#Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television

[strangerathecinema]

wow guys can’t believe the episode titled “emotional consequences of broadcast television” showed me the consequences of my emotional investment in a broadcast television show

[captainfairygodmother]

If I had a penny for every time I cried when Abed hugged someone goodbye, I'd have two pennies, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice

[khruschevshoe]

Community 6x13, Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television | Noah Kahan, The View Between Villages

[regular-theodore]

the only two pieces of media that have ever made me cry are Geothermal Escapism and Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

you say the whole world's ending (honey, it already did) (Trobed)

"It has to be okay for it to get on a boat with Lavar Burton and never come back."

This wasn't supposed to be a tragedy. This wasn't supposed to end like this.

He was supposed to end up with Britta. Or Annie. Anyone, really, it didn't matter, as long as he stayed. As long as the Dreamatorium still functioned.

(As long as you got to love him through movie nights and pillow fights and butter noodles and Armageddon.)

You don't know when you began to lose Him. It wasn't to the Air Conditioner Repair School. It wasn't to the Great Pillows-And-Blankets war.

It wasn't Pierce. Not truly. Pierce was never important enough to sever that tie.

He needed to be his own man. He needed to go on his own adventure.

And you?

You are floating. Drifting. You cannot find your plot. You cannot thread together the character arcs that once guided you. You are pulled and pushed and the world falls apart. He turns and hugs you and the one person who you counted on to always understand you, all of the tangled film reels making up your brain, gets on a boat with Lavar Burton and never comes back.

The color seeps from the world. The color grading fades to a grayish, sickly shade. The wide shots disappear in favor of mid-range shots centered around one location, the study table, but it's not a bottle episode in the fun way. It's not. The apocalypse has arrived, not in fire and nuclear war, but instead The Road style, all depressing grays and cold blues.

The shenanigans continue, sure. Of course they do. The show is barreling towards something- or, perhaps, it's limping. So many parts of it have been chewed away, stolen by other networks. First Pierce, a wound to the arm you could sustain and sew up with a few stitches and then move on.

But then Him. Then the other half of yourself, the part you clung to throughout so many potential apocalypses before, gets on a boat, stepping into freedom and his own spin-off, and you are handcuffed to a filing cabinet for the crime of being strange. Of your senses being too sensitive. Of you being finally understood and- not loved, not appreciated, but shown kindness.

It's wrong for others to show you kindness. It's wrong for others to accommodate you.

You are not made to be accommodated. You are made to mocked and shoved and forced into the cookie-cutter hole that society has forced upon you.

You stop getting up to adventures. You stop searching out whimsy. Your delight got on a boat and abandoned you.

You retreat behind your camera. You enter your corner and you never leave. You lock away the corner of your mind that contains the Dreamatorium.

You are still handcuffed to the wall of that locker, aren't you? He found you at Inspecticon, but he lost you in the lava. A clone emerged, a perfected copy, who is bound by metal and lava and zombie bites and the knowledge that you were a whole person before Him but a jagged wound after Him.

You stop reaching out. You leave him at an unanswered "I love you." You cannot bear to seek and not find, to be rebuffed in person once again by the one person you once gave your bleeding heart to.

He doesn't come back. He is never coming back.

Pierce is gone. Shirley is gone. He is gone. Frankie and Elroy are here, and they're nice, but it's not the same.

You wish the lava had cauterized the wound in your heart. You wish that the world had allowed you to move on without a constant pain tearing itself into your chest.

There is only one answer you can give yourself now. There is only one way your story can end.

You leave the study room for the final time and you look back and the table has so many empty seats. So many holes that need to be filled.

You close your eyes, tears burning the backs but refusing to fall, and you lay his name behind you. You will not take it with you. You cannot bear to take it with you. You cannot carry this weight alone. You must leave this hurt behind, even if it means abandoning your heart in Greendale just like He once abandoned you.

The door falls shut. The curtain falls. The credits play.

The show is over. The tragedy has run its course, you at the center, you the fool, you the crushed body, you the director who packs everything up and ends the story.

No one is interested in seeing your heart anymore, if they ever were in the first place.

***

(Years later, a man will step foot off of a boat. He is late. Far too late. He should have returned ages ago. He has a beard and a few new scars and he is wiser and more worn but his eyes shine like they always did.

He stops in Greendale and is told that you left years ago. That he has missed his chance. That he is better off returning to Air Conditioner Repair and not wondering where you went.

You have drifted. You have left. You have turned your back on a world that turned its back on you.

But He is far more stubborn than you give him credit for. He turned the world over for himself, but also for you. For the spin-off you always begged for.

He picks up your heart from beneath the study table, cradles it close, and resolves to return it to you. He will bring you the keys to the handcuffs. He will bring you understanding. He will bring you butter noodles and a smile that never wavers. Not for you.

It will take time to reestablish trust, to unravel trauma and an ache as deep and old as the life you have survived, but he will do it. He would follow you anywhere, you know? He was delayed, detoured, but you were always the end goal.

