This is a proof-of-concept for a book about Community. Essay still subject to edit before official publication.
Part I: Britta Perry was right. Britta Perry was wrong.
When she debuted in 2009 at the height of Obama era optimism, Britta Perry’s need to continue raging against the machine came off to many as trite. In a world with Hamilton and Parks & Recreation, did one really need to lock themself in a cage outside of a model U.N.? When Britta clutched the contents of her bag in “Cooperative Calligraphy” and forewarned of the Thought Police forcey-worcing us to bend and spread, this seemed to be a joke about those that see inconvenience as oppression. She would say things like, “Look, I hate cops,” pause for effect, and follow up that thought no further. This in the face of Officer Cackowski, the friendly local officer with a musical penchant who always had a lesson to impart. How could the cops be a tool of oppression when they’re teaching us about the monetary value of fire bricks?
She would say, “If our votes really counted, they’d be illegal” while the popular vote overwhelmingly reelected the first Black president of the United States. Britta opined that if she wanted the government in her uterus, she’d fill it with oil and Hispanic voters around the time gay marriage was legalized across her country.
Each of her declarations was met with dismissal or an audible, collective “Ugh!” from her close circle of friends. In “G.I. Jeff,” when Britta as Buzzkill teaches a group of cartoon children that they live in a “fascist police state disguised as a democracy,” Abed’s character Fourth Wall interrupts her with perfect comedic timing to tell the kids instead to--in effect--eat their green vegetables and do their homework.
For her fruitless protestation, Britta is labeled “the worst,” “the AT&T of people,” “a pizza burn on the roof of the world’s mouth,” and, most damningly of all, “the opposite of Batman.” Her rebellious, lived-in-New-York lifestyle was merely as fashionable as her endless closet of leather jackets. Notable also: Would someone who actually cares about animal rights own so many leather jackets?
And then, something happened that deserves its own Winger Speech.
Britta Perry was proven right.
The first draft of this essay is being written on the bridge from July 2020 into August. Here is a rough list of things that have happened since Community left the air about which Britta Perry was absolutely correct:
-New or surfaced videos and reports of police brutality or misconduct have appeared with frightening frequency and undeniability.
-There have been two straight months of daily protests against police brutality. These protests (including those that were entirely peaceful) were themselves met with incredible police brutality. Several protesters have ended up dead, many more with permanent injuries. The police fear so little repercussions for their actions, they are engaging in rampant police brutality during police brutality protests.
-During a viral pandemic the U.S. government has entirely failed to abate or contain, the upcoming election will largely be vote by mail. The current presidential administration has throttled the United States Post Office by putting a fraudulent leader at its head and massively cutting funding, setting the stage for at least a massive election delay and at worst a fraudulent outcome.
-The Electoral College instating a president who lost the popular vote by millions of votes.
-The U.S. war with the Middle East has continued for eighteen years, long after the stated reasons for starting the war were proven fraudulent. Its implied reasons for continuing are interpreted as oil & control.
-Our “two fake parties” have done very little about any of this, engaging instead in symbolic gestures. “Someone should do something,” say the people with power to do something.
It is almost certain that I am missing many examples. Through the passage of time and the revelation of information and perspective, Britta Perry was right.
However, (and do please hold this pause as long as you see fit) there are other sides to this die.
Britta Perry is, shall we say, deeply flawed. She’s frequently hypocritical, like when she tosses out her anticorporatism bent to have a Honda-centric relationship with Rick.* The line she draws is not when she is forced to manipulate her fellow humans or that she must sign over her allegiance to a gas guzzling car brand. It comes when she is asked to pretend that she likes the movie Avatar.**
*The sales artist formerly known as Subway.
**It’s a very popular film.
Playwright and podcaster Jacen Ziev referred to Britta as a startling example of a “white feminist.” To summarize it simply, Britta’s version of feminism is very narrow. It excludes the Christian motherhood of her friend, Shirley. She enjoys a little too deeply the chance to throw Shirley’s distress about her possible pregnancy back in her face in “Cooperative Calligraphy.” Her version is often critical of the “little girl” aesthetics and not infrequent cleavage of Annie, her closest confidant. In “The Psychology of Letting Go,” Britta and Annie come to physical blows in a disagreement of expressed femininity that starts with her lambasting Annie for her playing into patriarchal gender stereotypes.
