Anonymous asked: I have to say I thik you are reading too much into these episodes of Community.
Cool, cool, cool. Authorial intent is a tricky thing. Indeed
![Community 1x07: “Introduction to Statistics”
Chang introduces Annie by telling the class that all faculty are required to give extra credit to a student who organizes academically related events outside of class. Annie has planned a Dia de los Muertos party which she calls “Mexican Halloween.” She invites the class to the party and asks for RSVPs from the members of her study group. Shirley replies with a yes, citing her new lack of a wedding ring as her reason for going out. Pierce says he already replied, and tries to reconcile with his technology to find his answer. Britta speaks to Jeff in an aside and Jeff states that his answer regarding the party is no. Jeff asks Britta if she is certain that they will never be non-platonic, and she says they will not. Jeff claims that he is happy about this because he actually wishes to pursue one of his professors instead. Having lost control of his phone, Pierce interrupts every one as he exits the room by trying to cover the ramblings of his mother, who is revealing secrets about him. This is not a Halloween episode about fear, but a Dia de los Muertos episode about not being afraid of death and celebrating life as a result.
Prof. Slater wraps up Statistics 101 by describing the Bernoulli Distribution as “the number of successes in a series of independent yes/no experiments.” A Bernoulli Trial is considered fair if the probability of success is 50%. So if you let heads be a success and tails be a failure —or a yes and a no respectively—, and toss the coin, if the probability that it lands on heads is the same as the probability that it lands on tails, the coin toss is fair. Annie conducted a Bernoulli trial earlier to see if people were coming to her party, and Jeff is about to conduct an experiment of his own to see if Prof. Slater will agree to go out with him. Jeff asks 4 times and receives all No answers. Prof. Slater tells him that she has a personal rule against dating students, revealing that Jeff’s experiment is unfair. Britta and Shirley are walking down the hall as Jeff continues to ask Prof. Slater for a date. Shirley is offended on Britta’s behalf for the way Jeff has replaced his advances on Britta with advances on Prof. Slater. Britta maintains that she does not care what Jeff does, however. Jeff’s last tactic in the hallway is to convince Prof. Slater that he is older than her and is no longer a student. As Prof. Slater rejects him once more, Annie appears and accosts Jeff for an answer about attending her party. Jeff is evasive and will not give a yes or no response until Annie begins to cry. Through her tears, Annie says that Jeff is “the cool guy” and will make the party a success, and that the success or failure of the party is her second chance to make herself be “hip, cool, laid back” in the eyes of her peers.
Pierce and Troy are studying silently. As Pierce attempts to take a pill in secret, Abed appears behind him and draws attention to his actions. Abed compares his own grandfather to Pierce and warns about the dangers of taking medications. He gives the anecdote of his grandfather’s memory failing due to age, and taking the wrong pills together, causing him to run down the street with no pants on which is “a real party foul.” Pierce says that he does not need Abed’s advise, and he is not a “pantsless grandpa.” However, Abed’s story will be mirrored in Pierce’s actions before the night is through. Abed is behind Pierce in this scene. Here and for the rest of the episode Abed will symbolize the fear of the character behind whom he appears. Pierce is still afraid of being seen as old, and he will be fighting this image to seem hip, cool, and laid back.
Dressed as a skeleton, Annie welcomes her guests to her party. She removes her mask and greets Britta who is dressed as a squirrel. Britta talks about how she hates “when women use Halloween as an excuse to dress like sluts.” Annie agrees dismissively as she takes off her cape to reveal that her skeleton costume is skin tight. Britta looks at Annie and then down at her own costume sadly. Annie introduces the cookie tombstones “por tradicion” and announces that “la danza de los muertos” will start in a few minutes. Frustrated, Chang yells that she does not have to keep translating everything. Jeff walks in without a costume and Britta teases him about not being out on a date with Prof. Slater. Jeff says that she is grading papers, and Chang yells from across the room to correct him, telling them that Prof. Slater is at the faculty party. We never saw Prof. Slater tell Jeff that she would be grading papers, and based on what she did say earlier, it is more likely that Jeff made up that story to save face in front of Britta. Abed, dressed as Batman, appears behind Jeff, personifying Jeff’s fear that others will find out he was rejected by Prof. Slater. Pierce enters dressed as The Beastmaster from the 1982 film of the same name. No one gets his out of date reference, and he must explain himself to them. Shirley shows up behind Britta, offering drinks with a bad English accent. Jeff thanks her and calls her costume Urkel, but she corrects him saying that she is Harry Potter. Chang makes the same mistake. In fact, no one can see the guise Shirley is presenting for what it means to her.
In the bathroom, Pierce is once again attempting to sneak his medication. Star Burns interrupts him though and offers to trade his own illicit substances for what he thinks are comparable drugs. Pierce refers to his drugs by out of date street names he thinks are cool, but he declines a trade until Star Burns makes a disparaging remark about his coolness by saying that he is not quite the Beastmaster he claims to be. Pierce relents and offers to trade his medication to Star Burns for some ecstasy.
Chang leaves Annie’s party and hands Jeff the clipboard of extra credit. Jeff asks Chang to bring him along to the faculty party so he can talk to Prof. Slater. Chang refuses until Jeff offers him a bribe. Jeff gives the extra credit sheet to someone else and leaves Annie’s party. We were told earlier that Jeff would be the life of Annie’s party, and, with the life absent, Annie’s party starts to die. Abed is behind Annie and their frame tightens as she calls for Jeff and slowly realizes that he is gone. Her fear builds as Abed shares more of her frame. Pierce asks Star Burns what the drug he took was because he keeps grinding his teeth and wants to kiss everybody. Star Burns does not answer, but reveals his own symptoms from the drugs he took off Pierce. They are both artificially trying to change their stage of development and encountering problems. Star Burns is encountering problems taking drugs that will make him old before his time and Pierce is trying to be young again, finding his body cannot handle it. Britta consoles Annie, saying that Jeff will be right back. She pulls Shirley aside saying they have to go bring him back for Annie. Shirley agrees, but keeps making it a vendetta against Prof. Slater. Pierce seems to be doing better with his drugs now, massaging Annie’s shoulders and saying that he loves her.
At the faculty party Jeff is dressed as a cowboy and approaches Prof. Slater, offering her a beer. Jeff continues his Bernoulli Trial of asking her for a date. He says that he hates everyone at the school except for her just as Britta interrupts them. Prof. Slater asks if Britta is a classmate of Jeff’s, and Jeff rejects the term classmate as juvenile saying that “what’s great about community college is that a lot of the students are just as mature as the teachers.” Abed appears now in front of Jeff, saying that Annie is feeling unpopular and needs Jeff to return to the party. Troy entreats Jeff to come help take care of Pierce and his worsening trip. Jeff rejects them all and says that he is at a “grown up Halloween party” calling them all unseemly. Just as Britta asks how exactly they are being unseemly, the dean draws attention to Shirley ripping the antennae off of Prof. Slater’s car. The dean still calls her Urkel, even though Shirley brandishes the antennae like a wand as she rebukes Prof. Slater for “stealing Jeff from a good woman”. Pierce draws attention away from her as he enters, meowing and knocking things over. Jeff rebukes each member of the group in turn, finally telling Pierce that he is “too old to be tripping.” Pierce scoffs at this information, but, as he sees his hands before himself, he does not recognize his own body. Calling himself a zombie, he runs out of the party and the rest of the group follows him. Jeff stays and tries to entice Prof. Slater once again, but she stops him with his own word “unseemly.”
Britta is walking down the hall as she encounters Shirley attempting to fill Prof. Slater’s office with water. When Britta asks why, Shirley states “to teach that long necked, weave having bank teller she can’t steal another woman’s man!” Shirley realizes that she has spoken the truth behind the facade no one could see through before and she tells Britta the whole story. The reason her wedding ring is gone, was not by her own choice, but because her husband wants a divorce and has moved on to someone else whom he wants wearing that ring. Shirley’s reason for coming to the party was not a choice of removing the ring and moving on, but a cover up of the fear of being rejected by her husband. She states that she never wanted him back, but she just wanted to be the one to reject him. Britta listens mostly silent as Shirley talks out her own problem. Shirley concludes: “It’s like I was too proud to admit that I was hurt, so I had to pretend that you were.” Britta responds: “I totally get that.” and says they should go check on Annie. When Shirley is out of the office, Britta shows that she holds some animosity towards Prof. Slater as she calls her pretentious and breaks the head off of one of the trophies. The root of Shirley’s issue is also found in Britta, and just as Shirley was projecting onto Britta, Britta has been projecting onto Annie.
Back at Annie’s party, Pierce is not a pantsless grandpa, but he is committing a party foul by wandering around horrified with a “full on erection.” Pierce sees everyone as a frightening apparition, and he alternates between sobbing and primal roaring. In The Beastmaster, there are zombie like enemies called Death Guards. A Death Guard is just a regular person who has had a leech put into their brain. This leech eats anything it meets and as the movie states “[this] extreme torture transforms the man into a wild beast.” Chevy has allowed the leech of old age equaling death or a wasted life to eat away at his brain, and now he is torturing himself, soon to be running around as even more of a mindless beast if he does not stop this leech of an idea. In his vision, Annie has become Catrina, the depiction of death who taunts the living.
Back at the grown up party, Chang taunts Jeff about striking out with Prof. Slater. Jeff says the campus has fed on his coolness and he no longer has any moves. Chang ridicules Jeff for treating everything like a game with “moves”, and he offers Jeff ”one move I bet you’ve never tried in your life.” Jeff walks to Prof. Slater with Chang’s new move, and we discover that it is unabashed, childish begging for sex. Prof. Slater accepts, and offers to take Jeff with her only if he stays three steps behind her and never tells anybody. He promises to comply, and they leave together.
As Jeff and Prof. Slater walk past the library together, they see that everyone is gathered outside and inviting Pierce to come out and join them. Pierce refuses, saying that he is not ready to die. Troy beseeches Jeff to help and Jeff stops to consider. Jeff says goodnight to Prof. Slater, and she asks if he has been appointed guardian of the group. He says: “they’re my classmates.” Jeff has accepted the role he refused so vehemently earlier. Jeff’s goal was to be a sexual hero to an ideal he held for himself, and also to be graded on his life thus far and be found as an adult. Instead, he goes back to being a student and accumulating successes in the experiment of his life. Had he gone with Prof. Slater, Jeff would have had to stay three steps behind her. He would be stuck developmentally. Jung discovered that many of his patients were stuck at some earlier phase in their childhood which then defined the type of adult that they were. Dia de los Muertos takes place over three nights, the gates to the afterlife open on Halloween night, the dead children come first, then the adults come two days later. Deceased adults are depicted as maintaining into the afterlife the same station they had at the time of their death. By going to die on this Halloween night, Jeff would leave his classmates (whom he deemed juvenile) behind, and return stuck in his role of hero to no one forever. He would be choosing to halt his learning in life, and forcibly end his Bernoulli Trial. Pierce feels that he has lived beyond the point of achieving anymore successes in his own life’s Bernoulli Trial and that this same halting was chosen for him because of his age.
