Blaine Anderson is a nice guy. Pretty much everybody would agree on that fact. Of course, if you asked Blaine himself he would say that he tries to be nice but the truth is that he doesn’t spend too much time thinking about whether he actually is or is not nice. After all, he’s kind and polite and respectful. What he isn’t, is introspective. It’s not that he deliberately avoids introspection, it’s more that it’s something that he’s never needed to do. You see, things just come easily to Blaine, mostly because everything he has is just enough. He’s just rich enough to not have to worry about money without being so rich that he has to worry about envy or noblesse oblige. He’s just smart enough that he gets good grades without really trying but not so smart that he wins awards or stands out in class. And he’s just good looking enough that people like to look at him without being resentful or jealous. Because of this, people tend to like Blaine. When people like you and things come easily to you, you don’t have to spend much time worrying about why your life isn’t great because it basically is great. So Blaine doesn’t spend much time, for example, thinking about the incongruency of somebody like him singing about being gangsta because pretty much everybody just accepts it because he’s Blaine and that’s how things are for Blaine.

So it’s not that Blaine is insensitive, or deliberately hurtful, it’s more that he’s just plain clueless. Now he’s not clueless in an uneducated or willfully ignorant way, but more in the Alicia Silverstone in the movie Clueless kind of way. It’s actually a little amusing because Blaine’s seen that movie 3 or 4 times and if you asked him which character he most resembled he would of course say the hot gay guy and never ever realize that he’s much more like a male version of Cher. But the plain truth is that like Cher, Blaine really does try to be kind and giving and helpful but is in the end completely unaware of what he’s really doing. In other words, clueless.

Which brings us to Kurt. Blaine has come full circle on Kurt Hummel since he first met him on the stairway at Dalton although, again, he would never realize it. All he does know is that he was initially attracted to Kurt, which isn’t surprising since Blaine is a teenage boy which means he is pretty much attracted to the majority of other teenage boys, particularly if they are likely to be gay and because Kurt is pretty much Blaine’s type. Now if you ask Blaine outright he wouldn’t say he has a type, but that’s mostly because of that very expensive psychiatrist that his parents sent him to when he first came out to them, his mother explaining “it’s not that we want to change you dear, it’s just that we want to make sure that you are not saying this for the wrong reasons and if you indeed are gay, then therapy can help you to deal with any issues.” The psychiatrist had asked Blaine, as one of his tasks, to describe his ideal partner in three words. Blaine had started with “kind” and had been intending to add “funny” and “responsible” when the psychiatrist had pointed out that he was looking for more of a physical description. The only word that Blaine could come up with was “ethereal” which still doesn’t make sense to him at all. Fortunately or not, the psychiatrist had already reported to Blaine’s parents that Blaine was remarkably well-adjusted, all things considered, and while he felt that Blaine would most definitely benefit from ongoing weekly therapy in order to continue to deal with any additional issues that might arise, Blaine’s parents had decided that this was a good time to terminate therapy. So Blaine had never actually had to come up with any other words.

Now if you asked Blaine to describe in general what kind of guys he finds most attractive, he would say tall, and slim, fit but not overly muscular, and that he prefers blonds or redheads, and might admit that he has a kind of a thing for freckles. He would say he prefers blue or green eyes, which he might point out is kind of the standard in beauty since nobody but Van Morrison ever wrote a decent love song about somebody with brown eyes. The psychiatrist would likely have had a field day with this, pointing out that Blaine himself comes from a long line of brown-eyed, brown-haired and olive-skinned men and could have spent many profitable sessions discussing why Blaine sought somebody so different from himself and his family and exploring Blaine’s “father issues”.

What Blaine and the psychiatrist might both have missed is that Blaine’s preference stems as much from Disney as from any other source. You see, in the Disney movies that Blaine loves so much, the prince is almost always tall, dark and handsome, and just because he’s gay doesn’t mean that Blaine doesn’t want to identify with the prince. It’s not that he wants to fall for a princess, it’s just that somewhere in his subconscious he realizes that identifying with the prince also reinforces his masculinity. He doesn’t want a feminine partner, he just wants to make sure that he himself doesn’t lose his masculinity. So, he subconsciously seeks to be tall, dark and handsome. Tall, unfortunately, isn’t happening. Handsome, he’s pretty much OK with, which leaves dark, which may or may not explain why he’s attracted to guys with light hair and pale eyes and pale skin. And all of this explains why Blaine is so attracted to Kurt when they initially meet and why he flirts so shamelessly when he sings to him.

