I'm gonna be so for real that this post was not an invitation to start a discussion on this, it's why I did not put it in any tag. I was in the Glee fandom the entire time it aired. I have had this discussion a million times. Nobody will ever make me believe that friendship was deep in any way shape or form. But I can't not reply to this because well. One or two moments a season does not a ~best friends forever/Quinn is basically their third!! relationship make.
S1. There was nothing to suggest actual friendship between them in S1. There was more to suggest they weren't friendly. They joined New Directions under Sue's instruction. Quinn had ulterior motives, but Brittana did not join for Quinn, they joined for Sue. They laughed at Quinn's pregnancy, made no offer to help her outside of ND sing alongs, Quinn had no patience for Brittany when she needed help, Quinn and Santana were bickering, etc.
S2. Quinn's whole plot that episode was about impressing Finn and being a leader, she would have talked to Sue about not shooting anyone out of the canon. I would also hope anyone would do that. That is hardly an indication of best friendship between her and Brittany. The New York hotel room scene being the one and only genuine moment the three of them ever had on the show lol. Again, their friendship is 95% tell, 5% show. And no, they could have not said fuck her because it would not have lined up with their character arcs or the arc of the episode.
S3. Again, more UHT lip service. Being told they're best friends when it's never shown and Quinn was completely unmoved by them and they had zero idea of what her real issue was, something Rachel could see but not them. Quinn and Santana doing the ballots together because they don't trust each other and to facilitate them fixing the votes for Rachel as a way to give closure to her high school relationships with both of them. Wow. Starting together and ending together and zero in between lmao #realfriendship
S4. They came to New York because Kurt called them both. They slept together because they got drunk, Quinn wanted to experiment and Santana is probably the only lesbian she knows while Santana implied she slept with many experimenting college girls and was upset about Britt. Nothing about that gave ~safe or said much about their level of friendship. How anyone gets poly relationship between the three of them from an experimenting one night stand that never amounted to anything, I’ll never know. They also slapped each other and insulted each other for shits and giggles.
S5. Santana did not call Quinn her best friend in that scene. The exact line: "I guess we didn't have a lot of girl friends in high school. Brittany doesn't count 'cause I was in love with her. And I guess I had Quinn but the fact that she lives an hour away and I never thought about calling her should say something to me." The realest Glee ever was about that relationship.
Glee does hate girls and female friendship. Nobody would ever argue that. But it's so funny that people can acknowledge that Glee dropped the Quinn/Mercedes friendship, that Quinn/Brittany have spoken once in their lives, that the Rachel/Mercedes relationship was inconsistent, but will continuously lie to themselves about Quinn/Santana's superficial friendship and the UHT's relationship that was only paraded out in Very Special Episodes and act like it was soooo deep. If more people were honest about how lacking their onscreen relationship was and that 80% of their gushing is about headcanons and fanon content, it would bother me less. I never once said she was not their friend, I think everyone in Glee club was their friend to some extent, but I will never subscribe to the way fandom talks about them and just accepts the fanservice lines the show threw out in a couple episodes despite what was shown onscreen.
Don't even get me started on the fact that anyone thinks Santana Lopez would ever be in a poly relationship. Just insane to me. Anyone that thinks she would willingly share Brittany with anyone else does not understand Santana. Anyone that doesn't think she'd throw Quinn in front of a bus for Brittany without blinking an eye is insane. Quinn was so far removed from everything about Brittana’s relationship that even if I did believe Santana didn’t hate poly people, the idea the fandom forces of them basically being a throuple just does not make any sense to me beyond people shipping Santana with both girls so they force it to.
When I say their trio with Mercedes is better, it's not about who is a better friend. There is zero contest between Quinn and Mercedes about who is a better friend. It's about which friendship is more consistent, less forced, and more believable. The show never once had to tell me that Mercedes/Brittana were besties for life or breathed as one or whatever that fuck ass quote from Thanksgiving was. I just watched the show with my own two eyes and saw them being friends, having similarities, and working together, which is why their dynamic is far superior to me. It was natural and their scenes spoke for themselves. They were show and not tell.
All that being said, searching them on my blog reminded me of an old post of mine where I pondered the possibility that their fakeness and lip service was intentional, that high school girls, especially cheerleaders, often claimed to be besties while actually secretly hating each other (at least on tv), and that people often look back on high school friendships with rose colored glasses and remember them more fondly than they were. But it’s Glee, so I doubt it. It was just lazy writing.