He will eventually return his hands to repair. He likes helping people, and likes fidgeting with his hands, so why not?

But right now, he turns on his heel and heads straight for the airport. He has a plane to L.A. to catch.)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/48569731

[the-dreamatorium]

okay so I need opinions on this.. badly

(The last episode being 'Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television' or 6x13/s6e13)

please lmk what you people think I'm really curious

[tismperson]

thinking about the community finale. you know how chang says "im gay! im for real gay! im legit gay!". and frankie and the dean are the only ones who react to chang saying that with a "damn he was one of us the whole time?" kind of look.

[abedsweaters]

Season 6 Episode 13: Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television

Outfit 1: Burnt Orange Hoodie appearance #6: reviewed here

How appropriate that the show ends with abed wearing one of his most worn and one of my least liked outfits of his!

Outfit 2: Orange and Purple Flannel

Classification: Flannel

Rating: 4/5

EDIT: Idk why but I keep remembering that I fucked up in my LAST regular abed sweater post EVER because i didn’t include the shirt he wears in the ending montage. So finally I am rectifying this. Nothing else to say I’m sorry it’s not that interestinggggg

That’s a wrap folks! I hope you enjoyed the journey, especially if you’ve been here since 2020 when I started this as a dumb quarantine project. Thanks to everyone for following and reading my silly little opinions. I don’t expect to do any more Abed Madness or anything but I might finish off the project with a couple of fun recap posts if I find the time to, so don’t unfollow and block just yet :) 

[flowerandthesongstress]

MAAARRRRR: I have a placeholder so setup, it makes analogies look like punchlines. LAVERNICA: My setup lacks awareness, but my punchline doesn't know. MAAARRRRR: Abusively cynical one-liner dismissing everything you just said. LAVERNICA: Absuuuuurd reaction! HECTOR THE WELL-ENDOWED: You guys, can we put a pin in the B story and focus on the A story? ZIPPITY-DOO: I don't trust A stories. Never have, never will. I had a setup about a story that was so placeholder, the punchline came five words early. And I can tag it too. HECTOR THE WELL-ENDOWED, high-fiving ZIPPITY-DOO: Ooh! [??????]: I'll just take a moment to explain the risks involved in all decisions made from here until eternity. ZIPPITY-DOO: Who the hell are you? FRANKIE DART: I'm Frankie Dart. ZIPPITY-DOO: Is this combination gonna work? FRANKIE DART: Not my place to say. Abed? ABED: 😵😵‍😵‍😵 BRUTALITOPS: Lizard. Fire hydrant. Obama. Chaaaaaaangggg!

[rangosmango7]

harry’s house is such a trobed album

it just screams “longing”

[admiral-bennetts-aide-de-camp]

a lot of people talk about abed comparing troy to comfort TV, but not enough people talk about the implication of how, by saying that, abed positions himself as a parasocial fan

[litrallytyrus]

There is skill to it. More importantly, it has to be joyful. Effortless. Fun. TV defeats its own purpose when it’s pushing an agenda or trying to defeat other TV, or being proud or ashamed of itself for existing. It’s TV. It’s comfort. It’s a friend you’ve known so well and for so long. You just let it be with you. And it needs to be okay for it to have a bad day, or phone in a day. And it needs to be okay for it to get on a boat with Levar Burton and never come back. Because eventually it all will.

[shesnake]

Community season 6 episode 13 "Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television" (2015) dir. Rob Schrab

[twos-have-blues]

Britta in Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television:

have i talked about trans dean yet? idc idc im doing it again if i did already.

the moment dean said "my boobs" in response to "is there anything about you that's real?" i knew he was trans. his voice? trans as hell. and the "daddy's little girl" from alastair ?? also he's just SO eldest daughter coded. no one's doing it like him. also i know the 3 layers of clothing is just a Winchester Thing but there's no reason for his jackets to be SO BIG but they are

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

sister I'm trying to hold off the lightning (and help you escape from your head) (Jeffbritta finale fic)

Title is from "Deep End" by Holly Humberstone. Finale character study of Jeff Winger. Crossposted on ao3.

Jeff and Britta, at the end.

---

At the end of it all, as Season 7 dawns, there are only two souls left from the beginning to make their way to the study room table. The two who started it all, end it all, remain at all.

Two lonely souls, alone at last.

Annie and Abed have left. Shirley left for that detective that Jeff's pretty sure she ended up marrying- there's an opened and unanswered invitation sitting sadly on his kitchen counter. Troy abandoned them all for the high seas long ago. Pierce died.

Frankie and the Dean and Chang are all still here, and they matter, but they didn't sit here at the study table on that fateful night where the closest thing that Jeff has ever had to a family began.

Abed would love the symmetry. But Abed is gone. Someone more sentimental than Jeff might even say that Abed's heart left long ago, dying in the lava floes beneath the school. 

Jeff takes a gulp of his beer, his thumb smoothing over label of whatever discount brand the local gas station provided. He's years, lifetimes, away from the expensive bottles of brandy his old law firm provided.