And this is to say nothing of Britta’s… indelicate dealings on the subject of race. In “Geography of Global Conflict,” she makes a plea to the Black members of her study group that ends with the epithet-laden plea to her fellow “N-words.” Walking this moment back one sentence later does not negate its happening in the first place. In a moment emblematic of White Nonsense, Britta leaps at the opportunity Shirley inadvertently presents to her by saying “you people” in regards to white slackers to spew “What do you mean, you people?” She follows it up by stating how long she’s “wanted to say that,” as if she’s long been itching to throw a rebuttal of everyday racism back in the face of the Black community. This was all the rage for a few decades there. It has also never once been a good look.
When she drops what she believes to be a deep burn on Abed’s father with, “That’s right, I’m a woman, and you can see my whole face,” she’s less showing the oppression of a community but rather her ignorance about the would-be oppressors. Gobi Nadir’s response: “Oh, I get it. Because I’m Arab, I must hate women… I love women. But I’m getting a major b-word vibe from you.” It’s subjective, but he’s not wrong. Britta Perry was wrong.
Britta Perry is right. Britta Perry is wrong. The dial of this particular psych major’s relative correctness springs back and forth between these two extremes, and only these extremes. Sometimes it does a full 180 from one moment to the next.
If we accept that one’s moral correctitude and efficacy can be measured by how they lead (please do), then let’s examine exactly that. Look upon the works of Britta Perry: Spearheader and despair. Despair that as we gaze into the Galadriel-esque Mirror of Britta to look to prove her right or wrong, we will only find her gobsmacked in the middle.
-“Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas”: Abed experiences an emotional trauma and interprets the world into Claymation. Britta is the first to become concerned about her friend’s condition. After he destroys a parking lot full of cars, is incapacitated by campus police, and assaults fellow student Chang in public, Britta takes it upon herself to “trick” Abed into therapy. She is summarily tossed out of the therapy adventure for her ulterior motives and not pursuing the true meaning of Christmas. But her ends and means conflict and leave the situation in a morally messy place. To be sure, trying to save her friend from expulsion is a righteous idea, but to manipulate him into an unwanted therapy session (with a psychologist whose goals for the situation are well below board) is murky to the say the least.
-“App Development and Condiments”: When an app that lets users rate other people on a scale of up to five MeowMeowBeenz is beta tested at Greendale, the school splits into social strata based on rating. Britta is an early naysayer of this concept. She urges her fellow students to rise above the baser instincts of humanity. Her warnings are cast out for their intensity. It’s not until her face is marred with a streak of yellow mustard that her revolutionary ideas are considered. She becomes the spokesperson for the unheard. She dons a Che-esque beret. Propagandic posters of her face and iconic mustard stain are erected in her honor.
When the revolution comes and her Ones rise up to take out the inner sanctum of rich, futurist dancing Fives, she is ready to publicly execute them. “Execute,” a word which here means “remove the amenities of their Five society by the relatively low stakes of a Greendale app beta test.” A la Bioshock Infinite, The Dark Knight Rises, and so many other fictional revolutions that predate her, Britta’s revolution of collegiate dregs becomes that which it sought to destroy. Per Jeff’s morality and the implied morality of the show, the best class revolution is none at all.
-“Basic Email Security”: In a pastiche of the Sony email hacks, the Save Greendale Committee is threatened by a preteen hacker with an ultimatum: If offensive comedian Gupta Gupti Gupta performs at Greendale, their private emails will be leaked for all to see. In a move that surprises many within and without of the show’s universe, Britta stands up in defense of the comedian’s right to do this terrible act. She speechifies the group into not being bullied out of their First Amendment rights. And the hacker releases their information. The group turns on itself as secrets that should have been kept are revealed for all to read. All this for a performance with a total of one audience member. And in defense of a comedian who is so painfully unfunny and offensive that he did not deserve defending on the basis of quality alone. And at the end of it all, the Save Greendale Committee sits around the table, pondering if there was a point or lesson to any of this. And act of moral intensions that ends in such a state that no one, not even the people that wrote it, knows if it was worth it.
The aim of Britta’s weapon is always at that which she considers to be morally incorrect. The expression of freedom and the right to attain it are tantamount in her actions. But her execution leaves her overall morality in a humanly murky place. She cries for the rights of the masses. But we don’t listen to her unless she has mustard on her face. She opines against the treatment of the repressed, but through language represses her Black classmates and friends.
