Communityis simply one of the best TV shows to ever grace our screens. A comedy about “sucky people that need to work a lot at getting less sucky,“Communityis what you’d get if you threwIt’s Always Sunny In Philadelphiaand abunch of John Hughes moviesin a blender, then slathered it in pop culture references.
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Fans have long since debated the question: “who is the most toxic person inCommunity?” It’s a passionate argument that has permeated forums, Reddit, and Facebook groups across the internet. It may not be a question that can be empirically answered, but it’s a fun thought experiment nonetheless. So beforeThe Community Moviecomes out sometime in the next five decades, it would be a good exercise to rank theCommunitycast from the least, to the most toxic person.
9) Britta Perry
Britta (Gillian Jacobs), like all members on this list, is a selfish person with an abundance of flaws and poor judgment skills. However, she’s also the only character in the cast always striving to be a better person. She may not know how to improve the world, and a lot of the time it’s a bougie excuse for her to feel better about herself (“I can excuse racism….”),but at least she’s making an effort.
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Britta’s greatest fault is just being sort of cringeworthy and pretentious, which is something we’re all guilty of from time to time. She also cops the most abuse from the other characters, as she’s dubbed “the worst” which exacerbates her insecurities. Britta starts off as a well-adjusted person and devolves throughout the show in great part due to the constant insults hurled at her. It’s hard not to sympathize.
8) Troy Barnes
WhileCommunityfound its footing, Troy (Donald Glover) was initially a kind of dumb, jock bully. Over the show, he became a classic example of “a fool with a heart of gold”. It’s refreshing to see amale character so open about their emotionsand inquisitive about the world.
Like the others, Troy has a mean streak, he calls Britta “human tennis elbow” and the “opposite of Batman” just because thetelevision show “Cougartown Abbey"only had six episodes. Troyalso broke up with Brittain one of the most immature ways possible, creepily named the monkey “Annie’s Boobs” despite Annie’s objections, and is a general nuisance when he takes his shenanigans and pranks with Abed too far. However, the way he treats and takes care of Abed is nothing short of heart-warming.
7) Abed Nadir
Easily the standout character in a long list of brilliant players,Danny Pudi’sAbed is a one-of-a-kind character that steals the show in every scene he’s in. There are obvious reasons why Abed isn’t the most toxic member of the group. He is an emotionless, but lovable “robot” that can only really communicate and empathize through a pop culture lens. Whenever Abed does something wrong, it’s accepted that he doesn’t know better.
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The showrunnershammer in thatAbed is calculated and logical, but sometimes he simply should know better, especially after the first few seasons. How has he been “studying” people for so many years and doesn’t realize that destroying Buzz Hickeys’ hard work and then humiliating him is hurtful behavior? At the end of Season 3, he destroys Britta by exposing her childhood trauma, then is perfectly willing to cut off Jeff’s arm because he’s so in character as “Evil Abed.” At the end of the day though, his follies and selfish behaviors are completely overshadowed by how much joy and wonder he brings on the screen.
6) Shirley Bennett
There’s a pretty big jump in toxicity levels from Abed to this next group of characters. Shirley Bennett (Yvette Nicole Brown), bluntly put, is a bigot. Although she definitely improves throughout the show and learns to be more accepting, her unrelenting passive-aggressiveness, not to mention a penchant for violent threats, makes her a pretty worrying individual. Canonically, she’s always been a bully (“Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism”) and the less said about her discriminatory behavior towards other religious beliefs, the better.
Shirley’s most damning moments come in “Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps,” where her hysterically out-of-touch views on drugs and “sinful” behavior are alarming, to say the least. Shirley takes glee in the fact that she’s the only one not going to Hell, plus her incarnation of the devil is a cross-dressing Dean Pelton yelling “Gay Marriage!” All this being said, it’s a tragedy that Nicole Brown had toleave the Series in season 6, and we’d be lying if we said “The Butcher and the Baker” didn’t look like a sweet show.
5) Dean Craig Pelton
Dean Pelton (Jim Rash) has been described by other characters as both an “innocent pervert” and a “pansexual imp”. Both are pretty apt descriptions ofRash’suproarious character. The Dean does not intend to be a bad guy, yet his consistent incompetence isresponsible for many extreme situationsthat almost get his students and faculty killed. His negligence is so all-encompassing that the “Save Greendale Committee” is formed to fix the issues that should be mended by him. The Dean has blinders on for everyone in the school except the study group, mostly due to his creepy obsession with Jeff Winger. Unwarranted touching, stalking, and even moving in next door to Jeff are all on the cards for the Dean, despite Jeff unambiguously rejecting all advances.
How can anyone at Greendale be expected to behave rationally when their Dean is an absolute mess? Every wound the Dean suffers from is self-inflicted. Paint-ball, the first Chang dynasty, and “hot lava” are only possible because of the Dean’s unparalleled incompetence; and thank goodness that he never wised up, because without his poor judgment, we wouldn’t have a show.
