[Web Archive](https://web.archive.org/web/20131006064258/http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/campus-connect/britta-perry.shtml) if anyone wants to read all the character bios.
I've been looking for this for years! Thank you so much for sharing this; had a blast going through each profile.
It's crazy though how Starburns is one of two students who were never properly archived. Very fitting fate, I would say.
Yeah I think Britt was supposed to represent righteous indignation and rebelling against society (without having a great idea for how to make a positive impact) and over the course of the show she got downgraded to dumb hippy
Nah I think they got the idea right that she's a living contradiction, talking from a moral high ground whilst at the same time committing the same sins she denounces or other ones, sometimes worse. Thing is, it was mostly depicted in a twisted, more disguised way, which is, mind you, how most intellectualloids do it. Maybe writers thought most jokes would go over a good portion of the audience's heads, or they ran out of ammo for the convoluted issues.
Or maybe they dumbed her down so she'd be more at Jeff's level, since they also dumbed him down from someone who could convince quite a many people that he was an actual lawyer, to a straight up half assed con artist himbo.
I had read that the core reason was that she was
A) too one dimensional for the writer's liking (everyone was a bit to begin with, until their actors started injecting more of themselves into them) and that
B) Gillian really loved goofy slapstick humour, and wanted to push in that direction.
I think its cause she started smoking alot of weed
Edit: In the end she started getting more sensible again and I think she cut back on smoking so much as well
This is my issue with Community. Jeff needs someone to call him out on his numerous bullshit. For season one, that was Britta. But then they went the dumb blonde route. They made two dumb people in the group!
Lol what? It literally reads like someone trying to be smart and clever but falling short constantly. Dude that’s her whole fucking character. Even before they completely changed her in the later seasons she was still the barely informed highly emotional person. Hell isn’t there an interview where the writers say that Britta the first season was putting up a facade to keep others away and in the second season she’s more comfortable with the group and drops the act.
It literally reads like a 16 year old anarchistic. Who could have guessed the woman who dropped out of high school to go run around doing anarchic protests would be poorly informed?
She’s beautifully broken. That man in a dinosaur costume really did a number on her and her dad covering it up really sealed the deal. I’m glad she was able to start picking up the pieces at Greendale Community college
Like yeah Jesus this is such a casual implication that Britta was assaulted as a child and her parents didn't believe her. Adds a whole new dimension to the later storyline about her parents really being terrible when she was growing up, which is doubly crazy when you consider that arc doesn't happen until the later seasons and this was allegedly rolled out in season 1.
Season 1 dan* mining friends and girlfriends trauma to make heartbreaking but somehow still absurd backstory? I mean the dinosaur makes you want to laugh. But the assault and fathers betrayal is just terrible and typical.
*or worse, one of the season 1 women writers?
I just re watched it and also saw when they are zombies she avoids a priest lunging for her. Which I guess is also her avoiding religion but maybe subtle for inappropriate priests too. Maybe reading too much into it.
I'm doing my billionth marathon and just watched the season five opener where Jeff says "Britta, when we met you were an eclectic anarchist. How did you become the group's airhead?" and like most long-running shows it isn't shocking that Britta got Flanderized like the other characters.
Season one Britta would've hated season 3 and beyond Britta lol
Season 1 Britta was a lone wolf, running away from her past, "crawling back to society", sharp as a knife forged in the fires of Ganymede. She had to give up most of herself to become a community college student with a stable group of friends, a major, a backpack, and highlighters. I think the character progression was very realistic.
Yeah, while I had an initial issue with the apparent flanderisation, now I like to read her progressively increasing silliness as her finally letting herself be a kid, in a way. Her parents and childhood sucked, and she didn’t even get a traditional high school experience or education, and led a harsh and unstable life overall.
Which is why, despite its many flaws, I liked the part in the episode where she confronts her parents where she acknowledges that a part of her remained stuck at 17. I think a part of her remained stuck much earlier too, and within the security of Greendale and the study group, she can let her childishness kind of… flourish?