From within a large desk fort, Pierce says that he will crush himself to death with desks and tables. Like Star Burns, Jeff appeals to Pierce’s costume identity and asks if that is a death befitting a Beastmaster. Pierce now admits that he never saw the film, but that he just wanted to be cool. Jeff removes his hat, seizing an opportunity to be a different kind of hero, and crawls into the desk fort in which Pierce is cowering. Pierce admits finally: “I’m old Jeff.” Jeff rejoins: “I don’t know how you spent the first sixty years, but I know in the last two months you’ve probably doubled the national average for amount of life lived per lifetime.” Pierce accepts this, and Jeff adds “if life is just a series of ridiculous attempts to be alive, you’re a hero to everything that’s ever lived.” Just as with Annie and Shirley earlier, everything Jeff is saying applies to both Jeff and Pierce. Jeff is saying that life is just a Bernoulli Trial and that though it is unfair (as everyone always says), you can make it unfair in your favor by gaining extra credit (like doubling the amount of life lived per lifetime). In the past two months that Jeff mentions Pierce has joined the study group, and this then is how you gain extra credit: by studying with other people, by taking on other people’s life experiences through empathy or through actual shared experience. Jeff said that Pierce is a hero to everything that has ever lived, now making him The Beastmaster he is dressed as. The others who have not figured out their lives, who are becoming Death Guards via some nagging thought that is making them into mindless beasts can be helped by Pierce’s experience, and he by theirs. The Beastmaster described his own powers in the film as empathy and shared experience saying: “I see through their eyes. They know my thoughts; I know theirs.” By delivering this speech, Jeff is also taking his own advice and staying back as a student rather than an “adult”, and empathizing with Pierce because their problems are similar. In fact, all of the main character’s problems stem from a similar fear of rejection. Pierce accepts Jeff’s assessment of his life triumphantly, and accidentally destroys the equilibrium of the desk fort, causing it to tremble and begin to fall on top of them. Abed appears from nowhere and grabs them both, pulling them out of the fort as it crumbles. They are situated such that Abed is behind both of them as they are dragged from the wreckage. Abed is now fear as a motivator. They are afraid of death or afraid of a wasted life, and that is good because it is motivating them to move forward and not to sit passively waiting for death to come tally their successes and failures. Jeff asks if Abed is staying for the party, and Abed says that if he stays “there can be no party.” The party thus far has been a failure because it is filled with fear. Dia de los Muertos is not about fear, but about embracing death as an equalizer and celebrating the lives of the deceased. This is why Chang wanted Annie to stop translating everything earlier, because at that time the party was a Halloween party driven by fear. Once Abed removes himself from the library and the party, we see everyone enjoying themselves and enjoying the company of each other. They are now all gaining extra credit by sharing and incorporating the lives of others into their own, no longer fearing death but reveling in life, adding to the successes column of their Bernoulli Trials.
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
- e. e. cummings
Episode 1 Analysis
Episode 2 Analysis
Episode 3 Analysis
Episode 4 Analysis
Episode 5 Analysis
Episode 6 Analysis
Episode 7 Analysis](http://25.media.tumblr.com/f69eb5a1456088d291ab9095512688e9/tumblr_mj7thnsR041qzh8m2o1_500.png)
Community 1x07: “Introduction to Statistics”
Chang introduces Annie by telling the class that all faculty are required to give extra credit to a student who organizes academically related events outside of class. Annie has planned a Dia de los Muertos party which she calls “Mexican Halloween.” She invites the class to the party and asks for RSVPs from the members of her study group. Shirley replies with a yes, citing her new lack of a wedding ring as her reason for going out. Pierce says he already replied, and tries to reconcile with his technology to find his answer. Britta speaks to Jeff in an aside and Jeff states that his answer regarding the party is no. Jeff asks Britta if she is certain that they will never be non-platonic, and she says they will not. Jeff claims that he is happy about this because he actually wishes to pursue one of his professors instead. Having lost control of his phone, Pierce interrupts every one as he exits the room by trying to cover the ramblings of his mother, who is revealing secrets about him. This is not a Halloween episode about fear, but a Dia de los Muertos episode about not being afraid of death and celebrating life as a result.
Prof. Slater wraps up Statistics 101 by describing the Bernoulli Distribution as “the number of successes in a series of independent yes/no experiments.” A Bernoulli Trial is considered fair if the probability of success is 50%. So if you let heads be a success and tails be a failure —or a yes and a no respectively—, and toss the coin, if the probability that it lands on heads is the same as the probability that it lands on tails, the coin toss is fair. Annie conducted a Bernoulli trial earlier to see if people were coming to her party, and Jeff is about to conduct an experiment of his own to see if Prof. Slater will agree to go out with him. Jeff asks 4 times and receives all No answers. Prof. Slater tells him that she has a personal rule against dating students, revealing that Jeff’s experiment is unfair. Britta and Shirley are walking down the hall as Jeff continues to ask Prof. Slater for a date. Shirley is offended on Britta’s behalf for the way Jeff has replaced his advances on Britta with advances on Prof. Slater. Britta maintains that she does not care what Jeff does, however. Jeff’s last tactic in the hallway is to convince Prof. Slater that he is older than her and is no longer a student. As Prof. Slater rejects him once more, Annie appears and accosts Jeff for an answer about attending her party. Jeff is evasive and will not give a yes or no response until Annie begins to cry. Through her tears, Annie says that Jeff is “the cool guy” and will make the party a success, and that the success or failure of the party is her second chance to make herself be “hip, cool, laid back” in the eyes of her peers.
Pierce and Troy are studying silently. As Pierce attempts to take a pill in secret, Abed appears behind him and draws attention to his actions. Abed compares his own grandfather to Pierce and warns about the dangers of taking medications. He gives the anecdote of his grandfather’s memory failing due to age, and taking the wrong pills together, causing him to run down the street with no pants on which is “a real party foul.” Pierce says that he does not need Abed’s advise, and he is not a “pantsless grandpa.” However, Abed’s story will be mirrored in Pierce’s actions before the night is through. Abed is behind Pierce in this scene. Here and for the rest of the episode Abed will symbolize the fear of the character behind whom he appears. Pierce is still afraid of being seen as old, and he will be fighting this image to seem hip, cool, and laid back.
Dressed as a skeleton, Annie welcomes her guests to her party. She removes her mask and greets Britta who is dressed as a squirrel. Britta talks about how she hates “when women use Halloween as an excuse to dress like sluts.” Annie agrees dismissively as she takes off her cape to reveal that her skeleton costume is skin tight. Britta looks at Annie and then down at her own costume sadly. Annie introduces the cookie tombstones “por tradicion” and announces that “la danza de los muertos” will start in a few minutes. Frustrated, Chang yells that she does not have to keep translating everything. Jeff walks in without a costume and Britta teases him about not being out on a date with Prof. Slater. Jeff says that she is grading papers, and Chang yells from across the room to correct him, telling them that Prof. Slater is at the faculty party. We never saw Prof. Slater tell Jeff that she would be grading papers, and based on what she did say earlier, it is more likely that Jeff made up that story to save face in front of Britta. Abed, dressed as Batman, appears behind Jeff, personifying Jeff’s fear that others will find out he was rejected by Prof. Slater. Pierce enters dressed as The Beastmaster from the 1982 film of the same name. No one gets his out of date reference, and he must explain himself to them. Shirley shows up behind Britta, offering drinks with a bad English accent. Jeff thanks her and calls her costume Urkel, but she corrects him saying that she is Harry Potter. Chang makes the same mistake. In fact, no one can see the guise Shirley is presenting for what it means to her.
In the bathroom, Pierce is once again attempting to sneak his medication. Star Burns interrupts him though and offers to trade his own illicit substances for what he thinks are comparable drugs. Pierce refers to his drugs by out of date street names he thinks are cool, but he declines a trade until Star Burns makes a disparaging remark about his coolness by saying that he is not quite the Beastmaster he claims to be. Pierce relents and offers to trade his medication to Star Burns for some ecstasy.
Chang leaves Annie’s party and hands Jeff the clipboard of extra credit. Jeff asks Chang to bring him along to the faculty party so he can talk to Prof. Slater. Chang refuses until Jeff offers him a bribe. Jeff gives the extra credit sheet to someone else and leaves Annie’s party. We were told earlier that Jeff would be the life of Annie’s party, and, with the life absent, Annie’s party starts to die. Abed is behind Annie and their frame tightens as she calls for Jeff and slowly realizes that he is gone. Her fear builds as Abed shares more of her frame. Pierce asks Star Burns what the drug he took was because he keeps grinding his teeth and wants to kiss everybody. Star Burns does not answer, but reveals his own symptoms from the drugs he took off Pierce. They are both artificially trying to change their stage of development and encountering problems. Star Burns is encountering problems taking drugs that will make him old before his time and Pierce is trying to be young again, finding his body cannot handle it. Britta consoles Annie, saying that Jeff will be right back. She pulls Shirley aside saying they have to go bring him back for Annie. Shirley agrees, but keeps making it a vendetta against Prof. Slater. Pierce seems to be doing better with his drugs now, massaging Annie’s shoulders and saying that he loves her.
At the faculty party Jeff is dressed as a cowboy and approaches Prof. Slater, offering her a beer. Jeff continues his Bernoulli Trial of asking her for a date. He says that he hates everyone at the school except for her just as Britta interrupts them. Prof. Slater asks if Britta is a classmate of Jeff’s, and Jeff rejects the term classmate as juvenile saying that “what’s great about community college is that a lot of the students are just as mature as the teachers.” Abed appears now in front of Jeff, saying that Annie is feeling unpopular and needs Jeff to return to the party. Troy entreats Jeff to come help take care of Pierce and his worsening trip. Jeff rejects them all and says that he is at a “grown up Halloween party” calling them all unseemly. Just as Britta asks how exactly they are being unseemly, the dean draws attention to Shirley ripping the antennae off of Prof. Slater’s car. The dean still calls her Urkel, even though Shirley brandishes the antennae like a wand as she rebukes Prof. Slater for “stealing Jeff from a good woman”. Pierce draws attention away from her as he enters, meowing and knocking things over. Jeff rebukes each member of the group in turn, finally telling Pierce that he is “too old to be tripping.” Pierce scoffs at this information, but, as he sees his hands before himself, he does not recognize his own body. Calling himself a zombie, he runs out of the party and the rest of the group follows him. Jeff stays and tries to entice Prof. Slater once again, but she stops him with his own word “unseemly.”
Britta is walking down the hall as she encounters Shirley attempting to fill Prof. Slater’s office with water. When Britta asks why, Shirley states “to teach that long necked, weave having bank teller she can’t steal another woman’s man!” Shirley realizes that she has spoken the truth behind the facade no one could see through before and she tells Britta the whole story. The reason her wedding ring is gone, was not by her own choice, but because her husband wants a divorce and has moved on to someone else whom he wants wearing that ring. Shirley’s reason for coming to the party was not a choice of removing the ring and moving on, but a cover up of the fear of being rejected by her husband. She states that she never wanted him back, but she just wanted to be the one to reject him. Britta listens mostly silent as Shirley talks out her own problem. Shirley concludes: “It’s like I was too proud to admit that I was hurt, so I had to pretend that you were.” Britta responds: “I totally get that.” and says they should go check on Annie. When Shirley is out of the office, Britta shows that she holds some animosity towards Prof. Slater as she calls her pretentious and breaks the head off of one of the trophies. The root of Shirley’s issue is also found in Britta, and just as Shirley was projecting onto Britta, Britta has been projecting onto Annie.
Back at Annie’s party, Pierce is not a pantsless grandpa, but he is committing a party foul by wandering around horrified with a “full on erection.” Pierce sees everyone as a frightening apparition, and he alternates between sobbing and primal roaring. In The Beastmaster, there are zombie like enemies called Death Guards. A Death Guard is just a regular person who has had a leech put into their brain. This leech eats anything it meets and as the movie states “[this] extreme torture transforms the man into a wild beast.” Chevy has allowed the leech of old age equaling death or a wasted life to eat away at his brain, and now he is torturing himself, soon to be running around as even more of a mindless beast if he does not stop this leech of an idea. In his vision, Annie has become Catrina, the depiction of death who taunts the living.
Back at the grown up party, Chang taunts Jeff about striking out with Prof. Slater. Jeff says the campus has fed on his coolness and he no longer has any moves. Chang ridicules Jeff for treating everything like a game with “moves”, and he offers Jeff ”one move I bet you’ve never tried in your life.” Jeff walks to Prof. Slater with Chang’s new move, and we discover that it is unabashed, childish begging for sex. Prof. Slater accepts, and offers to take Jeff with her only if he stays three steps behind her and never tells anybody. He promises to comply, and they leave together.
