Artie Abrams is a guitarist and paraplegic manual wheelchair user. McHale described Artie as a "nerd" who loves the glee club wholeheartedly and uses it as a form of escapism. Artie uses a wheelchair due to a spinal cord injury he received in a car crash at the age of eight. During the first season, he begins to accept his disability and the fact he will never achieve his dream of becoming a dancer. In the first season, he has a relationship with fellow New Directions member Tina Cohen-Chang, who breaks up with him at the beginning of the second season saying he is to boring. Artie then loses his virginity to cheerleader Brittany Pierce, and with encouragement from his former bully, Puck, they begin dating. The two remain a couple for most of the season before breaking up. In the third season, Artie, then a junior, directs the school musical and a television special featuring the glee club for the local PBS station.