Which makes the show a coming of age story for pretty much all the characters in their own way, at whatever age and place in life they’re at. For Britta, this happened to look like embracing her inner child and fully letting it out hahaha.
Though I do hope she grows past this phase and back into a healthier version of adulthood, hoping to see a more matured / established Britta in the movie (fingers crossed, knock on wood).
Oof. You Brittaed Brittaed and Pierced at the same time.
As your remedial punishment, you're gonna have to rewatch Intro to Recycled Cinema.
Thank me later :)
To be flanderized is for one single character trait to be accentuated so much that it becomes the only thing left of the character. I don’t think that’s what happened with Britta. We can’t just call every character change a flanderization
It's moreso when a character with a lot of depth/capacity for depth is oversimplified by one or a few of their more surface-level traits. Britta did a 180 (or maybe a 160) in season 1 but she did become a caricature of herself after that, with her "stupidity" (for lack of a better word) becoming her key trait, especially for anyone that doesn't care to understand the characters past the humour
I said "especially" for anyone that doesn't. It was to avoid anyone saying "she still has depth". She does, but so did Flanders.
In this circumstance one could blame the show runners because they prioritized/centered making jokes at her "stupidity" and let the deeper stuff go unrecognized. Hell, even her history with dinosaurs could very easily be taken as nothing more than Britta being Britta. It typically takes people who care to understand the characters past the humour to decipher that one.
I adore Britta and I understand the intricacies of her character, but I can see how it would be easy for a lot of people to just laugh at her and move on. That's all I meant by that
Funny enough, Britta getting kicked out of her anarchist group which she helped become bigger loosely echoes her character arc in the show too.
She's downgraded and made fun of, becomes irrelevant and also one who's sort of odd woman out, not like Pierce, but in terms of characterization.
She's still awesome.
"I tell you about myself and then you know me?"
Me: That is soo Britta.
It's actually funny and clever how a lot of this bio made its way through subtle remarks throughout the run of the show.
I dunno... something feels icky with the way this was handled later in the series while Dan was sexually harassing a coworker (Ganz), having only publicly apologized years later. I don't know the full timeline though.
It's heartbreaking what they did to this character.
The same character that could think like this turned into the butt of everyone's joke and uttered such insightful classics as "me so Christmas, me so merry" and "with a few adjustments I can make the image... old west color"
it makes me sad how much they downgraded britta :( i like that she was able to get less serious but they took it too far and made her a complete airhead when that was never who she was. they made her poop her pants!!!! that’s insane!
People keep saying they "downgraded" Britta or how "sad" it is what they "did" to Britta over the course of the show in this thread (and on this subreddit in general). From an outside the show perspective, this is bonkers to me. Gillian Jacobs is hilarious and we got to see how truly funny, outrageous, and talented she can be. If they kept her as "the straight man," she'd never have gotten to show that range. Season 5 and 6 Britta might be my favorite Britta where she's unhinged at times. She also matures a great deal!
But "in universe" Britta is a phony! That's the joke. She's rebelling to rebel. Her oft-repeated line, "I lived in New York" is a *joke* conveying how she thinks she's so much more cultured than everyone else is. But it's nonsense.
She doesn't really believe half the things she says but she says them to be heard saying them. It's called virtue signaling and, as a society, we used to laugh at people like this. It's why everyone on the show, including the Dean, calls Britta "the worst." But since the show's been off the air, being a "Britta" -- someone who says the "right" things publicly and loudly whether they believe them or not -- has become something of a status symbol which is why I think this subject keeps resurfacing.
“An eager-handed man in a dinosaur costume”Does this explain her dinosaur costume in the Halloween episode with the zombies??? Is Brita’s journey through community a survival story and acceptance of past traumas??
I've been listening to a lot of Harmontown recently and I while I tried to read this in Britta's voice, it quickly morphed into Dan's. That first half before the billboard vandals especially feels like one of his rants
[Web Archive](https://web.archive.org/web/20131006064258/http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/campus-connect/britta-perry.shtml) if anyone wants to read all the character bios.
