the crowd's positive reaction to the start of the half-time show, a mashup of "Thriller" and "Heads Will Roll"; the full team ultimately wins the game. Later, in school, Finn approaches Karofsky about joining the glee club and apologizing to Kurt, but Karofsky rejects his suggestion out of hand, since the championship victory has him back on top of the social ladder.

Karofsky appears in three additional episodes later in the second season. Santana Lopez (Naya Rivera) decides in the episode "Born This Way" that she wants to become prom queen; she sees Karofsky and realizes he would be a credible prom king partner moments before she sees him checking out a male student's ass and also realizes he is as closeted as she is. She then blackmails him into teaming up with her as a pretend couple—beards—and starting an anti-bullying club, with the purpose of getting Kurt Hummel to return to McKinley and New Directions. Karofsky apologizes to Kurt for his bullying in a meeting with their fathers, Principal Figgins (Iqbal Theba), and Will Schuester; Kurt is happy to be able to transfer back. In "Prom Queen", with the prom less than a week away, Karofsky and Santana arrange to guard Kurt at school when they learn he will be bringing Blaine as his prom date; Karofsky tells Kurt, tearfully, that he is sorry for what he did to him. At the prom, Karofsky is voted prom king but Santana is not elected prom queen; instead, an appalled Kurt is written in and wins. As they take the floor for the traditional prom king and queen dance, Kurt suggests that this is Karofsky's chance to come out and "make a difference", but Karofsky isn't ready to do so, and walks away.

Development

Max Adler portrays Dave Karofsky.

Dave Karofsky is played by actor Max Adler, who first appeared in the first season episode "Mash-Up", initially as a member of the William McKinley High School hockey team. Karofsky began as a background player tormenting members of the glee club. So far as Adler knew, his role was for a single episode only, but he returned once more before the first half of the first season ended, and then three times in the nine episodes of the second half of that season. The last of these, "Theatricality", written and directed by series co-creator Ryan Murphy, proved to be pivotal: Murphy was impressed with his acting and wanted to write more for him.

In the second season, Karofsky continued as an ordinary jock bully, but Murphy hinted to Adler that there would be more in store for the character. According to Adler, Murphy came up to him at the second season Glee premiere and said, "'we just wrote some really good stuff for you for episode six'. I had no idea what that meant, until I read it!" Adler had long been wondering why his character behaved the way he did: "I thought there's got to be a reason why he's so angry, why he's such a bully, why he's going out of his way to make other people's lives a living hell". Although he'd considered various ideas for Karofsky—"maybe he was jealous of the glee club, maybe he was gay, maybe a million different things"—when he got the script for that episode he "was just as shocked as anybody else" when "Karofsky kisses Kurt", though he "thought it was so awesome that they would allow this character to go there."

There was a strong reaction from the show's viewers. Adler said, "I've heard from a lot of fans how important this character is for them because it's important to watch the internal struggle, the confusion and the torture one person can put themselves through being closeted. I know a lot of fans have been waiting on pins and needles to see Karofsky become ok with who he is, accept himself, and come out because I think it would be a beacon of hope for everyone else who's struggling. If Karofsky can do it, so can you. I hope that doesn't sound glib but people do get hope from Glee." He also said, "I think [Ryan Murphy] trusts me to do what I'm doing with the character, which is one heck of a compliment from him." Murphy has indicated a preference for positive future developments, and said in early January 2011, "This show is by nature optimistic and I think a character like Karofsky could turn to booze or pills or alcohol and kill themselves or do something dark. But I also love Max and I love that character and I sorta want that character to have a happy ending."

At one point in the bullying storyline, Karofsky threatens to kill Kurt, a scene that Adler characterized as "very powerful. Chilling, terrifying, horrifying, yet, at the same time, heartbreaking. … Because there are kids who have messaged me since that episode saying they used to hear that line spoken to them day in and day out at school, and how they wished they didn't have to wake up in the morning and go to school and hear it again, and they were so afraid to go from class to class that they changed their routes every day, it's very real. So, to get to play that role and show the audience what is really going on out there and not watering it down and to show people how students (both the victim and the tormentor) are dealing with it, is an honor."

