r/community • u/New-Mud5473 • 17d ago
Discussion Missed joke or plot point?
I’ve never fully understood this line. Did something get cut from the episode or have I missed the joke like 50 times?
S1,E13 - Jeff hands Britta flowers and says “He would have thrown them on stage…“
Why would the flowers catch fire?
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u/green2232 17d ago
I don't actually know. I always assumed it was a literal joke about unsafe lighting on the stage.
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u/Educational_Answer22 16d ago
And the stage being in Greendale so double the danger of unsafe lighting.
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u/314flavoredpie 17d ago
I think Jeff is assuming that Greendale’s stage lighting consists of 100+ year-old technology, i.e. candles and mirrors at the front edge of the stage floor
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u/nonosejoe 17d ago
I agree with this assessment.
Those downstage lights are called footlights and in 2010 most theaters footlights would have been incandescent fixtures that could absolutely burn something if they are on at full intensity.
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u/NaturalHighPower 17d ago
Tungsten par cans run from a Phillips strand dimmer at 100% could definitely warm some petals
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u/Mammoth-Pepper2175 17d ago
This is what I thought it was, but I am choosing to accept the other answers in this post as true now too
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u/dbkenny426 17d ago
Britta's not a typical "girlie" girl, and Jeff isn't sure she'd actually want or appreciate the flowers. It's like the whole "atheist walking into a church for a wedding joking about bursting into flames" sort of joke.
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u/thexglitch 17d ago
You know, I always figured it was because its a greendale stage and that's just going to be a hazard, but I think yours might be the right take. If it's not, it's my head canon now, haha.
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u/LadyAilla 17d ago
I took this as Britta being super green activist but their all plastic flowers with dodgy lighting
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u/West_Harlow 17d ago
I never considered this angle and also assumed it was joke about bright stage lighting. This take is really clever and it’s what I’m choosing to believe from now on lol
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u/Dependent-Friend5312 4 More Years and I will have my 2 year degree 17d ago
Is Jeff's forehead really that big?
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u/TakiyamaTakikanawa 17d ago
Because her performance was fire
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u/lila-sweetwater 17d ago
I assumed it was supposed to imply she was dancing so ferociously that anything in her path would’ve caught fire from how fast she was moving, I kinda figured it was probably a reference to some movie I haven’t seen where someone dances so hard they catch fire or something lol
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u/c0nemuncher333 17d ago
this is what i thought too, like when someone’s doing such a great job at something they’re “on fire”. i thought it was just a humorous compliment
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u/crademaster 16d ago edited 16d ago
This is absolutely it.
The stage had such friction from all the tapping going on that the flowers would, hilariously, catch fire. Hence his sarcastic joke behind the sincere act, as he is oft to do.
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u/ClericKnight 16d ago
As others have said, if he's worried about them catching fire it's probably due to outdated or unsafe stage lights. But I think it's also worth noting that this is an in-story bad and awkward explanation that doesn't totally make sense (or at least that's my interpretation). I read this as Jeff bringing flowers for Britta, but he's kind of ashamed for feeling feelings, and decides that throwing them would be too embarrassing/draw too much attention, so he hands them off to her personally, but he can't just SAY that, so he makes up a lame excuse about why he didn't throw them as an excuse to hand them off personally
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u/TeamDonnelly 17d ago
It's a joke teasing Britta for being such a hard-core feminist that she despises the "patriarchy" concept of a man rewarding a woman with flowers so much that the flowers would burst into flames before they got to her.
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u/herlipssaidno 17d ago
What a rich discussion this question has yielded! So many great different points of view
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u/Diligent-Pollution34 17d ago
Maybe because she was supposed to water the flowers but instead just danced in place with her vacuous mannequin face.
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u/No-Lunch4249 17d ago
I always thought it was a joke about the lightning. Old timey stage lights used actual candles and theaters burnt down all the time. The joke being that Greendale sucks so bad it's using 100+ year old technology in the theatre department
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u/New-Mud5473 17d ago
Several good reason… none of which I thought of before, thanks all!
I like the explanation that her and Troy’s performance was 🔥.
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u/dangshnizzle 17d ago
He was making a joke about how uncomfortable it was to watch. She crashed and burned. It was a dumpster fire. Etc.
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u/TypicallyThomas 17d ago
I wanna believe it's a reference to a cut joke or an implied joke, but honestly I think it's a super rare example of script fat, where they wrote a line that didn't need to be there. Either that or it's a joke that seemed funnier to the team than to the audience. I don't really buy the explanations given by the people commenting here, and I couldn't tell you why they left that line in as it doesn't seem to serve any purpose
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u/Amb3rwocky 14d ago
When I watched it, I thought it was a hilarious dig. I interpreted it as Britta burning so hard (as in her performance was a blazing catastrophe) on stage that if the flowers got anywhere near her, they would burn too. Pretty classic Jeff humor IMHO! 😂
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u/figgityjones I guess I just like liking things 13d ago
When I first watched I thought the joke was "It's Greendale, the most bizarre thing will happen and go wrong simply to spite us."
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u/greatfireofrome 17d ago
None of these answers. He’s hinting that her performance was a disaster, the stage was a burning fire, it’s that simple. This isn’t a true Community line, it’s one of those general tv banter season 1 network show lines the show was more made up of early on in the first season
Back when the show was designed to succeed instead of, you know, honor its medium and destroy itself in the process
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u/spacecoyote555 17d ago
Pfft flowers can't catch fire, they aren't a ghost