So everything is going pretty well until he, Wes and David actually sit down with Kurt and he realizes that Kurt is broken. Although Blaine could potentially deal with a guy who is delicate or even fragile (which incidentally might be a better description than ethereal) he doesn’t want to date someone who’s broken. But, again, Blaine Anderson is a nice guy. So he shifts Kurt to the friend box and moves himself to the mentor box and proceeds to try to help Kurt. Now an objective observer might say that Blaine has no business advising Kurt at all. Sure Blaine was bullied in school. But there’s a major difference between an upper-middle class kid being called names by other upper-middle class kids whose parents are all professionals and know each other from the country club and what Kurt is going through. There is no question that Blaine was called names and no question that the teachers at his old school didn’t intervene. But when Blaine told his parents, who told the bullying kids’ parents who confronted their kids who threatened to beat Blaine up after school, which sent Blaine back to his parents who pulled him from that school and put him in private school, it didn’t really cross anybody’s mind that these were not the sort of kids who were likely to do any real physical damage and therefore risk their chance at getting into a good college, and subsequently a good graduate school so that they could join their parents on the golf links. So, while Blaine was bullied, it wasn’t to the degree that Kurt is being bullied which is why Blaine gives Kurt such horrendously bad advice. Or, in other words, Blaine is still clueless.

But Kurt takes Blaine’s advice, and then calls Blaine to help fix the inevitable mess his advice causes. Blaine, being Blaine, steps in to fix the situation without much success. But since things always work out for Blaine he doesn’t seem to get why Kurt is so upset. He even briefly considers kissing Kurt to make Kurt feel better, but luckily thinks better of it since Kurt is still broken and really needs a friend. So Blaine and Kurt are friends and they get along quite well, especially considering that Blaine is one of the few who gets Kurt’s sense of humor. And Blaine continues to serve as a mentor to Kurt, advising him on auditioning for a solo and consoling Kurt by pointing out that most Warblers audition many times and pay their dues before they get a solo, completely ignoring the fact that Blaine himself had transferred schools and had immediately gotten multiple solos. If you had pointed out this inconsistency to Blaine he would have simply noted to himself that the council decided on the solos and since he usually gets what he wants, it wouldn’t have struck him as odd at all and it wouldn’t have been because he’s egotistical, just, you know, clueless.

Anyway, with Kurt in the friend box, there’s Jeremiah, who is blond and slim and kind and the perfect sort of guy for Blaine to fall for which is why it hits Blaine so hard when he’s rejected. Luckily, Jeremiah gives Blaine’s age as one reason for the rejection which Blaine uses to reassure himself that he’s not completely undesireable. It also helps that Kurt decides to tell Blaine of his feelings which helps to shore up Blaine’s self-esteem. And if Blaine doesn’t spend much time thinking about how all of this affects Kurt, it’s not because he’s insensitive, but rather because he’s too busy trying to get everything back to the way it should be, because in the usual course of events things always just sort of work out right for Blaine. But Blaine’s been hit harder than he realizes by Jeremiah’s rejection, which is why he does something uncharacteristic like getting smashing drunk at Rachel Barry’s party and ending up practically making out with Rachel in public. There’s also a tiny subconscious part of Blaine that wants to be bisexual so that Jeremiah’s rejection won’t mean as much because in Blaine’s mind it would be so much easier to be bisexual than gay. He doesn’t think about how bisexual kids can be even more marginalized than those that are gay because it’s not the kind of thing he thinks about because, again, he’s clueless. He also doesn’t think about how this all affects Kurt or even Rachel. In fact, when Rachel kisses him again he fairly bluntly blows her off which could seem to a random observer to be quite cruel, but in Blaine’s mind is not cruel at all because first Rachel really should know that Blaine is gay, and second because Blaine actually finds Rachel incredibly annoying.

