Source
r/community•
TCLe

Something I noticed about "Modern Warfare" and "Epidemiology" (Spoilers)

Something had been bothering me about those two episodes specifically due to their blatant referencing and surrealism that made me feel those episodes didn't really feel the same as other episodes around them. They were really outlandish and totally implausible even for a comedy series and they left a bad taste in my mouth for realism.

But then after seeing "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" with the whole claymation breakdown occurring I was reminded about those previous episodes that seem like they couldn't happen. Those episodes might have been the start of Abed augmenting the narrative with movie references and masking what really happened with his imagination. Maybe there wasn't really a mass paintball war (Or there was) or the zombie outbreak was something else entirely.

What do you guys think of how much Abed's perspective subtly controls the narrative?

Posted Feb 21, 2012, 6:17 AM UTC

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Tommygee98•

Or they felt it would be really cool to have a paintball episode....

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DaBigCheese•

I'm not sure, it's an interesting point, but I don't think the entire show is from Abed's point of view. I think it was just for that one episode they focused on what Abed had seen.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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Wombles•

I'm pretty sure that Dan said in an AMA that everything you see is what happened.

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FieryFurnace•

The zombie outbreak was something else entirely, it was rabies. I thought they pulled off an opportunity for a heavily stylized zombie episode with that whole army surplus MRE joke, because it really seemed like a simple joke about the Dean being cheap at first and then became the catalyst.

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magic_is_might•

Well, you'd have a point if Abed's perspective was controlling the narrative ;) But he doesn't control the narrative in all the stylized episodes.

So no, the paintball war and "zombie" (well, it was virus) outbreak almost certainly did happen.

2
TCLeOP•

Counterpoint, in the second paintball war the first episode was Western based but then changed to Star Wars. He may not directly change the narrative but his perspective of what is going on may change what we see ourselves.

0
zoidberg_MD•

I mean that's an interesting take, but it is not correct. Listen to any of the writers or actors talking about either of those episodes, they actually happened in the cannon of Community. For example when Dan Harmon was talking about Epidemiology he made them all get amnesia so that it could reasonably fit into reality that this could have actually happened but didn't alter the the world inside of Community.

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casatrobed•

The show isn't realistic; it's a ridiculous show and I lovelovelove it.

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piroteknix•

In the AV Club interview, Dan addresses this.

But I knew the whole time that this was further than we’d ever gone. The litmus test I used to prove that was to run through every episode in both seasons and picture myself reading the events that take place in the story in the local paper. I ran “Modern Warfare” through that. I ran chicken fingers through that. There was a shortage of chicken fingers on campus, and some kid took over the supply and was selling chicken fingers for favors. Whatever! Why did this make the paper? It was on page eight. There was a paintball game that got out of hand. Somebody built a fire in the cafeteria to warm their hands because the power went out. A guy set off a dye pack, and there were Die Hard themes. Again, it sounds interesting, but if I’m more than a city away, it’s not even in the paper. The military is covering up an experimental bio-weapon in the form of a rabies virus that spreads through bites and turns people into zombies and it was accidentally served at a Halloween party. Yeah. It’s on the cover of Time. [Laughs.] No matter where it happened. It could have happened at the North Pole, and you’d be reading about it.

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