The freedom to do wrong versus the need to do right are always at odds. There is no true moral certitude where matters of freedom versus conservation are concerned. If we weigh Britta’s ends against her means, what we get is the question mark of neutrality.
She’s in moral purgatory. The essence of average. To quote Evil Abed in “Introduction to Finality,” “Do you know what kind of person becomes a psychologist, Britta? A person that wishes, deep down, that everyone more special than them was sick, because healthy sounds so much more exciting than boring. You're average, Britta Perry. You're every kid on the playground that didn't get picked on. You're a business casual potted plant, a human white sale. You're VH1, Robocop 2 and Back to the Future 3. You're the center slice of a square cheese pizza. Actually, that sounds delicious. I'm the center slice of a square cheese pizza.”
Let’s say Batman is the epitome of the moral right. Britta is more than once referred to as the “opposite of Batman.” In truth, she is neither. Halfway between Batman and the Joker. So Britta Perry is, by laws of mathematics, the most average person in the universe. That would be X-Man. Aka Nate Grey. Aka her own favorite superhero.
To not add another 1000 words of X-Man analysis, we’ll put this briefly: X-Man is the original mutant messiah. A driven figure of righteous indignation who so bungles his messianic campaign, he was almost completely forgotten for twenty years and was surmounted by another mutant messiah without so much as a ceremonial passing of the torch. If messing up your noble aims is not Britta Perry, then I simply do not know Britta Perry.
Part II: “The Britta Arc”
This section begins anecdotally. From the perspective of my Community podcast Twitter account (@GreendaleThree), I put out that if presented with anything from Community I would supply my hot take. I was inundated with lots of different questions, but two items were presented numerous times. “Jeff and Annie” (a topic I dare not broach here), and “Britta.” One asker refined their question down to “The Britta Arc.”
In a sample pool of our fifty listener-submitted topics, five of them were Britta. One-tenth of the curious were most curious about Britta. People have thoughts, strong thoughts, and want to hear others’ thoughts on this topic at a phenomenally high rate. I would place it next to other anecdotal examples like the endings of Lost or Game of Thrones as an idea they want to see born out in the public space. And as one of these Britta-obsessives, I would be more than happy to oblige.
To broach this subject on a deeper level, allow me to briefly summarize the character of Britta as she shifts throughout the show’s six year journey:
At the start of season one, Britta is the object of Jeff Winger’s desire. In “Pilot,” his mission to sleep with Britta is the reason he creates his Study Group. In this first episode, Britta is perhaps the fourth most defined of the new characters presented, but the archetype she’s a riff on presents itself as the least sustainable comedically of the group. The cocky womanizer, the clueless old man, the dumb jock, the Black Christian housewife… These are well worn territories in situation comedy. Britta as presented in “Pilot” is an acidic warrior of social justice. This is a type many might find off-putting on screen and off. Per this first episode, she’s a dropout, a smoker, a Radiohead fan, a hypocrite (she lies, after stating she hates liars), and a defender of the undefended, as evidenced by how she steps up for the Study Group when Jeff betrays their trust. She is your standard foil.
While far from the state of definition others like Don Draper left their pilots with, Britta is certainly more well defined than the generic Nice Girl, “One of the Guys” love interests found on most other shows of this stripe. Her character was locked in, but her comedic place on the show needed time.
For a dozen some odd episodes, Britta remained stagnant. Her new comedy status was not redefined until “Physical Education,” and not solidified until the April Fools/March 32nd episode “The Art of Illusion.” When her pronunciation of the word “bagel” is revealed (the hideous “bag-gel”), an irate Ben Chang dubs her The Worst. This merges with her Buzzkill status when she goofs an April Fool’s Day prank so hard it cancels the non-government holiday for her entire school. Like Emma Frost and Hank McCoy before her, Britta’s secondary mutation had emerged. She had always been a Buzzkill. But she was The Worst at it. And this mutation would only grow from here.
For the duration of the first season, Britta was Jeff’s challenger. Plots were spurred on by his desire to be with her. The duo formed a partnership of mutually assured destruction, as the “two most fragile egos of the group” (per Abed) united. They manipulated Troy into pursuing Annie out of a petty desire to spite Vaughn. They engaged in a war of immaturity with a gaggle of high schoolers. Jeff became Britta’s most frequent confidant, as she notably has trouble getting along with women.
