The Complete "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" Episode of Community

Community was known for its theme episodes, and in Season 2, they went full Rankin/Bass with a stop-motion animated musical Christmas episode entitled "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas." 

When Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi), the resident "meta" character, suddenly begins seeing the world as animation and starts singing songs in order to "commit to the format," it leads the rest of the study group to try and suss out what kind of traumatic event may have happened that caused him to break further from reality than normal. They enlist the help of Professor Ian Duncan (John Oliver), who finds this situation "fascinating... and publishable," but whoalso brings his own cynical baggage about the holiday season to his therapy efforts.

Eventually there's a full-on adventure to the Winter Wonderland in Abed's mind, at which point the study group transforms into Christmas version of themselves — the Jeff-in-the-Box (Joel McHale), Troy Soldier (Donald Glover), Britta-Bot (Gillian Jacobs), Teddy Pierce (Chevy Chase), Baller-Annie (Alison Brie), and Baby Doll Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown) — with each one getting their own Ooompa Loompa-style send-off as the journey gets deeper into his head and his true emotional trauma. The Britta-Bot song is particuarly affecting, especially if you know how much crap she constantly took for "being the worst."

It's a brilliant episode from a show that was full of brilliant episodes, and the true meaning of Christmas is boiled down to... a DVD of the first season of Lost, "a metaphor representing lack of payoff."

People are talking about Community in our forums. Join the conversation.

Andy Hunsaker has a head full of sitcom gags and nerd-genre lore, and can be followed @AndyHunsaker if you're into that sort of thing.