As Jeff and Prof. Slater walk past the library together, they see that everyone is gathered outside and inviting Pierce to come out and join them. Pierce refuses, saying that he is not ready to die. Troy beseeches Jeff to help and Jeff stops to consider. Jeff says goodnight to Prof. Slater, and she asks if he has been appointed guardian of the group. He says: “they’re my classmates.” Jeff has accepted the role he refused so vehemently earlier. Jeff’s goal was to be a sexual hero to an ideal he held for himself, and also to be graded on his life thus far and be found as an adult. Instead, he goes back to being a student and accumulating successes in the experiment of his life. Had he gone with Prof. Slater, Jeff would have had to stay three steps behind her. He would be stuck developmentally. Jung discovered that many of his patients were stuck at some earlier phase in their childhood which then defined the type of adult that they were. Dia de los Muertos takes place over three nights, the gates to the afterlife open on Halloween night, the dead children come first, then the adults come two days later. Deceased adults are depicted as maintaining into the afterlife the same station they had at the time of their death. By going to die on this Halloween night, Jeff would leave his classmates (whom he deemed juvenile) behind, and return stuck in his role of hero to no one forever. He would be choosing to halt his learning in life, and forcibly end his Bernoulli Trial. Pierce feels that he has lived beyond the point of achieving anymore successes in his own life’s Bernoulli Trial and that this same halting was chosen for him because of his age.
From within a large desk fort, Pierce says that he will crush himself to death with desks and tables. Like Star Burns, Jeff appeals to Pierce’s costume identity and asks if that is a death befitting a Beastmaster. Pierce now admits that he never saw the film, but that he just wanted to be cool. Jeff removes his hat, seizing an opportunity to be a different kind of hero, and crawls into the desk fort in which Pierce is cowering. Pierce admits finally: “I’m old Jeff.” Jeff rejoins: “I don’t know how you spent the first sixty years, but I know in the last two months you’ve probably doubled the national average for amount of life lived per lifetime.” Pierce accepts this, and Jeff adds “if life is just a series of ridiculous attempts to be alive, you’re a hero to everything that’s ever lived.” Just as with Annie and Shirley earlier, everything Jeff is saying applies to both Jeff and Pierce. Jeff is saying that life is just a Bernoulli Trial and that though it is unfair (as everyone always says), you can make it unfair in your favor by gaining extra credit (like doubling the amount of life lived per lifetime). In the past two months that Jeff mentions Pierce has joined the study group, and this then is how you gain extra credit: by studying with other people, by taking on other people’s life experiences through empathy or through actual shared experience. Jeff said that Pierce is a hero to everything that has ever lived, now making him The Beastmaster he is dressed as. The others who have not figured out their lives, who are becoming Death Guards via some nagging thought that is making them into mindless beasts can be helped by Pierce’s experience, and he by theirs. The Beastmaster described his own powers in the film as empathy and shared experience saying: “I see through their eyes. They know my thoughts; I know theirs.” By delivering this speech, Jeff is also taking his own advice and staying back as a student rather than an “adult”, and empathizing with Pierce because their problems are similar. In fact, all of the main character’s problems stem from a similar fear of rejection. Pierce accepts Jeff’s assessment of his life triumphantly, and accidentally destroys the equilibrium of the desk fort, causing it to tremble and begin to fall on top of them. Abed appears from nowhere and grabs them both, pulling them out of the fort as it crumbles. They are situated such that Abed is behind both of them as they are dragged from the wreckage. Abed is now fear as a motivator. They are afraid of death or afraid of a wasted life, and that is good because it is motivating them to move forward and not to sit passively waiting for death to come tally their successes and failures. Jeff asks if Abed is staying for the party, and Abed says that if he stays “there can be no party.” The party thus far has been a failure because it is filled with fear. Dia de los Muertos is not about fear, but about embracing death as an equalizer and celebrating the lives of the deceased. This is why Chang wanted Annie to stop translating everything earlier, because at that time the party was a Halloween party driven by fear. Once Abed removes himself from the library and the party, we see everyone enjoying themselves and enjoying the company of each other. They are now all gaining extra credit by sharing and incorporating the lives of others into their own, no longer fearing death but reveling in life, adding to the successes column of their Bernoulli Trials.
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
- e. e. cummings
![Community 1x06: “Football, Feminism and You”
The episode opens with Annie quizzing Troy on Astronomy. Troy gets the answer correct and reveals he used a memory technique that is grounded in non pc language. Annie does not address the slur and proceeds to continue the quiz on the topic of black holes, and Pierce begins what sounds like an inappropriately sexual joke about black holes. However, as the group braces for disgust, Pierce speaks eruditely about a particular black hole and its specifications. The group relaxes except for Jeff who remains ready for Pierce’s crude side, and Pierce does not disappoint as he compares the size of the black hole to his weiner. Troy appreciates the childish language and Abed blankly states that Troy and Pierce have started bonding over the use of adolescent humor. They both rejoin with first grade insults. The dean enters and comments on the diversity of the group. Pierce insults the dean, but becomes contrite when he is told of the dean’s station at the school. The dean forgives Pierce dismissively and uses a poor segue to reveal his true purpose of seducing Troy to join the Human Beings (the Greendale football team). The dean reveals that the team was going to be called The Greendale Grizzlies, but many of the students “have been called animals their whole lives.” He admits, however, that presenting the grizzly now as a human being has left him at a loss as to what the public face of the mascot will be. Pierce happily offers his services which, while sounding applicable, are quickly discounted by his addition of “Y2K preparedness” as a useful skill. The dean is not off-put by this and seems to file away Pierce’s offer as useful as he returns to his quest to make Troy part of the Human Beings. Annie answers for Troy saying that he is no longer interested in football and the dean dismisses her by saying “Yoko Ono much?” and “Bros before hoes, Troy.” Troy states that he means no offense, but he was the best when he left football behind and Greendale is beneath him. Jeff dismisses the dean and the group prepares to study Spanish. Shirley gets up to go to the bathroom and invites Britta to go with her. Britta declines and Shirley looks perplexed, taking Annie with her as she leaves. Britta questions Shirley’s offended reaction and Jeff reminds her that “girls go in groups”, as he learned from standup comedy in the ’90s. She says she will go next time to please Shirley, and Jeff proceeds to hit on her. Abed comments on the sexual tension between them as if he is reviewing the show from a fan site. Jeff chastises him and Abed agrees to leave for the remainder of the episode. This episode is about the Jungian idea of persona building and a look at archetypes as seen in TV character stereotypes. As Jung said “The persona is a complicated system of relations between individual consciousness and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual.” Troy has been presented with two masks he can wear (jock or astronomer), and though we do not know it yet, he has shown us a third mask. Pierce has shown us two masks, and Jeff has presented one to Britta, who has also shown us her mask (though we do not yet know it). Abed can see through the masks and is therefore dismissed from the episode.
Jeff mocks the football team in front of Troy, and Annie attempts to get Troy to talk about science more, but he misses the point. As they walk down the hall, Jeff sees a poster of his face proclaiming that he is a student at Greendale, and he mutters “that’s not good.”
Britta invites Shirley to the bathroom with her instead of waiting for a second invitation from Shirley. Shirley accepts, and she begins venting about an earlier slight against her once they are inside. Britta takes the side of the stranger and shuts down Shirley’s complaint without seeking a connection. Shirley then attempts to bond with Britta over family, but Britta dismisses Shirley and her mother as programmed by the makeup industry and launches into a tirade that is stifled by Shirley’s activation of the hand dryer. Shirley later tells us that the purpose of the bathroom is “a place where ladies go to share, listen, support each other, and discreetly eliminate waste.” Instead, Britta is wearing a mask that completely blocks any connection Shirley tries to make in this place of sharing.
Pierce and the dean are discussing the public face of the Greendale Human Beings. Pierce is seeing things as black and white (racially) and the dean is trying to get him to think more about diversity by listing ethnicities to ignore. Jeff walks in holding the poster of his face and asks to speak to the dean away from Pierce. Jeff complains that this mask was made for him by the dean without his permission, and proceeds to ask “where’s the heart, where’s the soul, where’s the different poster design?” This is Jeff’s current face. He is a student at Greendale, but to him this does not convey the image he wishes to show. It does not have the personality (heart and soul) that he wishes to impress upon others. The dean shows him a full body mailer which clearly depicts Jeff at school. Jeff rejects this mirror and rips the mailer in half. The dean informs Jeff that if he can persuade Troy to play for the Human Beings, the mailers and posters will be suppressed. Before Jeff can agree or decline, Pierce interrupts them with the first draft of the public face of the Human Beings. Jeff sees it as a falcon with a gun, Pierce turns it and it becomes a falcon with an erection to Jeff. The viewer never gets to see the image. Is this a Rorschach test for Jeff? Does he see humans as either powerful/forceful or sexual only?
Shirley, Britta, Annie, and Troy are eating in the cafeteria. Shirley announces her need to use the bathroom and Britta volunteers to go with her. Shirley forcefully rejects her offer and leaves Britta hurt and defensive. She exits as well and Annie attempts to bring Troy back into astronomy. Troy answers her question incorrectly, but she laughs it off. Jeff enters and pulls Troy away from Annie. Jeff begins to talk to Troy about football, but Troy’s answers are just as silly and off topic as they were with Annie and the Astronomy conversations. Here, the viewer is faced with their perception of TV stereotypes. All of Troy’s dumb answers thus far have served to enforce the idea of the dumb jock and depending on the viewer’s investment in stereotypes, they may root for Troy to enforce the type and become a dumb jock, or they may wish for Troy and Annie to be together and break the type. Regardless of the mask you choose for Troy, there has been no evidence that Troy wants either of these. Both masks are manipulations, and as we will see shortly, they are both projections of the characters offering the masks. To simplify the subject, the Jungian shadow is that element of the psyche that the bearer ignores and pushes underneath their consciousness. As Jung said “Projection makes the whole world a replica of our own unknown face.” This unknown shadow face has, among other things, that which we do not like about ourselves and that which outside forces (parents, teachers, etc.) have repressed during early development.
On the football field, Jeff reveals to Troy that he drives by the courthouse every day on his way to school, in order to “get a glimpse of what I once ruled.” He compares Troy’s options to his own, saying that he is locked out of his old life, but Troy is not. They quickly run through a psychological Abbot and Costello routine, listing off cliches and pointing out the biases underneath each. Jeff quickly paints a picture of how great football can be, as he hands Troy a football and tells him that it is the only important thing in his life. Jeff continues painting the picture of success in football, projecting into it everything he would want from his old life as a lawyer (within football’s terminology). Troy seems to be persuaded.
Britta has clearly been waiting outside the bathroom for Shirley to emerge, and when she does, Britta attempts to guilt trip Shirley about now excluding her from a shared bathroom experience. Shirley apologizes, but Britta deflects this again with her mask that she will reveal in a moment. Shirley now explains what the purpose of the bathroom is and breaks through Britta’s mask by telling her that if she cannot learn to be soft, she needs to pee alone. Britta reveals what she has been repressing beneath her mask, that she has peed alone her entire life because “women have always hated me”, perhaps because she “got boobs before everyone.” Shirley quiets her and invites her to continue tearing down her mask inside the bathroom.
Troy enters, playing to the TV stereotype of the jock with an inflated sense of self and an aversion to learning. He rejects Annie’s attempts to present the mask she wants for him, and we see her shadow start to emerge as she explains that she had a crush on him in high school but was not “allowed to say anything because [her] parents are bigots.” She tells him football is bad for him, and he responds “Jeff said you’d say that” as he walks away.