Her worstness and relationship with Jeff fuse into an unholy meeting in the home stretch of season one. During the first of at least four schoolwide paintball games, Britta and Jeff burst the sexual tension dam. They consummated the promise of the “Pilot” on the study room table. They immediately agree that this never occurred (“It’s not that it was a mistake, just that it didn’t happen”). This pact lasts for… two episodes. In a shockingly unironic finale, Britta confesses her love for Jeff in front of the whole school. One could argue these feelings are pushed out of her by a jealousy for Jeff’s ex Michelle Slater, but these feelings were pushed out all the same.
Both women end up humiliated when Jeff ghosts the both of them to make out with a teenager. Britta’s jilted status catapults her to campus fame. She labels herself as the “People’s Champion,” borrowing phrasing from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s wrestling persona. This eventually resolves in a public competition of pettiness, the group returns to normal, and Britta & Jeff engage in a school year of Secret Sex.
For the duration of seasons two, three, four, & five, Britta slides fully into her role as The Worst. A pizza burn on the roof of the world’s mouth, if you will. She mucks up everything from a Christmas pageant, to wartime photography, to her psych major. She misidentifies RoboCop as “RowboatCop.” Outside of the odd impressive showing during a genre pastiche episode here and there, Britta’s competence reaches its valley here—particularly during season three.
During this same period, she is mocked for abandoning the same revolutionary ideals that put off so many people in the first place. Her former allies ding her for not living up the cause in “Bondage & Beta Male Sexuality.” She’s furious at herself for giving up the teargas lifestyle in “Geography of Global Conflict” (and Brittas her return to form pretty hard). This marked transition is noted by Jeff in “Course Listing Unavailable.” When Britta dons a pair of fake starburns as a form of group grief therapy, he remarks, “You seemed smarter than me when I met you.”
By the time we reach this status quo, the criticisms were common and repeated. This was not the character Britta had started off as. The former New Yorker who cared about the atrocities in Venezuela had been replaced by a bumbler. To use the parlance of our time, Britta had been “done dirty.”
To speak frankly, that’s a load of bologna.
Your first impression of someone is hardly the being you will know them to be as your relationship deepens. Whether through intentional guardwalling or someone’s unintended outward projection, there is almost always a deeper, different strata. Breaking Bad’s Walter White initially appears to be a kindhearted teacher and father, but is quickly revealed to be a criminal bulldozer with no moral scruples. On Lost, James “Sawyer” Ford projects a heartless conman, but willingly sacrifices his safety, his life, or at times his potential rescue for his fellow island castaways. The same stratified, onion-ic (or parfait-ic) approach to layered character applies just as much to Britta, though she rarely gets her due credit for it.
“Welcome to Greendale” host Jillian (@HolyCityFanGirl) phrased this idea best, so I will just copy her here:
“It’s interesting, as I wade further into discussions of Community to see people talk about Britta in season 1 as if she is a disconnect from who she is as the seasons progress. Often times my husband cites the ‘I thought you were cooler than me when I met you,’ line to me because I was that person with the cool façade who, once you broke it down was a big, soft dork. It’s why I relate to Britta SO MUCH. I get so much of what she’s about. I get finding the space to be comfortable just being you. Of worrying that you’re not doing good or enough even if your heart is in the right place. Of the entire cast of characters she is the one I’ve always felt within my soul. And I think season 1 Britta is so incredibly important to that and her.”
The Britta we come to know as the seasons progress is still her same self. When we first meet her, she is projecting her socially aware, leather jacket persona to compensate for her own feelings of inadequacy. She doesn’t become sillier or dumber, but finally feels comfortable enough to be as silly or dumb as she pleases.
And these two disparate sides of Britta Perry shake hands and fusion dance into a whole character piece in season six.
Compared to her ostensible contemporary Jeff, Britta handles her still being at Greendale six years later with much more grace and acceptance. She’s taken on a bartending gig at a local watering hole. A clumsy barkeep, but a good one. It leaves her the freedom to attend emergency Save Greendale Committee meetings concerning dog graduation. It’s not the most fruitful use of a Psych major in progress, but what is your friendly neighborhood bartender if not an occasional unlicensed therapist?
Britta’s ultimate display of prowess comes in “Advanced Safety Features.” Teamed up with Rick née Subway, Britta becomes a Honda selling machine. She pulls off manipulations heretofore unseen. She could sell circles around a used car salesman, much less their new car varietal. Billy Zane’s Honda Boss offers to buy Britta out of her old life. She gives up a future with the man of her dreams in a choice ripped right out of Casablanca. It’s a bold, declarative choice made as another layer of this character is revealed.