In addition to Karofsky's newly revealed sexual orientation, other aspects of his personality have been explored. In "The Sue Sylvester Shuffle", when the football team is forced to spend a week working with the glee club that Karofsky and other members have been bullying, the "softer side" of his personality is seen, especially when he's performing with the club. After the club's director surprises him with a compliment on his performing, Karofsky's the one who suggests that the team perform an extra musical number for the halftime show they're preparing for, though he comes up with a rationale that makes it sound like a necessity to keep up their social status rather than something he particularly wants to do. Adler said, "I feel like that it did make him happy and, obviously, he has some natural abilities that Mr. Schuester was able to spot. I don't think he's ever allowed himself to do that ever in his life, to dance or learn a song, especially to do that in public. ...Doing that was such an obstacle to overcome." In "Furt" and "Born This Way", his father says that he had been kind, a cub scout, and an "A" student, but his behavior had changed for the worse in the former episode before returning to the good in the latter. Though the anti-bullying club formed by Karofsky and Santana in "Born This Way" was created for somewhat selfish reasons, the kind cub scout was seen in "Prom Queen", when Karofsky makes his tearful apology to Kurt and then makes sure Kurt will wait for his escort after the next class.

Reception

It wasn't until the second season's "Never Been Kissed" that Karofsky received significant comment from critics. Amy Reiter of the Los Angeles Times commented that it was testament to the writers and cast that Karofsky's kiss startled the audience as much as it did Kurt, and commended the transitioning of Karofsky from a faceless jock into "a nuanced character with a back story and hidden motives of his own." MTV's Aly Semigran wrote that, should the episode inspire a single teenager to have courage in the face of discrimination, or re-consider bullying, it would be an impressive accomplishment. Linda Holmes of National Public Radio dismissed "Never Been Kissed" as "one of the most facile and emotionally inauthentic episodes the show has ever produced", and felt that Karofsky's swift transition from bullying to kissing Kurt was absurd and "emotionally unsound". His appearances over the next few episodes drew only oblique commentary, such as The Atlantic's Kevin Fallon's characterization in his review on "Furt" of the bullying storyline as a "very important arc that's been well-acted by all parties involved". In "The Sue Sylvester Shuffle", The A.V. Club's Todd VanDerWerff wrote, "I thought giving Kurt's bully, Karofsky (...), a miniature story arc that resolved itself only partially was a smart move. Up until now, he's been kind of a walking cliché, and now he gets to be someone who's not all repressed sexuality and monstrous tendencies." Reiter commented, "And best of all, we got to watch Karofsky's character develop a bit more. It was nice to see him let loose a little and dance, but all his back-and-forthing about glee was a little confusing."

Michael Slezak of TVLine complimented "Max Adler's surprisingly nuanced performance" as Karofsky in "Born This Way": "The complex play of emotions in Karofsky's eyes when Santana simultaneously came out to him, threatened to out him, predicted his sad future as a closeted state senator or deacon, and offered him a quick-fix solution by pretending to be his beard, was tremendous. (Again, as a character who started out as a human battering ram, Adler is bringing a terrific amount of depth to Karofsky.)" VanDerWerff refers to Karofsky's parallel journey with Santana, who is also closeted, in his comments about the episode and the next one where the character appears, "Prom Queen". He says in his review of the latter, "the characters I'm most interested in at this point are Karofsky and Santana. They're both people trying to do the right thing, but they're also both people who are defeated by their own weakest impulses. Both lack the courage necessary to come out. Santana is a bitch. Karofsky is trying to make amends for the things he did that drove Kurt from the halls of McKinley. They're both hemmed in by the decisions they've made and their inability to be true to themselves". Meghan Brown of The Atlantic praised Karofsky's "tearful apology to Kurt" in that episode as being "painful and poignant", and Slezak goes further: "Whatever awards Chris Colfer and Max Adler get nominated for in the next six months, they earned 'em during this conversation, where Kurt wondered if maybe, just maybe, he wasn't getting bullied because kids were indifferent to him being gay, not because Karofsky was serving as his security detail. ... [Y]ou could see in Kurt's eyes the decision to start treating Karofsky not as a former tormentor, but as a terrified kid struggling with his sexual orientation. And Karofsky's break—his first true apology for bullying Kurt, and his first tentative step toward admitting the root cause of his anger—had me reaching for the Kleenex. Tell me I'm not the only one hoping Glee will keep journeying down Karofsky's difficult road toward self-acceptance."