Jeff walks in on Pierce and the dean continuing their work on the face of the Greendale Human Being. He discovers that they have created charts and representations of all aspects of race to consciously ignore as they define a Human Being. Pierce and the dean are misunderstanding what a mask is. They are attempting to get under a mask of physical features instead of the psyche. By focusing so much on the outward, they are never able to go inward. This also works as a metaphor for Jung’s warning against being all persona. Being overly focused on the persona leads to being non-reflective and turning into a conformist. Jung termed the possible end result of this “Enantiodromia” which is a five dollar word for balance. If much effort is put into your persona and nothing else, eventually the ignored subconscious personality that is being suppressed will balance out that effort by exerting the same amount of energy to break forth and become your new persona. It is also possible that you inflate a persona so much that it crushes your subconscious individuality. In the commentary, Harmon states that Jeff’s response to Pierce and the dean’s racial charts “I think not being racist is the new racism” is his idea of the dean’s administration at Greendale, that the dean is trying to create a perfect world through an inflated persona. The students within this world then are to be watched for whether they collapse under the persona or emerge as their unique personality.
Annie confronts Jeff about steering Troy toward football. Jeff admits he is being blackmailed and Annie calls him selfish. Jeff responds by telling Annie the same thing. They have both been told now that they are projecting, and they will either reflect on the reasons for their projections internally and make a breakthrough, or continue projecting.
Annie flees the confrontation with Jeff and heads for the bathroom. She invites Shirley to go with her, but Shirley suggests that Britta try lowering her mask and connecting with Annie instead. Britta comes in behind Annie and Annie is dismayed at first, assuming that she will not be able to make a connection through Britta’s usual mask. Britta puts on the mask she thinks Annie needs and parrots Annie’s sentiment, but still does not make a connection until she allows herself to make a non-masked response. Annie has a breakthrough and will stop projecting.
Jeff has apparently had his own breakthrough off screen, and he has come to the gymnasium to stop Troy from pursuing the dream of football into which he was manipulated by Jeff. Troy is chanting with the rest of the team “Human Beings! Human Beings!” and is quieted by Jeff. Troy interrupts Jeff’s speech and reveals that he too has been wearing a mask this whole time. Troy hurt himself on purpose to get out of football in high school, because he could not take the pressure of what would come after. He reveals his realization to Jeff by telling Jeff what he should do “you should try accepting where you’re at, man. Take a pottery class or something.” Throughout the scene, Jeff has been standing next to the poster of himself which he had been tearing down through the rest of the episode, but he leaves the poster untouched, now accepting where he is at as a student of Greendale.
Having both had breakthroughs, Jeff and Annie rejoin to apologize to one another. The finished product of Pierce and the dean’s work shows up. It is a human being who is all persona and can neither talk nor hear. It must be led around based on the whims of others, just as Jung warned. Jeff and Annie embrace out of aversion to this type of human being.
When I first saw this episode, I got hung up on the racism aspect and tried to apply that to everything else, and I did not see it for the metaphor it is. Another aspect of the episode I enjoyed was that it has its own anima and animus in its two main stories, and the episode allows the viewer to find the balance between the two in their reactions to them.
Episode 1 Analysis
Episode 2 Analysis
Episode 3 Analysis
Episode 4 Analysis
Episode 5 Analysis
Episode 6 Analysis
Episode 7 Analysis](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbey34k0gD1qzh8m2o1_500.png)
Community 1x06: “Football, Feminism and You”
The episode opens with Annie quizzing Troy on Astronomy. Troy gets the answer correct and reveals he used a memory technique that is grounded in non pc language. Annie does not address the slur and proceeds to continue the quiz on the topic of black holes, and Pierce begins what sounds like an inappropriately sexual joke about black holes. However, as the group braces for disgust, Pierce speaks eruditely about a particular black hole and its specifications. The group relaxes except for Jeff who remains ready for Pierce’s crude side, and Pierce does not disappoint as he compares the size of the black hole to his weiner. Troy appreciates the childish language and Abed blankly states that Troy and Pierce have started bonding over the use of adolescent humor. They both rejoin with first grade insults. The dean enters and comments on the diversity of the group. Pierce insults the dean, but becomes contrite when he is told of the dean’s station at the school. The dean forgives Pierce dismissively and uses a poor segue to reveal his true purpose of seducing Troy to join the Human Beings (the Greendale football team). The dean reveals that the team was going to be called The Greendale Grizzlies, but many of the students “have been called animals their whole lives.” He admits, however, that presenting the grizzly now as a human being has left him at a loss as to what the public face of the mascot will be. Pierce happily offers his services which, while sounding applicable, are quickly discounted by his addition of “Y2K preparedness” as a useful skill. The dean is not off-put by this and seems to file away Pierce’s offer as useful as he returns to his quest to make Troy part of the Human Beings. Annie answers for Troy saying that he is no longer interested in football and the dean dismisses her by saying “Yoko Ono much?” and “Bros before hoes, Troy.” Troy states that he means no offense, but he was the best when he left football behind and Greendale is beneath him. Jeff dismisses the dean and the group prepares to study Spanish. Shirley gets up to go to the bathroom and invites Britta to go with her. Britta declines and Shirley looks perplexed, taking Annie with her as she leaves. Britta questions Shirley’s offended reaction and Jeff reminds her that “girls go in groups”, as he learned from standup comedy in the ’90s. She says she will go next time to please Shirley, and Jeff proceeds to hit on her. Abed comments on the sexual tension between them as if he is reviewing the show from a fan site. Jeff chastises him and Abed agrees to leave for the remainder of the episode. This episode is about the Jungian idea of persona building and a look at archetypes as seen in TV character stereotypes. As Jung said “The persona is a complicated system of relations between individual consciousness and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual.” Troy has been presented with two masks he can wear (jock or astronomer), and though we do not know it yet, he has shown us a third mask. Pierce has shown us two masks, and Jeff has presented one to Britta, who has also shown us her mask (though we do not yet know it). Abed can see through the masks and is therefore dismissed from the episode.
Jeff mocks the football team in front of Troy, and Annie attempts to get Troy to talk about science more, but he misses the point. As they walk down the hall, Jeff sees a poster of his face proclaiming that he is a student at Greendale, and he mutters “that’s not good.”
Britta invites Shirley to the bathroom with her instead of waiting for a second invitation from Shirley. Shirley accepts, and she begins venting about an earlier slight against her once they are inside. Britta takes the side of the stranger and shuts down Shirley’s complaint without seeking a connection. Shirley then attempts to bond with Britta over family, but Britta dismisses Shirley and her mother as programmed by the makeup industry and launches into a tirade that is stifled by Shirley’s activation of the hand dryer. Shirley later tells us that the purpose of the bathroom is “a place where ladies go to share, listen, support each other, and discreetly eliminate waste.” Instead, Britta is wearing a mask that completely blocks any connection Shirley tries to make in this place of sharing.
Pierce and the dean are discussing the public face of the Greendale Human Beings. Pierce is seeing things as black and white (racially) and the dean is trying to get him to think more about diversity by listing ethnicities to ignore. Jeff walks in holding the poster of his face and asks to speak to the dean away from Pierce. Jeff complains that this mask was made for him by the dean without his permission, and proceeds to ask “where’s the heart, where’s the soul, where’s the different poster design?” This is Jeff’s current face. He is a student at Greendale, but to him this does not convey the image he wishes to show. It does not have the personality (heart and soul) that he wishes to impress upon others. The dean shows him a full body mailer which clearly depicts Jeff at school. Jeff rejects this mirror and rips the mailer in half. The dean informs Jeff that if he can persuade Troy to play for the Human Beings, the mailers and posters will be suppressed. Before Jeff can agree or decline, Pierce interrupts them with the first draft of the public face of the Human Beings. Jeff sees it as a falcon with a gun, Pierce turns it and it becomes a falcon with an erection to Jeff. The viewer never gets to see the image. Is this a Rorschach test for Jeff? Does he see humans as either powerful/forceful or sexual only?
Shirley, Britta, Annie, and Troy are eating in the cafeteria. Shirley announces her need to use the bathroom and Britta volunteers to go with her. Shirley forcefully rejects her offer and leaves Britta hurt and defensive. She exits as well and Annie attempts to bring Troy back into astronomy. Troy answers her question incorrectly, but she laughs it off. Jeff enters and pulls Troy away from Annie. Jeff begins to talk to Troy about football, but Troy’s answers are just as silly and off topic as they were with Annie and the Astronomy conversations. Here, the viewer is faced with their perception of TV stereotypes. All of Troy’s dumb answers thus far have served to enforce the idea of the dumb jock and depending on the viewer’s investment in stereotypes, they may root for Troy to enforce the type and become a dumb jock, or they may wish for Troy and Annie to be together and break the type. Regardless of the mask you choose for Troy, there has been no evidence that Troy wants either of these. Both masks are manipulations, and as we will see shortly, they are both projections of the characters offering the masks. To simplify the subject, the Jungian shadow is that element of the psyche that the bearer ignores and pushes underneath their consciousness. As Jung said “Projection makes the whole world a replica of our own unknown face.” This unknown shadow face has, among other things, that which we do not like about ourselves and that which outside forces (parents, teachers, etc.) have repressed during early development.
On the football field, Jeff reveals to Troy that he drives by the courthouse every day on his way to school, in order to “get a glimpse of what I once ruled.” He compares Troy’s options to his own, saying that he is locked out of his old life, but Troy is not. They quickly run through a psychological Abbot and Costello routine, listing off cliches and pointing out the biases underneath each. Jeff quickly paints a picture of how great football can be, as he hands Troy a football and tells him that it is the only important thing in his life. Jeff continues painting the picture of success in football, projecting into it everything he would want from his old life as a lawyer (within football’s terminology). Troy seems to be persuaded.
Britta has clearly been waiting outside the bathroom for Shirley to emerge, and when she does, Britta attempts to guilt trip Shirley about now excluding her from a shared bathroom experience. Shirley apologizes, but Britta deflects this again with her mask that she will reveal in a moment. Shirley now explains what the purpose of the bathroom is and breaks through Britta’s mask by telling her that if she cannot learn to be soft, she needs to pee alone. Britta reveals what she has been repressing beneath her mask, that she has peed alone her entire life because “women have always hated me”, perhaps because she “got boobs before everyone.” Shirley quiets her and invites her to continue tearing down her mask inside the bathroom.
Troy enters, playing to the TV stereotype of the jock with an inflated sense of self and an aversion to learning. He rejects Annie’s attempts to present the mask she wants for him, and we see her shadow start to emerge as she explains that she had a crush on him in high school but was not “allowed to say anything because [her] parents are bigots.” She tells him football is bad for him, and he responds “Jeff said you’d say that” as he walks away.
Jeff walks in on Pierce and the dean continuing their work on the face of the Greendale Human Being. He discovers that they have created charts and representations of all aspects of race to consciously ignore as they define a Human Being. Pierce and the dean are misunderstanding what a mask is. They are attempting to get under a mask of physical features instead of the psyche. By focusing so much on the outward, they are never able to go inward. This also works as a metaphor for Jung’s warning against being all persona. Being overly focused on the persona leads to being non-reflective and turning into a conformist. Jung termed the possible end result of this “Enantiodromia” which is a five dollar word for balance. If much effort is put into your persona and nothing else, eventually the ignored subconscious personality that is being suppressed will balance out that effort by exerting the same amount of energy to break forth and become your new persona. It is also possible that you inflate a persona so much that it crushes your subconscious individuality. In the commentary, Harmon states that Jeff’s response to Pierce and the dean’s racial charts “I think not being racist is the new racism” is his idea of the dean’s administration at Greendale, that the dean is trying to create a perfect world through an inflated persona. The students within this world then are to be watched for whether they collapse under the persona or emerge as their unique personality.
Annie confronts Jeff about steering Troy toward football. Jeff admits he is being blackmailed and Annie calls him selfish. Jeff responds by telling Annie the same thing. They have both been told now that they are projecting, and they will either reflect on the reasons for their projections internally and make a breakthrough, or continue projecting.
Annie flees the confrontation with Jeff and heads for the bathroom. She invites Shirley to go with her, but Shirley suggests that Britta try lowering her mask and connecting with Annie instead. Britta comes in behind Annie and Annie is dismayed at first, assuming that she will not be able to make a connection through Britta’s usual mask. Britta puts on the mask she thinks Annie needs and parrots Annie’s sentiment, but still does not make a connection until she allows herself to make a non-masked response. Annie has a breakthrough and will stop projecting.