Britta is who you allow her to be.
Part III: BP & Potential Energy
Annie: Wait, you’re anti-wedding now?
Jeff: No, she’s just pro-anti.
Britta: “No,” to everything you both said.
Britta Perry is a reactive substance. The chemical reaction you get depends on the catalyst you apply. Abed will always be Abed (in or out of character); Shirley has two gears that she switches between with vocal cues for which mode she is in; Jeff has the one mode, with a schmooze meter that ranges in intensity based on if he is trying to actively sleep with someone. Alternatively, any number of Brittas may appear depending on the forces at play.
To use Britta’s own words from the episode “Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality,” “I’ve been defining myself with reactions to and from other people my whole life. Now I feel worthless, just because I’m worthless in relation to my friends.” One could easily interpret Britta’s form of activism along these lines—that it is performative. I would hold that the sheer number of times we hear Britta reiterate her same points is proof enough that she believes them, but for the sake of argument I’ll entertain the idea.
In “Geography of Global Conflict,” news of an old protest buddy being locked up abroad spurs Britta into performative activism. When she locks herself in a dog kennel and pours ketchup on a globe, her goal is not to get the shockingly large audience of a model U.N. competition to change their ways but rather to get a rise out of security officer Ben Chang. Her validation comes not through her action, but rather Chang’s need to act himself. The work is not what matters to her in this case. It is the reaction.
Britta also has a tendency to trade sexual favors for goods or services.* In “Accounting for Lawyers,” she comes very close to prostituting herself in exchange for a time share. Jeff refers to this move as “the world’s newest profession,” in reference to sex work being colloquially known as the World’s Oldest Profession. She’s narrowly talked out of this course of action by Jeff (though this writer sees no evidence that she did not later make good on this offer). In “Asian Population Studies,” Britta cautions Shirley away from this path. She postures that she’s been offered everything from Red Hot Chili Peppers tickets to a gym bag full of nickels for various acts or titillations. Later that same episode, Britta is abhorred to find that she flashed Neil her breasts in exchange for tickets on the (gasp) mezzanine.
*Before we continue, let it not be said that I am looking down on sex work. Quite the contrary. Sex work is as valid a profession as any other. We’re merely discussing Britta’s tendency toward it when others may be more reticent.
To my recollection, there is no source on the show for exactly how or why Britta’s side hustle developed. If I was a betting man (and in interest of this essay, let’s say I am) I’d suspect these offers of Jefferson gym bags and nosebleed seats were offered to her and not the other way around. The opportunity was presented and she took it. Being a woman of looks with less scruples than Annie, Shirley, or Frankie, Britta brokers deals with her body her companions certainly would not. Smarter people than me who have not written 4100 words about a sitcom character may continue to argue the relative empowerment of sex work, but Britta profits off of her body based on the opportunity it affords her.
The following paragraph should be taken a tad differently than the rest of this piece as it has little basis in the text and is more rooted in “fan theory” speculation. In the episode of Advanced Community Studies where we cover “Asian Population Studies,” I posited a theory my cohosts proved surprisingly amenable to. Twice in the first half of season two, Britta is seen entertaining the exchange of sexual favors for goods or services. At this point in the show, we’ve had no indication as to how Britta pays her bills--rent, school, infinite closet of leather jackets, etc. We’re a few episodes away from revealing she is a server at a local watering hole but I’m personally shaky on the idea that a server in Greendale, Colorado* is bringing home enough to pay her own rent, school bills, freely write checks to Abed for even more school bills, and food, all while being self-professed as terrible with her money. She is specifically not taking checks from her parents at this time, even though it is revealed in “Lawnmower Maintenance & Postnatal Care” alongside the fact that she owes money to basically the entire Save Greendale Committee. Sex work is work, and it can be good money. While I would doubt very seriously that Britta operates as a “prostitute” or “call girl” as those jobs are commonly understood, one could make a leap to say part-time sex work may very well be a role she fills and likely neglects to log on her taxes.
*Remember how this show takes place in Colorado?
To create a new gold standard for uncomfortable transitions, let’s talk about Britta’s love life. The first relationship we see Britta enter is with the tiny-nippled Vaughn. Like many entering into a new courtship, she spends a lot of time placating to Vaughn’s attitudes. It’s small potatoes compared to relationships to come but her feigned interest in his love of green tea or poetry is noticeable.
