Key findings

• Abed’s use of films to communicate with his emotionally distant father is an early example of
  Community
  ‘s emotional depth.
• The episode highlights Abed’s autism, his communication difficulties and his special interest in films.
• Community
  The portrayal of autism broke with conventional conventions by not resorting to cheap laughs, but by incorporating humor while appreciating the complexity of the disease.

Cult classic sitcom from 2009 Community is known for its wacky and offbeat plots. Each episode is filled with quirky main and supporting characters, movie homages, and genre-bending plots. Due to its unconventional nature, it struggled to find success, and the show moved from NBC to the defunct streaming service Yahoo! Screen for its final season, following other cancellation scares. But even before the show was full of experimental episodes, it told one of its riskiest stories in Season 1, Episode 3, “Introduction to Film.”

This episode gave the show a serious subject early on, and brought out strong emotions that most sitcoms don’t explore until later in the season. It also broke the tired TV trend of making characters who are assumed to be autistic the butt of jokes.

Community is often offbeat, but “Introduction to Film,” particularly the subplot involving Abed, still surprises for tackling a serious subject in the sitcom’s third episode. Abed reveals that his father is only paying for classes to help him run the family falafel business, even though his true passion is filmmaking. Britta, principled as ever and having a difficult relationship with her own father, is upset at the idea that Abed can’t choose his own path in life. She writes Abed a check for a film course and, after a confrontation with Abed’s father, begins supporting Abed financially in all aspects of his life.

Abed begins filming a documentary about his father for class and gets footage of the argument between Britta and his father, as well as many clips of Britta and Jeff together, who he has cast as his mother and father. The two become increasingly frustrated with Abed’s seeming apathy towards his class, as he has started skipping school, as well as his lack of interaction with them outside of the film. Tensions run high between the characters and the episode goes to some dark places when Jeff tells Britta that Abed is not normal and Britta storms out of the room after begging Abed to answer her.

Together, it tells the story of a marriage that falls apart due to health problems and a child’s unconventional behavior.

Ultimately, however, it turns out that Abed made this film to portray his own childhood, hoping to get his friends to call him weird and abandon him. Abed’s film is intercut with scenes of his real father and shows poorly edited images of his mother and father’s faces superimposed over those of Jeff and Britta as they argue about Britta taking care of him, spending money on him, and being frustrated by how different he is. Together, it tells the story of a marriage that falls apart due to a child’s health problems and unconventional behavior. While Jeff and Britta express feeling confused and left out, Mr. Nadir, played by Iqbal Theba from the contemporary satirical sitcom Joy, begins to cry. He says he didn’t believe Abed knew that he blamed him for Abed’s mother leaving, and promises to pay for Abed’s film lessons in the future if it helps him be understood.

Mr. Nadir’s statement that he will support Abed’s interest in film if it helps him be understood is an excellent way to end “Introduction to Film” because it gives a soothing resolution to the thread of Abed’s autism that runs throughout the episode. The two friends he casts as his parents constantly discuss how abnormal he is and how difficult it can be to help him, largely due to factors such as his lack of speech, a common trait of autistic children. His father is opposed to Abed studying film after he gets his first camera, saying that it was already difficult to talk to him, and now there’s another barrier between them, hinting at Abed’s social difficulties due to his autism.

Community
tells a groundbreaking story about an autistic character by showing how he can use his interest to build deep connections with others in his own way, even if he is initially misunderstood.

In the end, however, he is able to use movies to better connect with his father. As the series progresses, it becomes clear that movies and television are Abed’s special interest, the kind of long-term, all-encompassing interest that autistic people often have. Like many autistic people, Abed uses his special interest in movies to interpret and interact with the world around him, often giving the show its most metaphysical moments; when Abed describes himself and his fellow characters’ situation as a bottle episode in “Cooperative Calligraphy,” he is not actually breaking the fourth wall, but rather interpreting his own world through television terms. Community tells a groundbreaking story about an autistic character by showing how he can use his interest to build deep connections with others in his own way, even if he is initially misunderstood.

“Introduction to Film” is one of the first episodes to explore Abed’s autism in depth, but it’s not the first to address it, nor will it be the last to deal with it seriously. Even in the pilot episode, the characters tell him that he has Asperger’s (a now outdated term)., a character can be directly described as autistic without this ultimately being part of the canon; Will Graham in the unfortunately cancelled Hannibalwhile he reads like an autistic and is referred to as autistic in the show, was written by Bryan Fuller as not being autistic. Since sitcom audiences are used to The Big Bang Theory Sheldon Cooper, who is made fun of for his autistic traits, which are never confirmed to exist, gives the writers an outlet for their offensive jokes. Abed could easily have just been made a joke.

Placing an episode so early in the show that takes Abed’s autism seriously, discusses his difficult childhood, but also shows a joyful moment in which he and his father finally understand each other was a bold move by Community that’s what makes the sitcom great to this day. Abed strikes the perfect balance throughout the show by still being a funny character and even certain things that are part of his autism are funny; immediately after he has a touching moment with his father, Britta tells him he’s not a good friend for manipulating her and upsetting her for his movie, to which he says, “That’s not called the friendship business, it’s show business.” His low empathy, an autistic trait, doesn’t necessarily make him a good guy in that moment, but it serves as a framework for a joke.

Abed is an extremely popular character, and many fans love him so much because they feel he represents them in a television landscape that often mocks them, which was even worse in 2009.

However, there are also a wealth of serious episodes that focus on his autism. Episodes like “Contemporary American Poultry” and “Virtual Systems Analysis” are based on Abed’s difficulties in socializing with others and the many methods he uses to try to cope with his social issues. They don’t treat him like a very special episode where he’s treated like a problem to be solved, but he has a depth that shows both his issues due to his autism and his identity and personality that stem from it. In fact, series creator Dan Harmon realized he was autistic when writing Abed because of the research he did and the realism he brought to the character.

Community “Introduction to the Film” sets an early sign that Community will be a sitcom with a healthy dose of sentimentality and that Abed won’t be treated as badly as some contemporary autistic characters. Both of these were important to establish early on as they are some of the aspects of the show that fans love the most. Abed is a huge fan favorite and many fans love him so much because they feel he represents them in a television landscape that often mocks them, which was even worse in 2009. He shows that autistic characters can have emotionally impactful, serious yet funny stories told just like any other sitcom character.