4) Ben Chang
Say what you want about the Dean, but he was never a dictator willing to burn down Greendale. Ben Chang is up there with Nelson Muntz as one of the best sitcom villains, predominantly due to an extraordinarily fearless performance by the incomparableKen Jeong. Following his firing in Season 1 (thanks Annie!), Benjamin Chang grows increasingly unhinged and dangerous.
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Though his actions are legally the most damaging of anyone in the cast, (kidnapping, theft, and assault, amongst others) the fact can’t be denied that Chang should be in an institution. There are points in the series where our heroes could have thrown Chang a life preserver by letting him into the study group, especially after Chang almost kills himself at the “Pop-and-Lock-a-Thon,” but their apathy and casual cruelty further escalate Chang’s destructive tendencies.
3) Annie Edison
In online discussion, Annie (Alison Brie) is often the dark horse for the most toxic character in the show. The inciting incident in “Cooperative Calligraphy” is Annie accusing the study group of stealing her pen, which shatters the group and causes sharp divides between members. Worse still, when it’s discovered in “Paradigms of Human Memory” that no one actually stole her pen, there’s no apology or self-reflection. Annie is also prone to temper tantrums and childish outbursts, much to the chagrin of those around her.
Annie is the most subtly manipulative member of Greendale. She gets Chang fired in “English as a Second Language,” beginning his long descent into madness. The Professor Cornwallis incident in “Intro to Knots” and the bulletin board debate with Hickey in “Analysis of Cork-Based Networking” proves she is willing to throw her principles away at the drop of a hat. Annie is young, so it’s a little hard to totally fault her, but she’s also weirdly conservative and repressed for a millennial, as illustrated by her outdated gender role beliefs, like when she completely humiliated Kim McFadden based on the fact that he’s a guy who is “too sensitive.”
2) Jeff Winger
Inthe most beloved episode of the entire series,“Remedial Chaos Theory”, the writers firmly put their foot down and proclaim that Jeff is perhaps the greatest source of misery for the study group. Jeff (Joel McHale) is constantly undermining everyone around him, especially Troy, Pierce, and Britta, which is why it’s so cathartic to see the study so happy when Jeff is away. In the pilot, Jeff enlightens Duncan about his philosophy: “I discovered at a very early age that if I talk long enough, I can make anything right or wrong. So either I’m God or truth is relative.” Jeff is a serial liar, manipulator, and charming grifter, which makes him an amazing character, but a terrible friend and leader. Though he has a sad backstory and always comes through for the group, in the end, Jeff’s worse sin is that he brings everyone around him down to his level.
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The most blatant grievance with Jeff is how he hypocritically sexualizes Annie whilst not only leading her on but alsocoveting her so that she can’t find a healthy relationship. He is responsible for giving the moniker “Fat Neil” to a student, ruining a kid’s bar-mitzvah due to his overblown ego, and treating countless women like disposable objects. In a sidesplitting gag from the end of “Grifting 101,” we meet Ryan (aka, “The Guy From Jeff’s Gym”) a man who is essentially Jeff’s indentured servant. This small scene is a great little microcosm of how Jeff only thinks of others as useful pawns.
1) Pierce Hawthorne
At the end of the day, Pierce (Chevy Chase) clearly deserves the title of “Most toxic character inCommunity.” You may argue that “Pierce was of another generation, he doesn’t know any better.” This is true, but like everyone else, he had every opportunity to adapt and evolve. By the end of Season 4, he was still just an out-of-touch, selfish chauvinist. It definitely doesn’t help his case that behind the scenes,Chevy Chasewas the only actor who clearly didn’t “get” the show. His famous quarreling with showrunnerDan Harmonand enormous ego reflected more and more onto the character of Pierce. Towards the end of his stint onCommunity,even Chase was disgustedby how much of a racist, homophobic, and misogynist pig Pierce was.
It’s not all bad, Pierce had his sweet moments. He averted the study group from failing Spanish 101 and saved Britta’s Susan B. Hawkins Dance, but this simply isn’t enough to save his image. The final nail in his coffin was his treatment of Neil. Pierce goes out of his way to bully Neil when Pierce knows he is extremely depressed and on the verge of doing something drastic. This isn’t an isolated incident: just think of how Pierce humiliated Vicky in front of the whole school because she wouldn’t lend him her pencil. A highlight in his demo reel of cruelty was when he convinced Jeff that he’d found his father as part of his revenge plot. No amount of justification can be made for this. Though his funeral episode ends with a speech praising the best aspects of the study group, it’s hard to forget he put them through extreme emotional turmoil many times, and their reward for putting up with him was a cooler of his sperm. He was an absolute creep to the very end.
