(These may be copy/pasted from an AIM chat, shhhh)
I have thoughts! On Community! madeelly had some issues with Abed having his issues and Jeff's position in the group in this ep and then I had thoughts.
I thought this episode was actually incredibly well done. Like, it feels a little weird, but it works a lot better when you think about it, which is I guess good TV? Clearly, we've needed another Abed episode for a while, and I thought this was a really cool way to do it because it's a solely Abed thing to tell his own story in this sort of way. Annie's story would probably be told incredibly fast paced and spoken like meth-addled Gilmore Girls and I feel like Troy's would have sports metaphors and a lot of sudden Family Guy style cuts and things like that, which is one of the things that makes this show great. All of the characters clearly have a very specific viewpoint.
One of the things I think worked best was the fact that Abed was the narrator. It pretty much excuses any characterization issues for me because they're just being presented as Abed saw it and chose to interpret it, rather than by an unbiased extended view that we normally get where there's more subtlety and nuance. Which is why I think a lot of the things that happen here can't be taken as strictly canon because Abed is an unreliable narrator and while the events may have happened, they're clearly shaded by Abed-vision. Which is an interesting way to do a one-off episode. Like, there are scenes where Abed isn't actually there, so he's clearly telling them by what he heard and how he thinks things went, not necessarily how they actually did.
I think it puts a lot of things about the white!Abed to light. He was talking about how he's fine the way he is, but in this episode he clearly wants to be seen as useful to the group. I feel like the big difference is that when it came to white!Abed, Jeff was the only one NOT trying to change him and here Jeff was the one offering to utilize Abed's talents. I'm pretty sure Abed feels that if it weren't for Jeff, he wouldn't have his friends and he feels like he needs to not so much repay that, but to be as good to Jeff as Jeff is to him because their relationship has grown a lot.
On the whole, I think Abed feels a lot more equal to Troy and doesn't feel that he needs to prove himself to the girls for one reason or another, but Jeff is that character that he's seen all his life and always wanted to be, so here is that idol choosing him and Abed wants to feel worthy. Which is sad, but it also highlights how far both Jeff and their friendship has come because nothing about this was about using Abed. Jeff just knew that Abed would be best for the job and I think that if Abed had said no, Jeff would have been okay with it, but we wouldn't have seen that through Abed's POV because Abed worries about disappointing Jeff. But even through Abed-vision, there was nothing to suggest that Jeff wanted to really exploit Abed, which he would have done at the beginning of the season without hesitation. Jeff was actually sincerely worried about the state of everyone and that was possibly the one thing that was Abedified that I have no problem believing is canon.
So I guess what this overly long thing is saying is that as much as the episode was about Abed, it was still about Jeff and the group just as much in a different way. Because Jeff's storyline was about Jeff and how he and Abed have issues, but it was also about how Jeff does care about them all and not even giving the episode a completely new and biased narrator can make that feel out of character.
I thought this episode was actually incredibly well done. Like, it feels a little weird, but it works a lot better when you think about it, which is I guess good TV? Clearly, we've needed another Abed episode for a while, and I thought this was a really cool way to do it because it's a solely Abed thing to tell his own story in this sort of way. Annie's story would probably be told incredibly fast paced and spoken like meth-addled Gilmore Girls and I feel like Troy's would have sports metaphors and a lot of sudden Family Guy style cuts and things like that, which is one of the things that makes this show great. All of the characters clearly have a very specific viewpoint.
One of the things I think worked best was the fact that Abed was the narrator. It pretty much excuses any characterization issues for me because they're just being presented as Abed saw it and chose to interpret it, rather than by an unbiased extended view that we normally get where there's more subtlety and nuance. Which is why I think a lot of the things that happen here can't be taken as strictly canon because Abed is an unreliable narrator and while the events may have happened, they're clearly shaded by Abed-vision. Which is an interesting way to do a one-off episode. Like, there are scenes where Abed isn't actually there, so he's clearly telling them by what he heard and how he thinks things went, not necessarily how they actually did.
I think it puts a lot of things about the white!Abed to light. He was talking about how he's fine the way he is, but in this episode he clearly wants to be seen as useful to the group. I feel like the big difference is that when it came to white!Abed, Jeff was the only one NOT trying to change him and here Jeff was the one offering to utilize Abed's talents. I'm pretty sure Abed feels that if it weren't for Jeff, he wouldn't have his friends and he feels like he needs to not so much repay that, but to be as good to Jeff as Jeff is to him because their relationship has grown a lot.
On the whole, I think Abed feels a lot more equal to Troy and doesn't feel that he needs to prove himself to the girls for one reason or another, but Jeff is that character that he's seen all his life and always wanted to be, so here is that idol choosing him and Abed wants to feel worthy. Which is sad, but it also highlights how far both Jeff and their friendship has come because nothing about this was about using Abed. Jeff just knew that Abed would be best for the job and I think that if Abed had said no, Jeff would have been okay with it, but we wouldn't have seen that through Abed's POV because Abed worries about disappointing Jeff. But even through Abed-vision, there was nothing to suggest that Jeff wanted to really exploit Abed, which he would have done at the beginning of the season without hesitation. Jeff was actually sincerely worried about the state of everyone and that was possibly the one thing that was Abedified that I have no problem believing is canon.
So I guess what this overly long thing is saying is that as much as the episode was about Abed, it was still about Jeff and the group just as much in a different way. Because Jeff's storyline was about Jeff and how he and Abed have issues, but it was also about how Jeff does care about them all and not even giving the episode a completely new and biased narrator can make that feel out of character.