“Advanced Intro to Oversentimentality”

“Community” is a sitcom that prided itself in its sharp wit and meta humor, resulting in a cult following which I have been obsessed with during my college years.

The show follows seven community college students in a study group formed by Jeff Winger and inadvertently Abed Nadir. Jeff is a cocky ladies man, with Abed contrasting as the pop culture introvert. But over time, we begin to see that they are two sides of the same coin.

Jeff views his time in Greendale Community College as a prison, not wanting to be a part of the group. Whereas Abed quickly adapted to community college, being able to find pop culture references in everything, viewing the study group as a TV show.

Those references were something “Community” thrived at. The show prided itself on feeling like a different movie every week. You could get an action movie like in fan favorite “Modern Warfare” where the entire school descends into a paintball war. You could also get a clip show style episode where the cast remembers episodes that aren’t actually episodes of the show beyond that point. 

 While that seems like a writer’s room flexing their knowledge of all the stuff they’ve watched, almost all of them were for the purpose of throwing the cast into situations of letting their character arcs and personalities shine through. 

In season five, episode 11 “Geothermal Escapism”, Abed descends the entire campus into one game of “the floor is hot lava” as a send off to his best friend Troy Barnes, played by Donald Glover, who was leaving the show. Gangs and factions form with everyone taking the game just a little bit too seriously, turning what should be a simple childhood game into a Mad Max apocalyptic hysteria. Abed’s main purpose of the hot lava game was procrastinating on thinking about Troy leaving.

Abed is a character deeply afraid of change, one who would rather live in a movie and doesn’t want to face reality. His way of coping is escapism, avoiding conflict through references and procrastination. 

The turnaround would be another staple of Community. Multiple cast members would leave throughout the show’s fan-determined six seasons including Chevy Chase, Yvette Nicole Brown and the aforementioned Glover. The show was trying to find increasingly contrived reasons why the main cast would stick together. 

By the end of season six, not only was half the main cast gone, but Jeff Winger was certainly feeling it.

Season six, episode 13, “Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television”, follows the group as they  wonder what a hypothetical season seven of their lives would be. When Jeff starts to realize that his long term friends in the group, Annie and Abed, are leaving, he starts to indulge in the escapism that Abed deploys, manifesting itself into an episode that ponders what happens at the end of one’s era.

The episode has Jeff come up with contrived reasons to not let go of the friends he’s made in Greendale: having all of them become teachers like him or raising a kid with Annie. Contrived reasons to not let go is what television does to keep shows going and the episode does a great job representing not wanting to change and the reality that can’t happen.

The relationship between Jeff and Abed in Community is one that has always stuck out to me. Two characters that feel like polar opposites but seem to pull towards each other in a way that makes them completely the same.

Community’s ability to make you feel sentimental towards an era of your life isn’t something that’s readily apparent. Having a found family like the study group is probably the most important thing you could have in your adolescent years. A group of people who form and shape you into a better person, a more you version of you. 

It’s something that I find happens very naturally. Having dependable places to sit around campus, people who I know are gonna respond to a text in a certain way. I am very, very lucky to have found mine. 

This is all a very long winded way of saying that the lessons you learn at your time in college are the most important. 

I’m graduating and that has been weighing pretty heavily on me for a while. It feels weird, surreal. I’ve been feeling this strange, unending fear and grief recently, the kind you fear during a horror movie, or during sleep paralysis. 

But it’s also comforting. The unknown has always terrified me. But this is not my first time feeling like this.

My senior year of high school, I felt like I could hang on to everything from high school and my time there. The friends I made and the people I met were deeply important to me. I rejected the change coming to me and I needed that normality, that familiarity. 

And that’s why I’ve talked about this show for so long here is because I felt and still do to a large degree, feel completely afraid of change, but I need it. I need to sit with it, to swim in it, to be consumed by it. 

Whenever I don’t see someone as often, or they’re not in my life entirely anymore, I like to think that they’re off somewhere doing something good, something meaningful. That thinking is probably for survival, but I do want that for them. Whether they’re in my bubble or they floated somewhere else, somewhere greener. 

I’ve learned a few lessons from my time in college. You’re not stagnant if you’re not stressed. The sense of self is the most important thing. Love and good food is all you need. 

My time here at UTRGV, Student Media and Pulse Magazine has been one of the most endearing, creatively fulfilling and soulfully satisfying times of my life and I am deeply, deeply thankful of everyone and everything I’ve had the pleasure of having encountered. 

I can’t imagine having people more fun, insane and lovely than the people in my life. The memories in my head will remain in my heart forever and ever. But more importantly, I feel like I’m leaving college with a head that’s slightly cooler and an Odessa that feels closer to growing up.

On an even more personal note than I’ve been operating this whole article: I don’t know what’s next. But I’ll be ready for it.