It's been years, but the bitter taste of ambition still tastes stronger than the sour sting of the beer in his hands. He'd entered this school and this study group with two goals: get his bachelor's as quickly as possible, and fuck the blonde in his Spanish class. 

He's accomplished both, and look where it's landed him. As alcoholic as he once was, a teacher at a school that chewed him up and spat him out a better man with a far more broken heart than he entered with.

The door creaks open. A familiar face beneath darker hair enters. This season, this year, Britta's traded out her leather jackets for sweatshirts, her bleach-blonde curls for the natural darkening of the years. She's lost some of that natural intensity that once attracted her to him, more often to be found with eye crinkles than pouty lips.

She's grown up. Matured, but also softened. Let the years wear her away as firmly as they have him.

They have eroded, here. Weathered away into sand. Become older and more brittle and more nuanced.

"Last ones left," Britta says, as if she can read his mind. That's what intimacy is, Jeff supposes- years of close quarters and paintball fights and quick fucks and teasing and supporting and screaming boiled down to, at the end of the day, the kind of telepathy that aches because the person in front of you is more mirror than anything else.

Jeff tilts his bottle to her. She toasts him with her own glass of amber liquid as she sits down in her seat, forever next to him, forever around a corner from him. 

The table is empty around them. The seats hold ghosts, taken away by airplanes and boats and Buddhist funeral ceremonies and the sands of time.

Jeff's maudlin. He knows it. His Season 7 pitch was never what he truly wanted. Who needs a bunch of hot redheads when his family is gone?

He wants them back. He wants everything, their flaws, their strengths, their babbling voices, their annoying quirks. He wants their round pegs to fill the square hole in his heart.

But they've all grown up. They've all left. 

And he's been left behind.

Britta's hand settles on the table, palm up, an offering.

Jeff looks past her hand at the table. At the one they built together, when the old one was smashed to pieces. This one has no notches. They have not christened it with paint and dirty talk and sweat.

An old dilemma from Jeff's questionably-taught Philosophy 101 class filters back to him: the Ship of Theseus. If you replace every part of a ship, is still the same ship? Or is it something completely new?

The table is new. The study group is almost completely replaced.

But at the center of it all, Britta and Jeff remain. They are still here. 

Jeff looks back up at Britta. There is a kindness in Britta's eyes that has always been there, even beneath the snark and intensity that he first met her with. She's always wanted the best for others. It's why she paid for Abed's first film class with money she didn't quite have, why she pursued a psychology degree, why she has always been first unto the breach and the last one to retreat.

Britta Perry is is bitten-down finger nails and eye crinkles and snarky comments and bad analogies. She is stubborn and bright and flawed and passionate and a buzzkill and a failed therapist and a lapsed anarchist.

She is, at the end of it all, Jeff's best friend. Not by circumstance, not by artifice, but by choice.

She deserves to have someone choose her in return.

He hasn't been left behind. Not quite. The rest of the group left him, yes, but not because of him- because of themselves. Because of what they need for themselves. Self-discovery, their own lives, their own dreams.

Jeff wants to believe that someday, they'll be back. He'll get to see them all again, wrap his arms around them all, pull them into a group hug full of laughter and old jokes and new happiness.

But for now, he still has friends, both old and new. He has Frankie and the Dean and Chang, in all of their messy, crazy glory.

And he has Britta. He has Britta Perry, so different and so similar to the woman he started this study group with.

Jeff reaches out and takes Britta's hand, curling her familiar fingers between his own.

"Last ones out," he says, and it feels like a promise. An oath. A vow.

Jeff smiles, and Britta smiles right back.

[luunamoona]

how can people still be like "trobed doesn't make sense they're both straight" when like there is so much of evidence on the contrary. for one, troy and abed do not act like just friends. annie confirms they hold hands in season one, troy leaves a date with a woman he likes because she didn't like abed in season 2, they literally move in together and sleep in the same room in season 3, when they switch in season 4, the first thing they both do is look at each other's dicks and in season 5, abed's mind is set on fire by the prospect of troy leaving. abed only cries twice in the show, once in season 3 at the end of the first chang dynasty and once in season 6 at the end of emotional consequences of broadcast television. both of these were about troy leaving. in season 3, it was when troy left for the air conditioning repair school. in season 6 it was him reminiscing about troy and his departure in geothermal escapism. they always had a very deep emotional bond.

next, there's the argument that troy and abed are straight. and like what do you mean? troy has clearly shown his attraction to clive owens throughout the show, saying in virtual systems analysis (or abed playing as troy and using things that troy has said to him (still counts)) that he may as well be attracted to him and saying that he has a tumblr blog dedicated to him in the repilot. and then there's abed. i mean first we got the mixology certification, where he kept talking to a dude he knew was flirting with him for like a really long time, thought did ultimately decline when he requested they have sex. then there's the bisexual hoodie. like c'mon. literally wore a hoodie that had the bisexual flag on it for most of season 3.

troy and abed were for sure gay.