Celebrity crush: Heather Morris

Here's another profile featuring a singer, dancer, model and actress from the TV show Glee. Amazon and iTunes links follow. Any affiliate payments earned from your purchase or rental will help pay the hosting fees for my podcasts, so please consider clicking.

Name: Heather Morris (images -- some NSFW | Web site | Twitter)
Hometown: Born in Thousand Oaks, Calif., but raised in Scottsdale, Ariz., according to her Wikipedia profile.
Best Known For: Heather is best known for her role on Glee as the cheerleader Brittany. To call Brittany a dumb blond would be akin to calling the Eiffel Tower a hunk of metal, the Taj Mahal a desert structure, or Antarctica a cold patch of ground. Brittany takes the concept of vapid to a level so vast and all-penetrating that it becomes a sublime arena of cryptic enlightenment, with her non sequiturs and one-liners functioning almost like Zen koans.

Girl can dance, too. Speaking of which...

Why yes, there IS more to this photo.

Humble Beginnings: She competed on the Fox television show So You Think You Can Dance back in 2006 but didn't quite make the top 20. After moving to Los Angeles, she secured a job dancing for Beyoncé (including dancing with her and Tina Turner at the Grammys in 2008).

A small role in the movie Fired Up led to work on a number of TV shows -- Eli Stone and Swingtown -- and eventually to Glee, where she was initially hired to teach the other cast members the dance routine for Beyoncé's song "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)."

Woman at right is unknown.

Show creator Ryan Murphy liked what he saw, kept her around, and her character started to take on a life of her own over the course of the first season. By season 2, we got to hear her sing a solo and take the lead in an episode that guest-starred, inexplicably, an unknown low-key folk singer named Britney Spears, whose subtle meditations on human nature seemed a rare misstep for the show.

Obligatory Edgy Stuff: Somewhere along the way, some artistic nude photos were taken. No one is complaining about this fact -- at least Ye Olde Podcaster is not. There have probably also been some complaints about the bisexuality of Glee characters Brittany and Santana (played by fellow celebrity crush profile subject Naya Rivera), though the show has largely tended to play it for comic relief and hasn't been as provocative as Ryan Murphy's earlier TV works might have foreshadowed.
Only Kinda the Courteney Cox Factor: Well, considering her background is in dance, it's not really surprising she'd have at least three music videos on her résumé -- maybe it would be more accurate to call it the Paula Abdul Factor, but I'm afraid that could carry a stigma of erratic behavior and hosting American Idol.

Beyond music and dance, she wrote, directed, produced and starred in a short titled The Elevator and co-wrote a Funny or Die video titled "Nuthin' But a Glee Thang."

The Britney Spears bodysuit scene from Glee that led to
this tweet: "Heather Morris should never wear clothes again."

Why Ye Olde Podcaster Likes Her: There is something to be said for subtlety and moderation. And, oddly enough, while the character of Brittany on Glee is written with a level of dumb that is over the top -- out past the international space station -- Ryan Murphy and company have shown remarkable constraint in, for the most part, doling out just enough of Brittany's one-liners and (lack of) insights to keep her interesting, but not so much that she overpowers the show.

Besides being amazingly fit -- dancing will do that -- Morris has made Brittany, simply put, one of the most reliably hilarious characters on television. She is for Glee what Neil Patrick Harris' Barney Stinson is for How I Met Your Mother, and perhaps (due to that moderation) even more so. (Oddly enough, she has guest-starred on his show as part of a big dance number, and he has guest-starred on hers as a rival to the glee club teacher.)
Music videos: "Drop the Girl" by Hit the Lights (Amazon | iTunes) * "Candle (Sick and Tired)" by The White Tie Affair (Amazon | iTunes) * "The White Tie Affair: Short Film (Uncensored)" (Web video) * "Night Life" by An-Ya (Amazon | iTunes) * The Beyoncé Experience (Amazon | iTunes)

Musical work: Too many works too list with Glee cast (Amazon | iTunes)
TV and Web series credits: Funny or Die: "Nuthin' But a Glee Thang" (Web video) * Glee, season 2 (Amazon | iTunes) * How I Met Your Mother, season 5: "Girls vs. Suits" (Amazon | iTunes) * Glee, season 1 (Amazon | iTunes) * Eli Stone, season 2: "The Path" (Amazon | iTunes) * Swingtown: "Get Down Tonight" (Amazon | iTunes)
Film and TV-movie credits: The Elevator (short) (Amazon | iTunes) * Fired Up (Amazon | iTunes) * Bedtime Stories (Amazon | iTunes)