Jeff has apparently had his own breakthrough off screen, and he has come to the gymnasium to stop Troy from pursuing the dream of football into which he was manipulated by Jeff. Troy is chanting with the rest of the team “Human Beings! Human Beings!” and is quieted by Jeff. Troy interrupts Jeff’s speech and reveals that he too has been wearing a mask this whole time. Troy hurt himself on purpose to get out of football in high school, because he could not take the pressure of what would come after. He reveals his realization to Jeff by telling Jeff what he should do “you should try accepting where you’re at, man. Take a pottery class or something.” Throughout the scene, Jeff has been standing next to the poster of himself which he had been tearing down through the rest of the episode, but he leaves the poster untouched, now accepting where he is at as a student of Greendale.
Having both had breakthroughs, Jeff and Annie rejoin to apologize to one another. The finished product of Pierce and the dean’s work shows up. It is a human being who is all persona and can neither talk nor hear. It must be led around based on the whims of others, just as Jung warned. Jeff and Annie embrace out of aversion to this type of human being.
When I first saw this episode, I got hung up on the racism aspect and tried to apply that to everything else, and I did not see it for the metaphor it is. Another aspect of the episode I enjoyed was that it has its own anima and animus in its two main stories, and the episode allows the viewer to find the balance between the two in their reactions to them.
What is television, but a meditation on a theme, to which you return every week? Community is gone for now, but hopefully it will be back, and if I may serve as a Community apologist for a moment, I would like to talk about the meditation of Community.
I have talked to and read from many people that dislike Community and describe it as a live action Family Guy, stringing together pop culture references ad nauseum in lieu of a plot. I disagree with this viewpoint, but I understand that it may come from a place of differing mythologies. I posted a screenshot from episode 3x01 because it is exemplary of my point. 2001: A Space Odyssey is a film which I have meditated over many times and have attempted to tease apart the layers of meaning in its final scenes. Having personally worked over the narrative on my own, I have come to various conclusions about the transcendent journey that the character must take to arrive outside of himself and watch himself die, so that he may see his part in the larger whole of humanity and all existence, to be reborn as an enlightened being. By tying Jeff into this story with a few quick scenes, the writers of Community have immediately started speaking to me regarding what their goal for Jeff is in this story and what his journey should be, but I do not know yet if Jeff will follow the same path of the film, they still have something more to say about what the film meant and how it applies in this situation. This economy of language through pop culture mythology allows so much more to be put into a 22 minute show, if I speak the language. Some references, I admit, I do not get on first viewing. I understood that they were referencing Dead Poets Society in episode 1x03, but I had not meditated on that film, and I did not know what the writers wanted me to understand when everyone stands up on their desks and one person falls down. So, I watched Dead Poets Society, and suddenly, after investing an hour and a half, that 3 minute scene in the show reveals several more layers of meaning than the one sight gag I had gotten from it on first viewing. They are not using new archetypes, but then neither are the pieces they are referencing, the point of these metaphors is to talk about larger concepts and to provide a point of entry for your personal exploration of the concept. What Community does so well is say “ok, you know about the death and rebirth and seeing the planet as a whole that the space fetus goes through in 2001, but now look at how that concept also applies to interpersonal relationships and group dynamics here.” Once it evokes the memory of the mythology that you have meditated on and you are in the realm of the indescribable idea that you have worked through personally, then it anchors that to the character and combines it or contrasts it with another idea. If you remember the end of episode 3x01, Jeff emerges from the 2001 reference as the lead character of The Shining. So not only are we taking Jeff who should be an enlightened space fetus now, and having to immediately recast him in the role of a violent Jack Torrance and figure out the implications of that, but we are also reminded that both of these are films of Stanley Kubrick, and so, we are asked to examine the themes of his characters from an auteur standpoint. There is no mention of Eyes Wide Shut, Full Metal Jacket, The Killing, or A Clockwork Orange, but the mention of Kubrick by contrasting two of his films embodied in the same character, brings to mind the ideas of group dynamics in relation to the individual within the group in those 4 films, and that was what we were exploring in this episode to start with, so many more layers were added by that one change, depending on your previous meditation on Kubrick’s work.
When Community combines these mythologies well, it really is a masterful show. The point of meditation to which we are returning every week with Community then is that pop culture is our current mythology and what these meditations on the mythology mean to us.
Troy and Abed have made a space for Annie that they think she will like, all the while ignoring their holodeck/dreamatorium in which they can imagine anything, because they cannot imagine Annie outside of the box they have created to put her in. Annie only discovers their empty imagination regarding her, when she attempts to get blankets to make the whole apartment resemble the box they have created for her, making everyone equals in the space. Once Troy and Abed use their imagination space to manifest what Annie might want, they supplant their old space with an empty imagination and move into the box they had originally created for Annie.
Community 3x01: “Biology 101” mini analysis
When you leave the air conditioner you will have learned how to evolve. The dean has attempted to lift himself up and “will not tolerate monkeys living on campus.” The vice dean of the air conditioning repair annex must teach him that his path of evolution needs repair as he tears him down and shows him “the life of the mind” (Barton Fink reference not in episode). The dean is a self exalted common man and while he may wish everyone to look upon him, he has evolved incorrectly.
Pierce has accepted the magic of the table and has evolved. Jeff feels that he is more important than Pierce and attempts to keep him away from the table. The table is the monolith in 2001. Every time a being encounters the monolith and accepts it, they evolve.
Jeff enters the air conditioning ducts on his way to evolution and is hit by a gas that only has an effect on monkeys. It has an effect on Jeff and he sees himself consuming his phone in an homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey. The biology professor kicked Jeff out of class because Jeff was consumed by his phone, which was his personal monolith of his current state of evolution and a representation of his self involvement. Here he is consuming his monolith and is offered the chance to accept the monolith of the table. He sees himself as Pierce, but we do not know if it is Pierce the outcast as Jeff wishes to see Pierce, or the Pierce who has accepted the table and evolved. Jeff has become outcast from the group and from the table, self absorbed in his own monolith.
Jeff as Pierce is given the option to accept the monolith and evolve, we know that if he did accept it he will become a space fetus and watch the Earth from within an amniotic sack. We can see the space fetus as a man who has traveled so far outside himself that when he looks back, he sees his insignificance in the grand scheme. The fetus also mirrors the Earth to some degree and has become a companion to the entire world. A self absorbed individual reborn apart from self and coinciding with the group.
Regardless of what the next stage of Jeff’s evolution would be, he refuses to accept the magic of the table and instead becomes a later Kubrick character, that of Jack in The Shining. Jack isolates himself by becoming consumed by the hotel, which can be seen as his own psyche, each room containing a different part of himself for him to explore a la Last Year at Marienbad. Jack leaves his family to find the dark recesses of his mind, and as they retreat from his self absorbed darkness into the bathroom and out of the hotel, Jack forces himself through the door with an axe to try to rejoin with them (and slaughter them, but that is unimportant here). Jeff swings an axe at the table and attempts to forcefully rejoin the group, from which he has cast himself out by being self absorbed in his own monolith.
In the end we see that Jeff has destroyed his monolith and will be allowed back into the group and to the monolithic table to evolve and join with the others.
*I have a fever and I did not really read over this. I hope it makes sense the way it did in my head.
Season 1:
Community 1x05: “Advanced Criminal Law”
The Dean opens by attempting to convince everyone publicly over the PA system that Greendale is a real college simply because they will have their own song and a statue of prestigious alumnus Luis Guzman by the end of the week. He is projecting a lie that he believes, in an attempt to get others to believe it. Professor Duncan scoffs at his attempt at conveying respectability and meets with Jeff to discuss Britta’s relationship status. Duncan is interested in pursuing Britta, but he is not sure if Jeff is involved with her. Jeff is noncommittal and dismissive in his response, and we are not sure how he currently views his relationship with Britta. We must draw our own conclusions at this point. This episode is about self-deception and its external consequences.
Abed walks into class with Troy and asks if he thinks Luis Guzman will come visit the statue. Troy responds with sarcasm, and we are given visual cues in his facial features to see that he is lying and wants us to know because it is a joke. Abed does not pick up on the visual cues and Troy begins to lie straight faced, bringing Abed into a wildly concocted fantasy. Jeff sits down in front of them and tells Britta that he has discovered that she lied to him about her phone number. She says that she will give him the real number if he promises not to use it in a context other than friendship. He declines the number, and we are led to believe that it is because he does not wish for friendship, but he has still not revealed his intentions yet. Chang confronts the class about a tiny cheat sheet he has found lying on the floor of the classroom after their last test. He threatens punishment for everybody, unless the person who cheated confesses. He is showing how a tiny personal lie can harm others around an individual if it begins to show itself.
In the study group, Shirley complains about Chang’s stereotype of her during class and follows that up with an affirmation of the type. She is lying to herself about what she is living up to, and we can see Annie react knowingly to Shirley’s straight faced inner lie. Blame for cheating is passed around the table between the members of the group, and each offer terse perceptions of the person they think cheated, all of the accused accept their perceived character flaws except Pierce, who lies to himself and mishears the character flaw they gave him as a compliment (he turns the word stupid into genius). Jeff says that whoever cheated “wasn’t a real cheater, just insecure and naive,” and we are left not knowing for sure who has cheated. We can only read the visual cues the character’s give and draw our own conclusions. Annie changes the subject to her work on the school song, and Pierce tells her that he is a great songwriter and will work on it for free. He tells her this with confident visual cues. Troy reveals to Abed that the things he said earlier were lies, and Abed attempts to explore the foreign concept of lying by questioning the nature of concrete objects (“This isn’t a table, haha”).
Annie tells Pierce he is allowed to write the song and he now looks visibly worried, implying that his earlier brag was a lie. In class, Chang offers the cheater one last chance to confess. Everyone looks tense and Britta stands up to confess saying that it is not fair for Chang to punish the whole class. At this point, from her visual cues and speech, it would appear that she is lying to everyone to seem like a hero. Outside the classroom Jeff confronts Britta about being a cheat. At this point, we do not know what Jeff believes, but he is reaching out to Britta even though her lie has been revealed. She asks if he really wants to be her friend or is just hitting on her again, and he says he can neither confirm nor deny. His motive is hidden, and we are again left to draw our own conclusions.
Abed meets Troy and attempts to lie by questioning the nature of accepted reality again. He says “All dogs are blue now, every single dog in the world is blue.” Troy tells Abed that his visual cues give away his lies “you are not good at this, because you are not believable in your face, ok? Your face, it’s bad.” Abed begins writing in a notebook using a foreign language, and he says “it’s probably Arabic” when Troy questions him about it. Abed runs away making warbling spaceship noises. Abed is all the time giving us slight tells that he does not believe the lie he is acting out. He is pretending that he is alien and not of this world, which is a criticism many others have of him, and in pretending to be foreign he is embodying the way he saw lying earlier as a foreign concept. He has begun to act out how he thinks Troy wants him to act to be his friend, but he does not yet fully believe the lie judging by his cues.
The tribunal that will judge Britta convenes with a $6,000 table next to the pool area. The entire tribunal setup is a self-deception about its place and importance. Professor Duncan argues with Señor Chang over whether or not Chang is allowed to call himself Professor. Chang is lying to himself about his status, and Professor Duncan is lying to himself about his status mattering here (recall the opening scene in which he discounts the dean’s proclamation that Greendale is a real college). The dean makes a double entendre when he says that he “goes both ways” in his partiality in the case, but he asks to have that stricken from the record and clarifies that he is impartial. Regarding the tribunal, we know there is one side that likes Britta and wants to believe her (remember Duncan’s discussion with Jeff earlier), and an opposing side that does not like her and does not believe her (Chang believes she is a cheat). At present, we still do not know the truth and must also choose a side and draw our own conclusions.