Next comes Page, Britta’s friend that she believes to be a lesbian. Not a romantic relationship per se, but Britta wants to make a statement by engaging in a public display of affection. She taunts her believed self-righteousness back in the face of Annie’s homophobia. In a truly sitcom-ian turn, it is revealed that Page believed the same about Britta and that the two were locked in a proclamation of mutually assured fake lesbianism. They continue to raise the stakes to each other because Britta will not be beat.
[Here will go a brief section about Troy after I rewatch season four for the first time since 2013 but it’s perhaps… telling that I forgot about the Troy relationship until after a draft of this was finished]
Most notably there is Rick aka Subway. The two first meet in an Orwellian vision of life as a spokesperson for the Subway sandwich corporation. To sabotage the food giant’s attempt to set up a franchise at Greendale, Britta must seduce Subway and prove that he violated his employer’s very strict sexual guidelines. But Britta gets wrapped up in the forbidden romance. They engage in The Love That Cannot Be (read: a finger up the butt), committing sexual acts that even Pierce cannot stomach. Subway disappears, and Britta never mentions what happened here.
That is, until Subway returns. He’s changed. He’s grown a beard. He wears flannels now. He’s hucking Hondas instead of eating fresh. Also, his name is now Rick. But Britta falls back in with him as quickly as they parted. They “break in” the cargo space of a Honda CR-V. And the two become a well-oiled selling machine. Though the relationship ends in Casablancian heartbreak, when she was on Rick’s level there was magic in the air.
And this serves as a rough segue to Britta’s relationship with Jeff Winger. Most of our interactions with Britta are in her dynamic with Jeff, whether around the study room table or off crafting some on-campus scheme. In each, she is trying to get on his level. She refuses to back down to his verbal challenges. If Jeff has “an Olympic Gold Medal in Jibberjabber,” Britta is striving for the Silver. She… cannot quite keep up. In most of these fire fights, she ends up as dejected as Jeff Winger’s dumb gay dad. In the first Halloween episode “Introduction to Statistics,” she takes the first opportunity the show has afforded her to get a leg up on Jeff. She takes his ready-made cowboy outfit to task, holding a toy gun right to his head.
They engage in frequent races to the bottom. “Mixology Certification” features an episode-long debate about which of their proposed bars are lame. In the end, it is revealed that the two bars are one in the same. Yet, they still cannot drop the idea. Britta can’t help but throw one last potshot to Jeff’s case. “The Art of Discourse” sees Jeff and Britta threatened by a gaggle of high schoolers. They retaliate to the kids’ constant torment by scheming for Jeff to sleep with their leader’s mom, eventually devolving into an hours-long bout of childish taunts being hurled back and forth. Abed describes the duo as having “the two most fragile egos of the group,” and he is certainly right.
One of the strangest ideas that is repeated throughout Community is that if put under the right amount of societal pressure or existential dread, Jeff & Britta will attempt to get married. This happens three separate times. In the first, “Anthropology 101,” mounting public pressure and Abed’s determination to make his show into Cheers lead to the almost marriage of Greendale’s most public couple—complete with Irish folk band and George Clooney impersonator. The second comes in “Urban Matrimony and the Sandwich Arts,” after Britta’s acceptance that she would make a great wife & mother, and Jeff’s struggling with the very concept of marriage as an institution.
Finally, there is “Basic Story,” the first part of the season five finale. Faced with the potential closure of Greendale (read: of Community), Jeff & Britta find themselves in a very particular place. They are older than their friends Abed & Annie, and thus more equipped to handle a major change of life. They’ve been through it before. Jeff only recently saw his self-named law firm close. The duo are certainly more emotionally stable than Dean Pelton. Yet, Shirley has her kids. Duncan is a tenured psychology professor (albeit there is a ticking clock on half of that title). Hickey is a former cop with a budding cartoonist career. The gruesome twosome don’t have nearly the same fulfillment in their extracurricular lives. So, presented with the great unknown they seek security in each other.
Previously, I would have said, “One can only guess what that says about these two.” But that’s not a very interesting essay. In for 5000 word-pounds, in for a penny.
Britta and Jeff are both desperately lonely people. Loneliness is sort of a lynchpin in the Greendale Seven coming together in the first place, but the almost Mr. & Mrs. Perry fall second only to Pierce in the vacuous state of their lives. Neither have a relationship to their families they deem worth speaking of. Jeff’s dad has notably never been in the picture, and Britta is not on speaking terms with her own parents. Jeff refers to Slater as his first girlfriend.* Britta’s romantic history is even worse (see above).