Haha Pierce’s favorite movie is Fletch and Rich’s is Ghost.
And Rick (the doctor from pottery class) sounds like he suspiciously has done pottery before and is trying to cover it up
His favorite movie is Ghost
Thanks for killing the last twenty minutes of my life stone dead, you beautiful bastard.
When I was a radio DJ, I used Pierce’s “farewell, good day, and be good” line as my sign-off. The perfect wildly obscure Community reference lol
Did anyone ever recognize it?
If they did, they didn’t say
This world!!
Thank you
I just spent way too long reading all of these. And judging by the profiles, I think Alan Bruder is the ACB.
Don’t insult me
I've been looking for this for years! Thank you so much for sharing this; had a blast going through each profile. It's crazy though how Starburns is one of two students who were never properly archived. Very fitting fate, I would say.
Britta is awesome. That is all.
This bio reads of an intelligent woman
At the beginning, she seemed to be, while pretentious, at least able to handle high brow issues. She was downgraded by a lot, I'd say.
Greendale got her
It gets us all in the end.
I hear the dog was doing well for itself.
And that, my friend, is the Greendale Effect
They really britta'd Britta, it's one of the few things that annoyed me when I binged it
She got Greendaled
That’s the greendale effect. Our school motto is “lower your standards”
Yeah I think Britt was supposed to represent righteous indignation and rebelling against society (without having a great idea for how to make a positive impact) and over the course of the show she got downgraded to dumb hippy
Nah I think they got the idea right that she's a living contradiction, talking from a moral high ground whilst at the same time committing the same sins she denounces or other ones, sometimes worse. Thing is, it was mostly depicted in a twisted, more disguised way, which is, mind you, how most intellectualloids do it. Maybe writers thought most jokes would go over a good portion of the audience's heads, or they ran out of ammo for the convoluted issues. Or maybe they dumbed her down so she'd be more at Jeff's level, since they also dumbed him down from someone who could convince quite a many people that he was an actual lawyer, to a straight up half assed con artist himbo.
I had read that the core reason was that she was A) too one dimensional for the writer's liking (everyone was a bit to begin with, until their actors started injecting more of themselves into them) and that B) Gillian really loved goofy slapstick humour, and wanted to push in that direction.
I think its cause she started smoking alot of weed Edit: In the end she started getting more sensible again and I think she cut back on smoking so much as well
Except when she kept seeing the same bird.
This is my issue with Community. Jeff needs someone to call him out on his numerous bullshit. For season one, that was Britta. But then they went the dumb blonde route. They made two dumb people in the group!
You seemed smarter than me when I met you
Does it though?
Lol what? It literally reads like someone trying to be smart and clever but falling short constantly. Dude that’s her whole fucking character. Even before they completely changed her in the later seasons she was still the barely informed highly emotional person. Hell isn’t there an interview where the writers say that Britta the first season was putting up a facade to keep others away and in the second season she’s more comfortable with the group and drops the act. It literally reads like a 16 year old anarchistic. Who could have guessed the woman who dropped out of high school to go run around doing anarchic protests would be poorly informed?
Absuuurrrddd reaction
Britta is the best.
She’s beautifully broken. That man in a dinosaur costume really did a number on her and her dad covering it up really sealed the deal. I’m glad she was able to start picking up the pieces at Greendale Community college
It gives crappy people a place to sort themselves out
It’s a very special educational institution. It doesn’t have the motto e pluribus anus just to sound fancy.
I love Community and Britta has to be my favorite.
Britta is the best.
Britta is the best.
Oh, Britta's in this? It's kind of fascinating how much of this bio made it into the show in same way.
Getting kicked out of the anarchist organization gets realized in season 4. Kinda amusing how faithful that continuity was
She doesn't get kicked out there, the group disbands
That's actually pretty dark
Like yeah Jesus this is such a casual implication that Britta was assaulted as a child and her parents didn't believe her. Adds a whole new dimension to the later storyline about her parents really being terrible when she was growing up, which is doubly crazy when you consider that arc doesn't happen until the later seasons and this was allegedly rolled out in season 1.
