Community – Why has Jeff suddenly turned into Jim Halpert?

I, like most ladies in their twenties, love The Office‘s Jim Halpert. How can you not? He’s charming, funny, and ridiculously persistent and loyal. When he was at the rehearsal dinner for his wedding and said that he was just waiting for his wife? Come on. That was amazing. So, yes, I love Jim Halpert. But that doesn’t mean every dude in the world, or even every dude on TV should be like him.

Jeff on Community is great too, in his own way. He’s a surly Ryan Seacrest who puts too much effort into his sweatpant/sportcoat combinations. He’s a smarmy but charming former lawyer who has bullshitted his entire way through life, which of course, is how he ended up going from a successful law career to freshman at a community college in the first place. So why, in last night’s episode, was he mooning over Britta the way Jim mooned over Pam in the first three seasons of The Office?

Of course Jeff was upset that Britta was making out with that small-nippled hippie on the quad. Who wouldn’t be? That dude put his bare feet on the counter of a coffee shop — he is clearly a monster. What I wasn’t prepared for was how mopey he got about it, and how he bent over backwards to pretend he was cool with it and get Britta to see that he was the one she should be with.

It’s not that I want Jeff to be a completely disrespectful ass, but this whole nonsense about wanting to be friends and occasionally cat sitting for Britta is annoying. Jeff is used to being the alpha dog. I understand that he’s trying to dial it back, but does it need to go away completely?

I loved how Jeff took a picture of the poem and showed it to Shirley, but the fact that he tried to stop her from showing to everyone else? Weaksauce. He should have put it all on front street: “Britta, this guy has tiny nipples, reeks of patchouli, writes embarrassingly bad poetry, and while green tea is all well and good, to believe that it is actually a replacement for coffee is nearly as offensive as it is patently ridiculous. You deserve better. Also, have I mentioned his freakishly tiny nipples? Because I’ve had suspicious-looking moles bigger than that, and they ended up not even being worth removing.”

Britta needed a friend to snap her out of the hacky sack haze she was in. Jeff could have been that friend, but instead he kept his mouth shut. Just like Jim would have done.

Clacked by Kona Gallagher
on Oct 09, 2009 @ 11:06 EST5EDT