in(me)between

And while Community does exist as a show with seven very important, very well constructed characters, there is a hero among the bunch: Abed. Abed is Community’s shining star. Community is Abed’s show. And from the moment we meet him in the pilot, to his first tear-jerking short film that touched his father’s heart, to his expressed reliance on television later in the first season, all the way up to his most recent post-expulsion breakdown into Inspector Spacetime mode (the only way he’s comfortable “getting to the bottom” of the very clear problem presented with he and his friends).

And although Abed is awesome — a fly too awesome for the wall, in fact — he’s also a very complicated, very troubled, very lonely character. Dan Harmon appreciates this. He gave fans the heartbreaking “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas,” an animated episode that will make you break down in tears. He created the how-the-hell-did-this-get-approved “Critical Film Studies” in which Abed manipulates Jeff into inadvertently living out the movie My Dinner with Andre, the only way he knows how to reach out for human affection. And in “Virtual Systems Analysis,” Abed takes a long, hard look at himself, realizing just how pained he his by his own compulsion to distance himself from his friends, and how much he needs them.

Harmon loves Abed. He appreciates what makes him a tragic character. He also appreciates what makes him a hilarious oddball. And this balance is integral to keeping Community’s most important figure as close to our hearts as he needs to be. Because, in all truth, most of us watching Community are Abeds in our own right.