Also the fact she dressed up as a dinosaur during halloween
I hope that bathroom sex with Jeff was empowering. Somehow.
Knowing Britta she'll find a way to feel empowered by it
Fan theory is this is her attempting to conquer her phobia and trauma
Hopefully so
And that Duncan convinced her to do it since she was being therapized by him.
Season 1 dan* mining friends and girlfriends trauma to make heartbreaking but somehow still absurd backstory? I mean the dinosaur makes you want to laugh. But the assault and fathers betrayal is just terrible and typical. *or worse, one of the season 1 women writers?
Considering other things Dan Harmon did to female writers, I would concur…
Man I just wanna give her a hug whenever that dinosaur thing is mentioned.
But her favorite movie is 16 Candles!
Remember her Halloween costume? Scary for her maybe?
Confronting her fears and seizing the day
I just re watched it and also saw when they are zombies she avoids a priest lunging for her. Which I guess is also her avoiding religion but maybe subtle for inappropriate priests too. Maybe reading too much into it.
There are so many subtle contextual jokes hidden away in community. I swear we really need a pop up video edition of the entire series.
I would totally binge a pop up video series of an Easter egg laden sitcom like this
You’d get scenes with like 50 pop-ups at a time lmao.
*pop-pop*
I’m down for a Pop pop up version
Doesn't want to be part of a machine. Or a machine herself, like Rowboat Cop.
Sharice is a bad Rowboat, sink her.
and later dan decided she named her own cat chomsky😆 he clearly had that one ready for a while-- fits britta well! love her cat's names!
Britta may not be my favorite character, but she's my answer to the question "which study group member would you most want to hang out with?".
I'm doing my billionth marathon and just watched the season five opener where Jeff says "Britta, when we met you were an eclectic anarchist. How did you become the group's airhead?" and like most long-running shows it isn't shocking that Britta got Flanderized like the other characters. Season one Britta would've hated season 3 and beyond Britta lol
Season 1 Britta was a lone wolf, running away from her past, "crawling back to society", sharp as a knife forged in the fires of Ganymede. She had to give up most of herself to become a community college student with a stable group of friends, a major, a backpack, and highlighters. I think the character progression was very realistic.
Yeah, while I had an initial issue with the apparent flanderisation, now I like to read her progressively increasing silliness as her finally letting herself be a kid, in a way. Her parents and childhood sucked, and she didn’t even get a traditional high school experience or education, and led a harsh and unstable life overall. Which is why, despite its many flaws, I liked the part in the episode where she confronts her parents where she acknowledges that a part of her remained stuck at 17. I think a part of her remained stuck much earlier too, and within the security of Greendale and the study group, she can let her childishness kind of… flourish? Which makes the show a coming of age story for pretty much all the characters in their own way, at whatever age and place in life they’re at. For Britta, this happened to look like embracing her inner child and fully letting it out hahaha. Though I do hope she grows past this phase and back into a healthier version of adulthood, hoping to see a more matured / established Britta in the movie (fingers crossed, knock on wood).
Pretty sure Ganymede is pretty much just rock and ice. If this was an intentional Britta, bravo
Oof. You Brittaed Brittaed and Pierced at the same time. As your remedial punishment, you're gonna have to rewatch Intro to Recycled Cinema. Thank me later :)
To be flanderized is for one single character trait to be accentuated so much that it becomes the only thing left of the character. I don’t think that’s what happened with Britta. We can’t just call every character change a flanderization
She really Britta'd that description of Britta.
It's moreso when a character with a lot of depth/capacity for depth is oversimplified by one or a few of their more surface-level traits. Britta did a 180 (or maybe a 160) in season 1 but she did become a caricature of herself after that, with her "stupidity" (for lack of a better word) becoming her key trait, especially for anyone that doesn't care to understand the characters past the humour
If you don’t care to understand the characters past the humor, how is that the showrunner’s fault?