So Blaine continues to try to mentor Kurt which again would likely seem quite absurd to a disinterested observer. Frankly, Blaine has no business trying to teach Kurt about sex when he’s actually had even less experience that Kurt. After all, Blaine has never had a boyfriend or a kiss, or even a date, and while he admits that he has learned from the internet, it’s not like Kurt hasn’t been on the internet or in his own admission actually watched porn. But Blaine, still clueless, tries to teach Kurt about sex and then takes the incredible step of going to Kurt’s father to tell him to teach Kurt about sex. Now there are few guys out there except Blaine who would dare to take this step but this is Blaine, and parents like Blaine and think he’s respectable and upstanding and Blaine knows in his own mind that he is helping Kurt because that’s what Blaine does.

Over all this time, what Blaine has not realized is that Kurt is gradually becoming less and less broken. Which is why he is surprised when Kurt calls him out for getting all of the Warbler solos. After all, it’s not Blaine’s fault that the council chooses him, it’s just the way things seem to always happen for Blaine. He also notices that Kurt seems to be turning into a bit of a pissy diva bitch. But something deep inside him also starts to notice that while Kurt is still delicate and maybe even fragile he is most clearly no longer broken. Then Pavarotti dies and Kurt comes to the Warbler meeting and sings Blackbird. And Blaine can’t help but notice a few things. First, Kurt is back to his usual clothes which take Blaine back to the day they first met when Kurt wasn’t broken or consigned to the friend box but frankly was just hot. And then Kurt is crying, but despite the crying he is still able to get off a few sarcastic comments and Blaine realizes that not only is he not broken, he’s not even that fragile, which frankly makes Kurt even hotter. And Blaine hatches a plan to get closer to Kurt by singing a duet. Since he’s Blaine, the Warblers assume that he’s trying to give somebody else a chance to shine, without stopping to consider that giving somebody else a solo rather than a duet would probably be more effective. But he’s Blaine, so they can’t help noticing how thoughtful Blaine is and nobody really thinks about why Blaine chooses Kurt for the duet.
But Kurt, being Kurt, has a touch of immunity to Blaine, which is why he blatantly asks Blaine to explain his decision. The one thing about being as clueless as Blaine is that he’s never really had much reason to lie and so he doesn’t. He tells Kurt exactly what went through his head but stumbles when it comes to expressing how he actually feels because, again, this is something that Blaine has never actually had to deal with. So he tells Kurt that Kurt moves him without exactly knowing what he means by that and goes on to tell Kurt that he chose him for the duet to spend more time with Kurt.

It’s a good thing that Kurt is head over heels infatuated with Blaine because Blaine has just basically told him that his decision to do a duet was not at all influenced by what Kurt had said about sharing the spotlight and he has further insulted Kurt by not even mentioning singing ability as a reason for choosing Kurt. However, being head over heels about Blaine means that Kurt is more than a little clueless himself. Which is why Kurt doesn’t complain when Blaine kisses him. For Blaine, the first moment is spent trying to get the kiss right, so that it isn’t until the second fraction of a section when he almost panics that Kurt isn’t kissing him back. Kurt does kiss him back though. In fact, Kurt pretty much takes control which is why when they finally come up for air Blaine is blushing and more than a little flustered. Again, luckily for Blaine, Kurt’s a little more self-aware and he’s able to come up with a quip to break the tension and lead to more kissing which Blaine doesn’t mind at all. And, once again, things just work out well for Blaine without him even trying.

Now you might think that Blaine might be upset about losing at Regionals but this is something that doesn’t bother Blaine at all. It’s not about winning for him. Again, he’s never going to be the absolute best and he is perfectly content to have things work out well for him, which is why he doesn’t quite get why Kurt is so upset. In fact, when, after burying Pavarotti, Kurt complains yet again about losing Regionals, Blaine comforts him by saying “you did win, you got me” and while he then adds “we got each other” it’s not exactly a correction because Blaine really doesn’t get why some people might be a little offended by his first statement, or see it as more than a touch egotistical. But that’s OK because it’s Blaine, and Blaine usually gets what he wants because he's Blaine and because people like Blaine and mostly because he’s still completely clueless.