*Winger, you’re almost 40. Grow up. Say “girlfriend.”
When we meet these characters in “Pilot,” both of them have just lost their only social network. Jeff was ousted from the law firm he belonged at, and from the mentor he followed. Britta’s An-Her-Chist (their spelling) group has disbanded, as detailed in “Heroic Origins.” They are both now without purpose or place. They need an anchor. And the first one they find is each other—give or take an Abed. They hold each other in. And they weigh each other down.
At the end of “Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television,” Jeff hugs Abed and Annie goodbye at the airport. Annie is off to intern for the FBI, and Abed is starting out his Hollywood dream. Shirley and Troy had long since left to lead different lives. Even Pierce got to leave. But not Jeff, and not Britta. Though their jobs and reasons for hanging out at Greendale may have changed, they are still there. Still weighted down as if by some sort of--shall we say--ball and chain.
The two have more than put in their time bashing the institution of marriage. But “Urban Matrimony and the Sandwich Arts” sees the two crumble before the power of the time-honored matrimonial tradition. Jeff finds it in himself to see its value as he toasts his dear friend Shirley’s reentering its sphere. Britta crumbles as she realizes her lineage of wives and mothers make her a wedding planning machine. And both come seconds away from joining the marital penitentiary. Jeff never almost marries Annie or Slater. The closest Britta comes to non-Winger matrimony is with a pizza man in an alternate timeline. It is always the two of them, and it is always eloping.
This is why these two keep circling each other over and over, like buzzards waiting for the other to become romanceable carrion.
To use my own personal feelings on this, I relate deeply to this part of Britta. I’ve certainly been accused of molding my personality based on who I am speaking to. Levels of goofiness or purported intelligence or even my general intonation will change greatly, unintentionally matching who I am speaking to. I rise (or fall) to meet the demeanor of my partner. And I would certainly hope this doesn’t invalidate what I have to offer. Doesn’t make me “fake,” or lead to conclusions that I don’t truly believe anything.
Claims that Britta has no true beliefs are disingenuous. She has intense dogma. But they’re varied, amplifiable, and open for self-exploitation. Britta uses her truly felt beliefs for self-aggrandizement. Because the true cause that is being promoted is not anti-authoritarianism, or animal cruelty, or feminism: it is Britta.
Finale: Britta Perry is Very Competent
We’ll take a little risk here at the end. Much like the later seasons of Community lost the fans invested in the early seasons’ romantic plotlines, so too will I be forsaken by those who came to this essay for reasonable analysis of Britta Perry. But after now nearly six thousand words about her, the evidence seems clear: Britta Perry is very good at what she does.
Sure, she ran some scantron tests through the machine the wrong way. You’ve never Britta’d* something easy?
*She uses it, too, so I don’t feel bad.
She can’t sing or dance, but she also never claimed to. She’s not an on-stage performer.
So she uses a few words incorrectly? “What? Like you’re famous for your wit.”
Like most of us, Britta carries the damage of her home life growing up. Her parents were too drugged out to notice or care what she did. She was preyed upon in ways that remain vague by “a rather enterprising transient in a dinosaur costume.” But time wore on. The Perrys cleaned up their act by several definitions of the word. We don’t all have to have quality relationships with our parents, but Britta proved herself mature enough to give it her best shot.
We are speaking of the runner-up in nearly every paintball game. She rode the mystical orb of Shirley Island and forced an emotional resolution between two friends who may never see each other again. She has—again and again—survived tense situations of magical realism and emotional stakes. In her thirties, she found and forged a series of powerful new friendships of people that care about her. This may sound trite in the face of zombies, but anyone of a certain age will tell you how truly difficult and impressive that is.
Britta’s is a quiet success. Amidst criticism and little to no acknowledgement from her friends and peers, she has a determinism that manifests in secret. She doesn’t end the show with a perfect bow, but the last episode takes place largely at the same bar where she holds a steady job that she’s good at. She might never reach her potential as a psychologist. A lot of us don’t use our majors (except in long personal essays about sitcom characters). By most of my estimation, Britta has achieved a level of contentment and self-acceptance most of her peers—and viewers—have not. If Britta is “the worst,” then perhaps it would be wise to sink to her level.
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