Pierce is still lying to Annie and himself about being able to write a song, and she is starting not to believe the lie. He gets defensive when she picks the lie apart and dismisses her. In the commentary, Harmon reveals that “Pierce is a sort of mockery of me. My writing workflow is to shut myself in procrastinate and yell at everyone who comes near me. Tell them I’m a genius even though I’m not.”
Chang lies in his testimony to the tribunal. Britta is brought to the stand and says that she did not make the cheat sheet and that when she said so earlier, she was lying. The dean calls her a hero and she admits that she has just lied and she actually did cheat. The tribunal can be seen as Britta’s psyche choosing what to do about the revealed lie. She can either renew the old lie that she cheated or adopt the new lie that she is a hero. She rejects the new lie, and begins to renew the old lie of being a cheat.
Troy finds Abed talking to himself as if he is an alien again and Abed is now using visual cues about his lying to actually endorse the lie, by having his face lie about the fact that he is lying in pretending to be an alien. One school of thought says that self-deception has emerged as a survival mechanism because deceiving others while not believing in your lie costs more mental energy than conveying a lie that you believe. If Abed knows that he is not an alien, he recalls that first and then must act contrary to that to convey that he is an alien, but if he begins to believe that he is an alien, he can go right to that facade he has built within and project it outward with ease.
Jeff confronts Britta about her flip flopping testimony. She says “you know I have a problem with dishonesty” and Jeff reminds her that she is on trial for cheating. Jeff proposes that he will present her as a good person and she remonstrates him, saying “You don’t know that! You’re just doing all of this ‘cus you wanna sleep with me. I mean, you said it yourself, you don’t even want to be my friend.” Jeff never said that. Jeff did not reveal his motivations and left us and Britta to draw our own conclusions, and we now see the lie that Britta has projected onto Jeff which further enforces the lie she believes about herself. He tells her that her lie about him is wrong and that he does still want to be her friend, even as the lie she has been presenting to everyone is crumbling. Britta says she believes him and reveals the foundation of the lie she has built in herself “I have more experience being worthless, I think I left that crib sheet on the floor because I wanted to get caught. Im so used to screwing everything up i just wanted to get it over with.” The fact that she cheated is not the lie. Cheating is lying about personal ability and knowledge, and Britta has just revealed that that is her actual insecurity. The cheating is how it manifested. Having presented her rationalization for believing and acting on her lie about herself to Jeff, he deems her insane. He presents to the tribunal that they are all insane and the the whole school is insane. Everyone lies to themselves and rationalizes things beneath the surface (we have seen almost every character prove this so far). Britta is not anomalous.
Troy finds Abed talking to a pre-filmed version of himself. Abed is still acting out the lie, but now he is telling the lie to himself. The static paradox of self-deception says that at some point if you are deceiving yourself, there is a transitionary moment where you have to both believe and deny the lie. Abed on the screen is wholly into the lie because he does not exist outside of the lie, Abed talking to the screen is at that transitional moment, but Troy stops him before he crosses the threshold. Abed confesses that it was a lie and he was concocting the lie for Troy, because Troy told him that is what friends do. Troy tells him that it would be creepy if the lie were true and that “from now on, Abed friends don’t mess with each other.” Just as Jeff saw Britta’s lie crumble and revealed his desire for friendship, Troy wants to be Abed’s friend outside of the lie, and is there for Abed before he can begin to believe the lie himself.
Pierce has begin lying to himself in the quest to write the song. He steals “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” but rejects it once he realizes the lie. Annie comes to him as he realized this lie, and he admits to Annie that he is a fraud. She asks about his past success with the Hawthorne Wipes jingle and he reveals that it was stolen as well (from “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain”). Annie, having seen through Pierce’s lie, offers a personal story for him to relate to and says that she believes in him. Whether or not this is a lie on Annie’s part is unknown, but Pierce takes her parting words of inspiration and completes the song with them.
The statue is unveiled, and Pierce is allowed to play his song. We hear that Pierce’s song is a stolen Bruce Hornsby song, rewritten around Annie’s words, but Pierce does not know that and feels good about himself for completing his assignment and internalizing Annie’s (possible lie of) encouragement. He has believed the lie Annie gave him, but it was a lie that helped him succeed. While self-deception can be used to hinder yourself, Pierce demonstrates that you can believe a lie to help yourself overcome something, now whether or not this is good is brought into question when Abed asks if they can be sued for Pierce’s song and Jeff says that they can be.
Community 1x04: “Social Psychology”
Chang is in the classroom leading the class in Spanish recitation. He has them say “we speak” and “to speak” in Spanish, while he writes the words on the board unintelligibly. Everyone hears what he is saying, but they are unable to read it or make further sense of it. In the scene, Chang never reveals the translations of these words. Everyone is parroting what he says, but we are not sure if anyone knows what anyone else is actually saying.
Outside, Shirley attempts to connect with Jeff, but Jeff dodges her and joins Britta. Jeff says he can not bear to hear her say “ooh, that’s nice” while they walk across campus. Jeff has shown that he has been hearing what she says, but he has not been listening, engaging, or understanding. Jeff walks and talks with Britta across campus, and they talk about friendship. Jeff says that the sign of a true friend is talking with no awkward pauses and that he and Britta have just done so for 100 yards. She points out that it is great he is not hitting on her anymore, and an awkward pause emerges as they part ways. But before they parted, the two encounter Vaughan, whom Britta is in a relationship with for this episode. Jeff follows his first impulse to make fun of Vaughan and thus begins to push Britta away from himself. Vaughan represents the super ego and Shirley represents the id in this episode. At present, Jeff is taking in information from both of them but not consciously listening to either, and Britta is gravitating toward the super ego. This will be expanded on by other characters later.
Annie begs Professor Duncan to allow her to be in his Duncan Principle experiment before she is ready, and he agrees (it is usually open to second year students only). Pierce arrives with a package containing “ear-noculars” which he wears along with his bluetooth so that he can hear things other people are not supposed to hear, however he is overextending his hearing and begins to misunderstand which conversations are public and which are private, and begins to interpret everything on a higher level of revealing secrets in others. Annie approaches the group about being in the Duncan Principle experiment. Troy talks himself into it, while Abed declines because he wants to watch the Indiana Jones trilogy. Annie tells him that they are really good friends and he accepts both this statement and the request to be in the experiment. Jeff sees that Vaughan is talking to Britta and connecting with her, so he interrupts their conversation, hears what Vaughan says about coffee versus green tea, and contradicts what he says openly.
We join Annie with Professor Duncan and the other observers, watching the subjects in the Duncan Principle experiment. Professor Duncan explains the Duncan Principle as “The more control lost by the ego, the more gained by the id, resulting in a surprisingly predictable emotional eruption or breaking point.” In the classic Looney Tunes model of psychoanalysis, the devil on Daffy Duck’s shoulder represents the id and the angel on Daffy Duck’s other shoulder represents the super ego, while Daffy in the middle represents the ego, deciding which to listen to or to weigh their inputs equally and follow a median path. What Professor Duncan has not accounted for in his principle is the super ego. Here Annie and the observers are the id and the room full of subjects is the ego, but lying in the subconscious is the super ego played by Abed. The id may overtake the ego and drive it to a tantrum, but the super ego still remains present. Addressing our pop culture reference, Abed is Indy and we join him mid adventure (mid experiment) as in the beginning of all the films. Indy is always betrayed by someone he trusted or chose to work with in the films, here Indy is betrayed by his friend Annie when she misrepresents the experiment and their friendship. When Troy leaves, Abed is the only one left and the observes now become the ego, consumed by id examining but not listening to or engaging the super ego and eventually being driven mad as a result of this communication imbalance.
Jeff rejoins Shirley, but is trying to accept Vaughan and disengages her when she beings to make fun of Vaughan. He says that he is “trying to be a good friend to Britta…. I’m gonna show her that I am not the jerk she thinks I am and friend the hell out of that green tea drinking drum circler.” He is attempting to force himself to befriend Vaughan and disengage Shirley as a result. He is also trying to use friendship as an action rather than actually listening to Vaughan and letting a relationship grow.
The new ego of the observers consumed by id begins to attack itself and disbands in an emotional break. Annie allows Abed to leave the experiment finally, when she is told by Professor Duncan that she has ruined the Duncan Principle (she has exposed that the super ego exists).
Jeff thinks that he is truly trying to connect with and examine the super ego in Vaughan, but he is not listening still, only hearing the talk. Shirley shows up and attempts to incite Jeff to make fun of and dismiss Vaughan again, she succeeds to an extent and Jeff proclaims “you’re the devil,” naming her as the id that she represents.
Jeff practices Spanish with Britta, they are talking but they are not communicating because one is not understanding the other. Britta asks Jeff to examine Vaughan further and reveals that she has become intimate with him, but that she worries he is over thinking things more than she is (her super ego is outweighing her id, manifesting here as sexual desire). She reveals Vaughan’s poetry and Jeff copies it to make fun of it with Shirley in private. They tear apart his words without looking at the underlying sentiment. Pierce hears them with his augmented hearing and misinterprets what they are talking about.
Troy apologizes to Annie for ruining the experiment, and Annie reveals that the waiting was the experiment. She confronts Abed about ruining the experiment, and he reveals in a dead pan manner that he was livid for the 26 hours he sat in the room. She asks why he did not just leave and complete the experiment (super ego surrendering to the id), and he says it was because she asked him to stay and had said that they are friends (because they need to be in balance, not one over the other, but they are not communicating properly). This defeats Annie’s rage. Jeff and Shirley enter, still making fun of Vaughan. Pierce reveals to the group his misconceptions about Jeff and Shirley’s subject, he extrapolates their mockery of the super ego onto the group (he takes personally Jeff’s inner struggle). Shirley mocks Vaughan’s speech patterns and then passes his poem around for everyone to mock. They mock Vaughan openly as he enters and drive Vaughan away. Outside, Shirley reveals herself to Jeff as the id “I have a gossip problem, I stir the pot, Jeff, I’m a pot stirrer.” Jeff tells Shirley that they can not make fun of people anymore, but that they can still hang out. Jeff is starting to seek a balance in his subconscious. Shirley brings up dream analysis, mentioning that Britta has had a sex dream about Jeff. Britta after engaging with her super ego is attempting to reconnect with her id, but still only subconsciously.
Annie comes to Abed and apologizes by giving him the Indiana Jones trilogy, she is saying she understands what he is about and is giving him what he represents so that they may be in balance. Jeff finds out Britta is no longer with Vaughan and asks if he can remain her friend but not need to hear about her id (guys she dates) anymore. He mentions the sexy dream though and Britta expresses a frustration with Shirley (the id).
Outside, we see Vaughan who is now out of sync and tells the rest of the hacky sack group that there are “some worries, man, some worries” as we see Shirley and Britta giggling together, Britta is now falling out of sync and following her id closer than her super ego, she has no balance once again.
Jeff asks Pierce for his ear-noculars so that he may spy on Britta and her id, but Pierce says that he has gotten rid of it and explains “see, Jeff, there’s certain things man was not meant to hear. We were designed by whatever entity you choose, to hear whatever’s in this range, and really this range alone. ‘Cus you know who’s talking to us in this range? The people we love.” Pierce explains that the id/super ego balance in the ego is the responsibility of the individual and that we need to talk on the surface level with and listen to the people we love. Pierce has become Jeff’s super ego and his former actions of spying on and misinterpreting everything had been showing Jeff’s actions of attempting to analyze Britta’s super ego rather than his own. The way to link the seemingly subconscious ephemera to the conscious is through speech, this is the goal of the talking treatment and word association of Freud and his school of psychoanalysis. Britta brings up Jeff’s silver tongue at the beginning and Jeff says “I’m at my best during high speed bursts of wit,” he also talked about filling all of the silences with talk. He is leaving no room for introspection or listening and is not taking the time to weigh the id and the super ego’s input before speaking, he is out of balance. But he hears Pierce’s words and contemplates them before dismissing them with a quip to no one but himself.
