Community

About the series

Contains story spoilers.

Community begins with someone hoping that education will involve as little learning as possible. Jeff Winger is a lawyer whose college degree has been exposed as a fake, forcing him back to school. At Greendale, the group he ends up leading includes Britta Perry, Abed Nadir, Shirley Bennett, Annie Edison, Troy Barnes and businessman Pierce Hawthorne. Created by Dan Harmon, the comedy began in 2009 with Joel McHale playing Jeff. Its study table puts people with different ambitions and habits within arguing distance of one another. Jeff wants an easy route through his obligations, but these selected stories from the first three seasons repeatedly make him depend on the people he hopes to manoeuvre. The group's schemes can grow far beyond classwork, with cafeteria food, a missing pen or a housewarming party becoming occasions to test who is really in charge and how much the others will tolerate.

The cafeteria's chicken fingers become a source of power in Contemporary American Poultry. When Starburns reserves the food for his friends, Jeff decides that the study group needs someone of its own working the fryer. Britta and Annie help expose Starburns giving away chicken, and Abed takes the vacant job. What begins as a way to get lunch becomes a network of favours, with food exchanged for benefits and the group enjoying its new influence. Abed treats the operation as a crime-film organisation and becomes its effective leader. Jeff resents being pushed aside, while the others grow entitled to gifts and attention. Abed retaliates against their demands by destroying or withdrawing their rewards. Jeff heads for the kitchen intending to sabotage the fryer, but instead hears that Abed was trying to connect with people. They agree to help one another, and the distribution scheme ends. Getting lunch has exposed both Jeff's need for control and Abed's difficulty finding a place outside the stories he knows.

Cooperative Calligraphy achieves a similar collapse without taking anyone out of the study room. Annie's pen disappears as the group prepares to leave for a puppy parade, and she refuses to let another missing possession go unchallenged. Bags are searched, private things become public and the hunt becomes an argument about whether a friend could really let everyone suffer over such a small theft. Abed's notes about the women's menstrual cycles and a pregnancy test in Shirley's bag make the loss increasingly intrusive. Even stripping down for further searches fails to produce the pen. The group finally chooses a shared ghost explanation rather than accept that one of its members is deliberately hurting the rest. It is a way to stop the investigation and preserve trust, although the audience then sees a monkey with a cache of stolen objects in the ventilation system. Their friendship survives without their ever reaching the correct explanation.

Jeff's effort to get credit for an invented class in Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design creates a problem when the teacher he made up actually appears. Dean Pelton challenges the supposed independent study, but a man calling himself Professor Professorson produces identification and backs Jeff's story. Jeff admits to Annie that he has never seen the man before. Her investigation identifies him as a drama teacher, and the attempt to uncover the deception turns into a succession of performances involving Jeff, Annie and the dean. They use prop guns and staged betrayals to teach one another lessons, each new reveal showing that someone was following a different plan. A policeman joins the performance to demonstrate that prop weapons are not toys. Meanwhile, Troy and Abed's blanket fort expands into an elaborate indoor community that Jeff and Annie pass through during their pursuit. They eventually dismantle it when its popularity spoils the private escape they wanted. Both plots show carefully arranged worlds slipping beyond their creators' control.

Remedial Chaos Theory uses a much smaller decision to explore how the friends affect one another. At Troy and Abed's housewarming party, pizza arrives downstairs, and Jeff proposes rolling a die to choose who retrieves it. The episode follows alternative versions of the evening depending on who leaves. In the version without Troy, a chain of accidents leads to Pierce being shot and spilled alcohol catching fire, turning a casual gathering into disaster. Other variations rearrange arguments, affection and hurt feelings rather than destroying the room. Eventually Abed catches the die before it lands and points out the flaw in Jeff's supposedly fair method: there are seven people but only six possible numbers, leaving Jeff exempt. Jeff goes for the pizza instead, returning to find the others dancing together. The disastrous possibility remains a separate imagined course of events, rather than what actually happens to the group that evening.

Digital Estate Planning turns Pierce's family business into a competition inside a video game. His dead father has tied an inheritance to being the first player to reach a virtual castle, drawing Pierce and the study group into a world of pixel versions of themselves. Gilbert, who knows the game's workings, joins the contest and eventually reveals that he is Pierce's half-brother. Their father's prejudices are built into the game, and the inheritance comes with a demand that Gilbert never acknowledge being his son. Gilbert refuses the condition. Abed has meanwhile stayed with a game character called Hilda, creating a large family of digital children who can alter the code. Their help lets the group overcome the final opposition, after which the friends step aside so Gilbert can win. Pierce's loss of the prize becomes an act of recognition toward someone who had cared for their father while being denied a legitimate place in the family.