Community: 10 Worst Things Abed Has Ever Done
3. Became Jesus
Yeah this is a weird one. If you know, you know, and if you don’t, buckle up because it's going to get weird.
In Mesianic Myths and Ancient People, Shirley is upset by the state of internet and the lack of religious content, so she asks Abed to make a film about Jesus that’s “hip” and “cool”. He at first refuses, but then after a night of reading the New Testament in full becomes entranced by the Bible as a story and agrees. However, he goes full Kaufman with it, and makes an aggressively meta film that circles in and out of on the audience and features himself as the star in a Jesus-like role.
Abed takes the role very seriously, introducing himself to the campus high in the air via crane shot with a bolt of lighting and a booming voice, wearing a Jesus-like wig, speaking in calm verse as opposed to his usual bag of references, and never breaking from character. When Shirley asks him if he’s really trying to say that he is Jesus he simply responds, “I am who you say I am”.
Theological implications aside, this isn’t great. Abed’s entire motivation behind all of this doesn’t seem to be any great religious enlightenment. All that’s purely secondary if at all. All he wants to do is make a great film. When his film ends up a mess he ends up putting Shirley, the one who actually is religious and who he made deeply uncomfortable during all of this, in the position of cleaning up the mess he made.