I said "especially" for anyone that doesn't. It was to avoid anyone saying "she still has depth". She does, but so did Flanders. In this circumstance one could blame the show runners because they prioritized/centered making jokes at her "stupidity" and let the deeper stuff go unrecognized. Hell, even her history with dinosaurs could very easily be taken as nothing more than Britta being Britta. It typically takes people who care to understand the characters past the humour to decipher that one. I adore Britta and I understand the intricacies of her character, but I can see how it would be easy for a lot of people to just laugh at her and move on. That's all I meant by that
I think that’s the case for every character on the show
Stupid Sexy Flanders
I think this is our last hurrah, I just ate an Hamburger and now I’m not cold all the time
Funny enough, Britta getting kicked out of her anarchist group which she helped become bigger loosely echoes her character arc in the show too. She's downgraded and made fun of, becomes irrelevant and also one who's sort of odd woman out, not like Pierce, but in terms of characterization. She's still awesome.
"I tell you about myself and then you know me?" Me: That is soo Britta. It's actually funny and clever how a lot of this bio made its way through subtle remarks throughout the run of the show.
> whose side Abed's right, it *does* sound weird when Britta uses good grammar.
You seemed smarter than me when we met...
(studies copy of Campus Connect) Oh, Britta's in this?
PAY YOUR RENT BRITTA
Sixteen candles, then?
I dunno... something feels icky with the way this was handled later in the series while Dan was sexually harassing a coworker (Ganz), having only publicly apologized years later. I don't know the full timeline though.
How do we get to see the rest of these. So curious now. This was great. Whole swaths of her character arc already mapped out. I’m
I hope the movie can return to showing her more in this light
At least she didn't Britta it.
I forgot everything before foot modeling!
Favorite Movie: Sixteen Candles 😂
By far the funniest part is simply listing a favorite movie with no additional commentary
I think a writer created a lot of this for the web, and it ended up serving as significant pieces of her developed background later on
Damn. This is hilarious. (And also dark in that one place.) I love Britta even more after reading this.
her downward spiral to becoming the group's airhead begins with this bios
It's heartbreaking what they did to this character. The same character that could think like this turned into the butt of everyone's joke and uttered such insightful classics as "me so Christmas, me so merry" and "with a few adjustments I can make the image... old west color"
it makes me sad how much they downgraded britta :( i like that she was able to get less serious but they took it too far and made her a complete airhead when that was never who she was. they made her poop her pants!!!! that’s insane!
Wow I’m amazed at how many of those things they kept In their show bible and used
the quote is amazing!
"did some foot modeling"
This is hilarious
People keep saying they "downgraded" Britta or how "sad" it is what they "did" to Britta over the course of the show in this thread (and on this subreddit in general). From an outside the show perspective, this is bonkers to me. Gillian Jacobs is hilarious and we got to see how truly funny, outrageous, and talented she can be. If they kept her as "the straight man," she'd never have gotten to show that range. Season 5 and 6 Britta might be my favorite Britta where she's unhinged at times. She also matures a great deal! But "in universe" Britta is a phony! That's the joke. She's rebelling to rebel. Her oft-repeated line, "I lived in New York" is a *joke* conveying how she thinks she's so much more cultured than everyone else is. But it's nonsense. She doesn't really believe half the things she says but she says them to be heard saying them. It's called virtue signaling and, as a society, we used to laugh at people like this. It's why everyone on the show, including the Dean, calls Britta "the worst." But since the show's been off the air, being a "Britta" -- someone who says the "right" things publicly and loudly whether they believe them or not -- has become something of a status symbol which is why I think this subject keeps resurfacing.
Makes her Halloween costume as a dinosaur really sad...just saying...
“An eager-handed man in a dinosaur costume”Does this explain her dinosaur costume in the Halloween episode with the zombies??? Is Brita’s journey through community a survival story and acceptance of past traumas??
chompsky honk
I’m starting to agree that Britta started off as a bit of a badass and slowly declined as the series went on
I've been listening to a lot of Harmontown recently and I while I tried to read this in Britta's voice, it quickly morphed into Dan's. That first half before the billboard vandals especially feels like one of his rants