![Community 1x02: “Spanish 101”
“I am your dean with a few corrections to the fall class catalog. Cosmology should be cosmetology, astrology should be astronomy, and the students on the cover should be smiling, but I suppose that’s a matter of opinion.”
Modern cosmology is the study of the origins and fate of the universe. Not only how we got here, but also how everything got here, its progression, and what its ultimate demise will be. This big picture view is being completely replaced by the superficiality of looking good through donning facades (cosmetology). Astrology is a manufactured belief system placed on top of the stars and planets and other actual heavenly bodies. By turning astrology into astronomy, we are ripping the framework of lies off and studying only the actuality of what is there. This opening voice over by the dean explains the flow of the episode.
When Jeff arrives at school, he dons his first guise to get what he wants. He takes the faculty parking permit from someone else and puts it on his own car so that he may keep the close parking space that he wants. Inside, Pierce is presenting a facade to the group, making more of his relationship with Jeff (he likens him to a brother) than there is, to connect with the group more. Britta attempts to rebuke the idea that Jeff is important to the group: “Will you guys have some self respect, you are obsessing over someone who does not give you a second thought, meanwhile in Guatemala journalists are being killed by their own government…. Believe me, every day in that country, people are being killed for speaking out and the worst part of it is when it’s all over [Abed announces that spoilers follow] it’s gonna be as if it never even happened.” Britta tell shim that there are no such things as spoilers in real life and that TV is different from real life. Jeff enters like The Fonz from Happy Days and every one except Britta is happy to see him. He greets every one in a superficially friendly way and uses sympathy to get Spanish notes from Annie without doing any work. He sits back and asks “So what’s a guy gotta do to get a C around here?” Jeff’s goal is the middle of the road and a maintaining of the status quo.
Jeff offers an apology card featuring mixed metaphors to try to get Britta to forgive his first impression given in the last episode. She rebuffs him and rejects the card. Pierce tells him “You can’t pursue people so obsessively, it starts to creep them out.” Pierce then proceeds to do just that to Jeff, comedically showing himself to be a mirror for Jeff in this episode. Britta encounters her own mirror outside in Annie and Shirley. Annie says that Britta would “rather keep it real than be likable” and they both wish to follow suit. They ask for more information on the Guatemala situation that Britta told them to care about earlier. She somewhat grudgingly gives them a path to follow and casts derision on their chosen course of action once they leave.
We enter our first Spanish class. In this episode, Spanish is a metaphor for the language of friendship which the group is still learning how to use between one another. Chang presents their assignment to partner up in pairs to have conversations using phrases they learned in unit (episode) 1. The assignment is to maintain the status quo. Do not go further with one another than the superficial surface of first meetings. Jeff again dons a guise to get to Britta, by switching assignment cards with Abed. Abed will only switch if Jeff wears his shirt and lets Abed take away Jeff’s shirt. Jeff agrees, but his guise ultimately does not work because Britta has traded cards with Pierce for reasons unknown at this time.
Pierce and Jeff meet in the group’s normal study room. Pierce immediately opens up to Jeff saying that he has never had kids, and that it is only because he is super virile. He implies that whereas before he likened himself and Jeff to brothers, now he is longing for a son. Pierce is grasping for any connection with Jeff. When Jeff attempts to bring Pierce into the assignment and simply maintain the status quo by using 5 already learned phrases. Pierce erupts, asking “what am I, a piece of garbage to you?” by which Jeff is taken aback and denies the accusation with guarded empathy. Pierce acts as if he were joking and proceeds to try to connect with Jeff further.
Pierce wants to dig into the assignment by writing a story for the two of them as a team. He then says a better idea is to backtrack and discuss the origins of story itself. He is forcing a grand cosmology of story to take the place of the cosmetological simplicity of the assignment. Jeff resigns himself to such an exercise for now.
Meanwhile, Britta reencounters Annie and Shirley, actively doing something about the Guatemalan cause which Britta brought up earlier. Britta calls them “tacky and lame”, to which Annie replies that she sounds like Guatemala. Looking into her mirror, Britta realizes that she is hypocritical and that her status quo is not actually doing anything about the causes she espouses.
Jeff, looking into his mirror Pierce, reacts with frustration. Troy and Abed enter (Abed still wearing the guise he took from Jeff earlier). Troy and Abed perform their assignment, which is simply the 5 known statements from lesson 1. Jeff sees his usual self reflected in Abed’s clothes (which is Jeff’s shirt) and Abed’s status quo holding assignment. Jeff holds up the stack of yellow paper containing the cosmology of Pierce and himself and rejects it for the cosmetology of his old self, saying “we are going to take this and put it in a museum for crazy people” then ripping a page from the pre-defined text to use as his assignment.
Outside, Jeff once again dons a disguise to impress Britta by putting protest tape over his mouth and buying a sign off of another protestor. Having seen her own hypocrisy in her mirror, Britta extends an olive branch to Jeff, and he responds in his old pompous way (temporarily removing his guise to do so). Pierce comes out and completely destroys Jeff’s facade by blatantly stating truths about Jeff.
The day of the assignment, Jeff again presents Britta with an apology card full of mixed metaphors, but this time he seems a little more sincere because he is apologizing for Pierce (Jeff’s mirror). She takes the card, and everyone then proceeds to bad mouth Pierce (in turn bad mouthing Jeff). Britta finally spells out the truth: “He offered me a hundred dollars to switch cards with him just so he could be partners with Jeff. I think he thought getting closer to Jeff would bring him respect in the group. I think he spent his whole life looking out for himself and he would trade it all for a shot at some kind of family.” Jeff finally has his framework of lies torn down and he sees the mirror image he was supposed to see for what it is. Unlike Britta said to Abed earlier, real life does have spoilers, because Pierce is the spoiler for what Jeff will become if he maintains his status quo as he has been wanting to do all along. Chang offers Jeff a C in the class if he does nothing and watches Pierce act out their story alone. A C is what Jeff stated he wanted in the beginning, but now he cannot go through with it. He decides to do the assignment with Pierce.
Throughout the assignment, both Jeff and Pierce don many guises, but they are always the same or very similar guises, making each of them mirror images of one another, putting on a spectacle of themselves before the class. In the commentary for this episode, Dan Harmon states “if the audience isn’t just sitting there watching, then they’re participating, and we need them out there like just judging these guys because the triumph needs to be that Joel is willing to do something stupid, not something that uplifted anybody.” In the end, Jeff gets an F- and Pierce gets an F, remember if Jeff had done nothing he would have gotten his C. Britta calls what he did selfless, but that does not mean he mastered the language of friendship (Spanish), and Abed told us earlier that the spoiler for this episode was “when it’s all over it’s gonna be as if it never even happened.” Jeff will still use guises and facades in the future. Chang is not the best person to be judging the language of friendship. He does say he knows the language well, but then goes on to say that 90% of Spanish is hands and he uses his hands to stroke a student’s cheek inappropriately in that first screen cap.
Episode 1 Analysis
Episode 2 Analysis
Episode 3 Analysis
Episode 4 Analysis
Episode 5 Analysis
Episode 6 Analysis
Episode 7 Analysis](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lrbeqcE0iW1qzh8m2o1_500.png)
Community 1x02: “Spanish 101”
“I am your dean with a few corrections to the fall class catalog. Cosmology should be cosmetology, astrology should be astronomy, and the students on the cover should be smiling, but I suppose that’s a matter of opinion.”
Modern cosmology is the study of the origins and fate of the universe. Not only how we got here, but also how everything got here, its progression, and what its ultimate demise will be. This big picture view is being completely replaced by the superficiality of looking good through donning facades (cosmetology). Astrology is a manufactured belief system placed on top of the stars and planets and other actual heavenly bodies. By turning astrology into astronomy, we are ripping the framework of lies off and studying only the actuality of what is there. This opening voice over by the dean explains the flow of the episode.
When Jeff arrives at school, he dons his first guise to get what he wants. He takes the faculty parking permit from someone else and puts it on his own car so that he may keep the close parking space that he wants. Inside, Pierce is presenting a facade to the group, making more of his relationship with Jeff (he likens him to a brother) than there is, to connect with the group more. Britta attempts to rebuke the idea that Jeff is important to the group: “Will you guys have some self respect, you are obsessing over someone who does not give you a second thought, meanwhile in Guatemala journalists are being killed by their own government…. Believe me, every day in that country, people are being killed for speaking out and the worst part of it is when it’s all over [Abed announces that spoilers follow] it’s gonna be as if it never even happened.” Britta tell shim that there are no such things as spoilers in real life and that TV is different from real life. Jeff enters like The Fonz from Happy Days and every one except Britta is happy to see him. He greets every one in a superficially friendly way and uses sympathy to get Spanish notes from Annie without doing any work. He sits back and asks “So what’s a guy gotta do to get a C around here?” Jeff’s goal is the middle of the road and a maintaining of the status quo.
Jeff offers an apology card featuring mixed metaphors to try to get Britta to forgive his first impression given in the last episode. She rebuffs him and rejects the card. Pierce tells him “You can’t pursue people so obsessively, it starts to creep them out.” Pierce then proceeds to do just that to Jeff, comedically showing himself to be a mirror for Jeff in this episode. Britta encounters her own mirror outside in Annie and Shirley. Annie says that Britta would “rather keep it real than be likable” and they both wish to follow suit. They ask for more information on the Guatemala situation that Britta told them to care about earlier. She somewhat grudgingly gives them a path to follow and casts derision on their chosen course of action once they leave.
We enter our first Spanish class. In this episode, Spanish is a metaphor for the language of friendship which the group is still learning how to use between one another. Chang presents their assignment to partner up in pairs to have conversations using phrases they learned in unit (episode) 1. The assignment is to maintain the status quo. Do not go further with one another than the superficial surface of first meetings. Jeff again dons a guise to get to Britta, by switching assignment cards with Abed. Abed will only switch if Jeff wears his shirt and lets Abed take away Jeff’s shirt. Jeff agrees, but his guise ultimately does not work because Britta has traded cards with Pierce for reasons unknown at this time.
Pierce and Jeff meet in the group’s normal study room. Pierce immediately opens up to Jeff saying that he has never had kids, and that it is only because he is super virile. He implies that whereas before he likened himself and Jeff to brothers, now he is longing for a son. Pierce is grasping for any connection with Jeff. When Jeff attempts to bring Pierce into the assignment and simply maintain the status quo by using 5 already learned phrases. Pierce erupts, asking “what am I, a piece of garbage to you?” by which Jeff is taken aback and denies the accusation with guarded empathy. Pierce acts as if he were joking and proceeds to try to connect with Jeff further.
Pierce wants to dig into the assignment by writing a story for the two of them as a team. He then says a better idea is to backtrack and discuss the origins of story itself. He is forcing a grand cosmology of story to take the place of the cosmetological simplicity of the assignment. Jeff resigns himself to such an exercise for now.
Meanwhile, Britta reencounters Annie and Shirley, actively doing something about the Guatemalan cause which Britta brought up earlier. Britta calls them “tacky and lame”, to which Annie replies that she sounds like Guatemala. Looking into her mirror, Britta realizes that she is hypocritical and that her status quo is not actually doing anything about the causes she espouses.
Jeff, looking into his mirror Pierce, reacts with frustration. Troy and Abed enter (Abed still wearing the guise he took from Jeff earlier). Troy and Abed perform their assignment, which is simply the 5 known statements from lesson 1. Jeff sees his usual self reflected in Abed’s clothes (which is Jeff’s shirt) and Abed’s status quo holding assignment. Jeff holds up the stack of yellow paper containing the cosmology of Pierce and himself and rejects it for the cosmetology of his old self, saying “we are going to take this and put it in a museum for crazy people” then ripping a page from the pre-defined text to use as his assignment.
