User:Frickative/Brittany (Glee)

Brittany is a fictional character from the Fox musical comedy-drama series Glee. The character is portrayed by actress Heather Morris, and has appeared in Glee from its second episode, "Showmance", first broadcast on September 9, 2009.

Storylines
Brittany is member of the William McKinley High School cheerleading team, the Cheerios. She joins the glee club, New Directions, with her friends and fellow cheerleaders Quinn Fabray (Dianna Agron) and Santana Lopez (Naya Rivera) in the episode "Showmance", as part of a plan by cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) to destroy the club from the inside. When the club are due to compete at the sectionals round of show choir competition, Brittany gives their set-list to Sue, who leaks the routines to competing glee clubs. New Directions put a new set-list together at the last minute, and go on to win the competition regardless. Brittany also reveals that she and Santana have had sex, but are not dating. Following the club's victory at sectionals, Sue renews her effort to bring them down, enlisting Brittany and Santana to break up co-captains Rachel Berry (Lea Michele) and Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith). They invite Finn on a date with the both of them, but ignore him throughout the evening, ultimately requesting that he sit in the car and leave them to finish their meal alone. When Sue instructs the cheerleaders to emulate Madonna and date younger men, Brittany begins dating Wes Brody, the seven-year-old friend of her sister. She encourages Santana to take Finn's virginity, which she does.

Concept and creation
Brittany has not been given a last name by the show's producers. Many of her lines are unscripted, and are instead devised by Murphy during filming, or improvized by Morris. Morris portrays Brittany as being "literally insane". She is used by the series' writers to say things no other character would, to the point that Morris considers some of her lines nonsensical. Brittany's character traits including finding recipes confusing, cheating off learning disabled classmates, thinking the square root of four is rainbows and not knowing her right hand from her left. She is friendly towards most of the other characters, with Morris explaining that Brittany "love[s] everybody, no matter who they are", so is frequently smiling and being nice to people.

Development
Brittany's role in the show was initially intended to be minor, but grew towards the end of the first season. She does not have any solo musical performances during season one, but Morris is hopeful that she might have one in the second season. On April 27, 2010, Michael Ausiello of Entertainment Weekly reported that Morris would be upgraded to a series regular for season two.

At the Paley Festival Glee panel in March 2010, Murphy stated that Brittany and Santana would be seen to make out during the show's first season. Morris and Rivera only became aware of this after reading a Paley Festival report online. When they asked Murphy about the development, he claimed to have made the statement "to get a kick" out of the "dirty guy" asking about them. Murphy told Morris and Rivera that Glee would not push relationships to appease the show's fans, but would only pursue those which were "organic and natural." While there are moments on the show which depict Brittany and Santana as being very close to one another, Morris attributes these to her close relationship with Rivera, explaining: "that is just Naya and I joking around with each other and being really close. It's always her and I just messing around and they end up using it."

Reception
Jarrett Wieselman of the New York Post has compared Morris as Brittany to Lynch as Sue, opining that she has "emerged as one of the funniest second bananas on TV right now". Wieselman wrote that since her introduction, Brittany has been given "more and more to do [and] less and less to think", and that the result has been "one of the most clueless characters that's ever figured out how to dress herself in the morning." E! Online's Megan Masters has also compared Brittany to Sue, stating that Brittany's one-liners "easily rival" Sue's. She deemed Brittany "brainlessly brilliant", and thanked the Glee producers for creating her, writing: "Never before have we had the pleasure of enjoying such a ridiculously dumb—yet always loveable—character on television."

When a promotional clip for the episode "Sectionals" indicated that Brittany and Santana had slept together, Dorothy Snarker, writing for lesbian entertainment website AfterEllen.com, praised the pairing, referring to them by the portmanteau "Brittana". Snarker called the two her "new favourite Glee pairing", commenting that: "While Heather Morris (Brittany) and Naya Rivera (Santana) have had minimal screen time, they’ve made it count. Heather in particular has brought the laughs as the Cheerio least likely to get a Mensa invitation. Never mind Finn and Rachel — I’m on Team Brittana now."