Outside, Jeff once again dons a disguise to impress Britta by putting protest tape over his mouth and buying a sign off of another protestor. Having seen her own hypocrisy in her mirror, Britta extends an olive branch to Jeff, and he responds in his old pompous way (temporarily removing his guise to do so). Pierce comes out and completely destroys Jeff’s facade by blatantly stating truths about Jeff.
The day of the assignment, Jeff again presents Britta with an apology card full of mixed metaphors, but this time he seems a little more sincere because he is apologizing for Pierce (Jeff’s mirror). She takes the card, and everyone then proceeds to bad mouth Pierce (in turn bad mouthing Jeff). Britta finally spells out the truth: “He offered me a hundred dollars to switch cards with him just so he could be partners with Jeff. I think he thought getting closer to Jeff would bring him respect in the group. I think he spent his whole life looking out for himself and he would trade it all for a shot at some kind of family.” Jeff finally has his framework of lies torn down and he sees the mirror image he was supposed to see for what it is. Unlike Britta said to Abed earlier, real life does have spoilers, because Pierce is the spoiler for what Jeff will become if he maintains his status quo as he has been wanting to do all along. Chang offers Jeff a C in the class if he does nothing and watches Pierce act out their story alone. A C is what Jeff stated he wanted in the beginning, but now he cannot go through with it. He decides to do the assignment with Pierce.
Throughout the assignment, both Jeff and Pierce don many guises, but they are always the same or very similar guises, making each of them mirror images of one another, putting on a spectacle of themselves before the class. In the commentary for this episode, Dan Harmon states “if the audience isn’t just sitting there watching, then they’re participating, and we need them out there like just judging these guys because the triumph needs to be that Joel is willing to do something stupid, not something that uplifted anybody.” In the end, Jeff gets an F- and Pierce gets an F, remember if Jeff had done nothing he would have gotten his C. Britta calls what he did selfless, but that does not mean he mastered the language of friendship (Spanish), and Abed told us earlier that the spoiler for this episode was “when it’s all over it’s gonna be as if it never even happened.” Jeff will still use guises and facades in the future. Chang is not the best person to be judging the language of friendship. He does say he knows the language well, but then goes on to say that 90% of Spanish is hands and he uses his hands to stroke a student’s cheek inappropriately in that first screen cap.
![Community 1x01: “Pilot”
“What is community college? Well, you’ve heard it’s all kinds of things. You’ve heard it’s loser college for remedial teens, 20 something dropouts, middle aged divorcees, and old people keeping their minds active as they circle the drain of eternity. That’s what you heard, however, I wish you luck!.”
The dean has just stereotyped many of the supporting characters into roles, and it turns out he is missing the full deck of cards to tell them how things will be different from these preconceived notions of self.
Jeff has not yet been cast in a type, but as soon as we meet him, we find that he is looking for ways to use people, and that is what we are doing too. How can we utilize him and all of these characters we are meeting for the first time, as mirrors for ourselves or models of antithesis? In his first three interactions, Jeff wants to use Abed to get to Britta, use Britta to get sex, and use his old acquaintance to cheat his way through the community college by being handed all of the answers. He is lead to believe that he might get them.
Soon, the study group meets for the first time, and Abed gives us our first Breakfast Club reference. The assigned thesis of the Breakfast Club’s essay was “who you think you are,” which is also our assignment here as engaged viewers. Which of these character stereotypes introduced in the beginning are we going to latch onto?Jeff quickly distances himself from the group and rejoins his old acquaintance Duncan, who is a connection to his old life as a lawyer, when he was able to use his silver tongue to cheat the system. He still hopes that he can get all of the answers from this link to his past, but the only answer Duncan gives is a question of whether or not Jeff knows the difference between right and wrong. Jeff responds: “I discovered at a very early age that if I talk long enough, I could make anything right or wrong, so either I’m God, or truth is relative, but in either case: booyah.”
Jeff returns to encounter the rest of the study group, and Abed gives a second Breakfast Club reference. Jeff uses everyone and plays them off one another to throw the group into turmoil in hopes of extracting himself from the group once again. Abed delivers Bender’s speech from The Breakfast Club and stops the fight momentarily. The only person his reference elicits a response from is Jeff, everyone else becomes a silent observer. Jeff retreats again to finally retrieve all of the answers from his old acquaintance. When he returns, he must once again use everyone to attempt to get what he wants from Britta. He makes his first speech:
“We’re the only species on Earth that observes Shark Week. Sharks don’t even observe Shark Week, but we do, for the same reason I can pick up this pencil, tell you it’s name is Steve and go like this, and part of you dies just a little bit on the inside, because people can connect with anything. We can sympathize with a pencil, we can forgive a shark, and we can give Ben Affleck an Academy Award for screenwriting. People can find the good in just about anything but themselves.”
He goes on to recast everyone in the group in a new type. In the commentary, the creators explain this scene as follows: “He’s bringing them together [but] the character doesn’t mean it, but then again he’s not lying ‘cus the whole point of this character is supposed to be… the character doesn’t hate anybody, he doesn’t think that anybody’s a bad person, he’s too self-involved to care enough to judge anybody.”
In his speech, regarding Abed, Jeff states: “Abed’s a shaman. You ask him to pass the salt, he gives you a bowl of soup, because you know what? Soup is better.” The only person Abed connected with earlier during his film reference was Jeff, and we can see Bender (to whom the speech belongs in the film) as Jeff and perhaps the related story as symbolic of Jeff’s motivation. Jeff did confess earlier to the lunch lady: “I’m sorry. I was raised on TV, and I was conditioned to believe that every black woman over 50 is a cosmic mentor.” Though Abed does not change Jeff’s behavior with his references, he is attempting to reach him. To paraphrase Joseph Campbell, the job of the shaman is to determine what is wrong in the community, travel to the appropriate higher realm, commune with the spirits, and set it right quickly. The higher realm here is the collective unconscious of popular culture, and that is what the entire episode has been working in to set you at ease and help you connect better with the characters. When Abed shouted his reference, it was not at the group because they were not broken, but rather at Jeff who was breaking the group.
After the group is repaired by Jeff’s speech and Jeff is revealed to be a fake, he storms out with all the answers and Abed begins spouting a wider variety of pop culture references after him. Outside, Jeff tears open all the answers and rifles through a lot of nothing before coming to a single page bearing the word booyah. This recolors his speech before about his ability to manipulate truth and being God, which he ended with a “booyah.” His self addressing speech was a lot of nothing. This also hearkens back to the dean not having the cards to tell anyone how to overcome their perceived categorization in the community. Jeff has ultimately gotten no answers from his old way of life. The group comes out to find Jeff without all of the answers, and they begin to project themselves onto him and pull him back into their group.
In the opening of The Breakfast Club, the letter in response to “who you think you are” lists off the stereotype assigned to each of the members of the club and declares that they feel that they are brainwashed. However, at the end of the film the letter in response to the assignment has changed to reflect the fact that they all share commonalities. In the same way, the dean’s list of stereotypes in the beginning is eclipsed by our having found something relatable in each of the characters who form the study group by the end of the episode.
Episode 1 Analysis
Episode 2 Analysis
Episode 3 Analysis
Episode 4 Analysis
Episode 5 Analysis
Episode 6 Analysis
Episode 7 Analysis](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lr6y7es28q1qzh8m2o1_500.png)
Community 1x01: “Pilot”
“What is community college? Well, you’ve heard it’s all kinds of things. You’ve heard it’s loser college for remedial teens, 20 something dropouts, middle aged divorcees, and old people keeping their minds active as they circle the drain of eternity. That’s what you heard, however, I wish you luck!.”
The dean has just stereotyped many of the supporting characters into roles, and it turns out he is missing the full deck of cards to tell them how things will be different from these preconceived notions of self.
Jeff has not yet been cast in a type, but as soon as we meet him, we find that he is looking for ways to use people, and that is what we are doing too. How can we utilize him and all of these characters we are meeting for the first time, as mirrors for ourselves or models of antithesis? In his first three interactions, Jeff wants to use Abed to get to Britta, use Britta to get sex, and use his old acquaintance to cheat his way through the community college by being handed all of the answers. He is lead to believe that he might get them.
Soon, the study group meets for the first time, and Abed gives us our first Breakfast Club reference. The assigned thesis of the Breakfast Club’s essay was “who you think you are,” which is also our assignment here as engaged viewers. Which of these character stereotypes introduced in the beginning are we going to latch onto?
Jeff quickly distances himself from the group and rejoins his old acquaintance Duncan, who is a connection to his old life as a lawyer, when he was able to use his silver tongue to cheat the system. He still hopes that he can get all of the answers from this link to his past, but the only answer Duncan gives is a question of whether or not Jeff knows the difference between right and wrong. Jeff responds: “I discovered at a very early age that if I talk long enough, I could make anything right or wrong, so either I’m God, or truth is relative, but in either case: booyah.”
Jeff returns to encounter the rest of the study group, and Abed gives a second Breakfast Club reference. Jeff uses everyone and plays them off one another to throw the group into turmoil in hopes of extracting himself from the group once again. Abed delivers Bender’s speech from The Breakfast Club and stops the fight momentarily. The only person his reference elicits a response from is Jeff, everyone else becomes a silent observer. Jeff retreats again to finally retrieve all of the answers from his old acquaintance. When he returns, he must once again use everyone to attempt to get what he wants from Britta. He makes his first speech:
“We’re the only species on Earth that observes Shark Week. Sharks don’t even observe Shark Week, but we do, for the same reason I can pick up this pencil, tell you it’s name is Steve and go like this, and part of you dies just a little bit on the inside, because people can connect with anything. We can sympathize with a pencil, we can forgive a shark, and we can give Ben Affleck an Academy Award for screenwriting. People can find the good in just about anything but themselves.”
He goes on to recast everyone in the group in a new type. In the commentary, the creators explain this scene as follows: “He’s bringing them together [but] the character doesn’t mean it, but then again he’s not lying ‘cus the whole point of this character is supposed to be… the character doesn’t hate anybody, he doesn’t think that anybody’s a bad person, he’s too self-involved to care enough to judge anybody.”
In his speech, regarding Abed, Jeff states: “Abed’s a shaman. You ask him to pass the salt, he gives you a bowl of soup, because you know what? Soup is better.” The only person Abed connected with earlier during his film reference was Jeff, and we can see Bender (to whom the speech belongs in the film) as Jeff and perhaps the related story as symbolic of Jeff’s motivation. Jeff did confess earlier to the lunch lady: “I’m sorry. I was raised on TV, and I was conditioned to believe that every black woman over 50 is a cosmic mentor.” Though Abed does not change Jeff’s behavior with his references, he is attempting to reach him. To paraphrase Joseph Campbell, the job of the shaman is to determine what is wrong in the community, travel to the appropriate higher realm, commune with the spirits, and set it right quickly. The higher realm here is the collective unconscious of popular culture, and that is what the entire episode has been working in to set you at ease and help you connect better with the characters. When Abed shouted his reference, it was not at the group because they were not broken, but rather at Jeff who was breaking the group.
After the group is repaired by Jeff’s speech and Jeff is revealed to be a fake, he storms out with all the answers and Abed begins spouting a wider variety of pop culture references after him. Outside, Jeff tears open all the answers and rifles through a lot of nothing before coming to a single page bearing the word booyah. This recolors his speech before about his ability to manipulate truth and being God, which he ended with a “booyah.” His self addressing speech was a lot of nothing. This also hearkens back to the dean not having the cards to tell anyone how to overcome their perceived categorization in the community. Jeff has ultimately gotten no answers from his old way of life. The group comes out to find Jeff without all of the answers, and they begin to project themselves onto him and pull him back into their group.
In the opening of The Breakfast Club, the letter in response to “who you think you are” lists off the stereotype assigned to each of the members of the club and declares that they feel that they are brainwashed. However, at the end of the film the letter in response to the assignment has changed to reflect the fact that they all share commonalities. In the same way, the dean’s list of stereotypes in the beginning is eclipsed by our having found something relatable in each of the characters who form the study group by the end of the episode.
