Film Theory: We Solved Community's Final Mystery! (Community)

matpat theorize in in the mornin and we're back early birds later on in today's show we'll have a preview of Greendale's hottest theme dances coming up this semester I'm personally looking forward to Dean Pelton's floss Athan for cavity prevention it's sure to make plenty of human beings out there open up and say ah yeah but first let's all loosen up our belts because we've finally cracked the case of Greendale's most notorious criminal that's right human beings we're cashing in on the identity of the butt crack bandit which you know is called something else in the show but YouTube is stricter than mainstream media so gotta stay brand safe and you can keep the change on that one back after these messages Matt Pat theorize it in the morn and hello Internet welcome to film theory way more than six seasons still waiting on that movie boil theorists get ready cuz today we're gonna be dropping some quarter-sized nuggets of knowledge down your unsuspecting brain pants there's a crime of foot in the halls of Greendale Community College and it's up to us to finally crack the case of the serial cracker in the event that you have literally no idea of what I've been talking about for the first couple minutes of this episode let me introduce you to my favorite TV show of all time community now if you're a subscriber to this channel chances are you're a fan of Rick and Morty let's face it the viewership numbers on those episodes don't lie and if you like Rick and Morty then there is a very very high likelihood that you'll also love yourself some community as well because it was created by the same guy Dan Harmon I'm staying in the sleep study lab all I have to do is wake up every three hours and go and I get two credits but now it is back on Netflix for all of you to pour directly into your eye holes to catch you up the show is about a dysfunctional community college study group constructed of weirdos and outcasts the show itself is incredibly meta and pays homage to just about every film and television trope you can think of from iconic paintball episodes riffing on 80s action movies like die hard and chicken finger heists that are inspired by mafia movies like Goodfellas - claymation Christmas specials and even classic 8-bit video games while he's fighting for greed we're fighting for friendship which means we can't lose okay okay I guess there's no hug button it's also notorious for having some of the most intricate and patient meta jokes in all of television history I mean this is a show where entire plot lines can happen in the background and go completely unnoticed if you aren't paying attention which brings us to the episode that I wanted to focus on today season fives basic inner gluteal numismatics a mystery episode riffing on the tropes of dark David Fincher esque films like seven and Zodiac but unlike those films horrific murders the threat that lurks in communities halls is much more mundane an evil that terrorizes Greendale Community College by sneaking up on people who have exposed a little bit of butt crack and then dropping quarters into the resulting slot a move known on campus as cracking because of the nature of his crimes he's referred to as the ass crack bandit whom will hereafter be referring to as the ACB or just the Bandit because it turns out YouTube censors or even harsher than NBC's in the Fincher movies that communities parroting here there are red herrings subtle clues galore that have to be looked at inside and out and still might not lead to a solution and the same is the case with this particular episode by the end of inner gluteal numismatics the case is left as wide open as the back of an ill-fitting pair of jeans the ACB escapes unidentified it's an incredibly frustrating dangling loose end to the story of the show one that I hope to finally tie up with today's video now don't get me wrong it is an incredibly difficult mystery to solve but as Troy himself says all difficult things are better like carrying a disease or holding in a fart right now the bandits main episode is in season five but we actually know that the ACB was active on Greendale's campus as of season two because any references the bandit in her speech while running for student body president if I'm elected the assailant known only as the ass crack bandit will be brought to justice if you go frame-by-frame and pause during the opening credits montage of news articles about the crime spree you learned that there were no less than seven cracking in seven weeks during that first wave you also get yourself a partial list of victim names you even learned that the butt crack bandit was not the serial fountain pooper there are two different crime sprees eventually the Bandit just stops for reasons unexplained and disappears for over a year the season 5 episode kicks off with a new cracking during the reopening of Shirley's sandwich shop shortly afterward troy becomes the next victim of the bandit prompting the dean to propose Troy's law which would put cameras in Greendale's bathrooms but at a rally for Troy's law another student named Vicky is cracked in the bleachers sending the entire school into a panic annie believes that ACB has access to the teachers lounge and convinces jeff to team up to investigate discovering an important detail hidden in the bandits letters i am the mad hatter if hats were buts to me you're all like ants marching to class freaks on parade I mean why mix metaphors ants don't have butts wait a minute do have butts no these are Dave lyrics Dave Dave Matthews hardcore fans : Dave they're eventually led to starburns who quickly confesses to the crime but Jeff learns that he's not a Dave Matthews Band fan and only confessed as part of a deal with the Dean after creeping on Annie in his office aren't you going to pick those up professor Duncan is correct in the hallway Jeff and Annie pursue the assailant but the Bandit gets away and the case goes cold also Chang walks around backwards eating a giant churro and wearing a fake butt which leads to nothing in the investigation but does lead to one of the strangest and funniest moments in the show's history extra large sure tastes good in my real mouth no it feels safe to say that we can eliminate people who themselves got cracked so that immediately eliminates both Troy and professor Duncan narrowing our field of potential suspects down to ten we don't have tons of hard evidence to use in this case but we can do most of the work of eliminating suspects by using what in criminology are called the three indicators of suspicion means opportunity and motive means is all about having the tools necessary to commit the crime and it's not exactly like quarters are particularly hard to come by means though also relates to the physical capabilities of the suspect and that one is helpful because it immediately gets rid of Pierce as a potential candidate in season two when the bandit first becomes active Pierce is confined to a breath powered wheelchair and let's just say he's not great at maneuvering around there's no chance that he's gonna be able to sneak up on anybody in this thing so he's immediately off our list opportunity most closely aligns with alibi if you're accounted for during the crime we can safely eliminate you in the opening of the episode Shirley Dean Pelton and Chang are all in the cafeteria for the ribbon-cutting of Shirley's sandwiches and when Garrett runs in from having just been cracked all three of them are still visibly there that knocks another three suspects off our list it also can't be star burns and not just because he can't recognize Dave Matthews Band lyrics when duncan gets cracked star burns are still locking in his cage in the cafeteria being pelted with change so that now leaves us with five potential suspects remaining Hickey Jeff Britta Annie and Abed now examining motive forces us to be a little bit more subjective and connect more dots considering things like victimology in the pattern of the Krakens and when it comes to motive Hickey just makes no sense sure he has access to the faculty lounge he has a background in criminology and he recognizes Dave Matthews Band when he hears them at the end of season five I mean real fans just call him Dave but still he knows the band the thing is though the pattern of attacks doesn't really make sense if hickeys been at Greendale for 15 years why would he start cracking in season two stop for seasons three and four and then start up again in season five he's also not the type to find this sort of thing funny he's not really the type to find many things funny to be honest but most importantly of all knocking Hickey out of contention is the ACB's phone call to Dean Pelton where he specifically calls out the relationship between Jeff and any more friends buzz Hickey in the Canon of the show just met Jeff one episode ago and as such has a less than zero stake in the bond again off again relationship between Jeff and Annie thereby buzzes off the list this phone call is also a key piece of evidence throwing both Jeff and Annie into question I mean they're both in the room when it happens so they're not the ones making the call that said I guess it could have been pre-recorded so we'll need more to fully eliminate them from contention so let's look at the man who wasn't put in the effort to do something nearly this elaborate Jeff Winger when it comes to motive problems he's the character who struggles to find a motive to do anything as such sustaining a prank over multiple years just isn't Jeff's style and well he has no real alibi for the Krakens he has access to the faculty lounge he knows Dave Matthews Band lyrics and may subconsciously be looking for an excuse to spend time with Annie the rest just doesn't add up why would he fight against starburns his confession why would he go looking for the bandits laptop with a message recorded on it if he was the one who planted it there in the first place none of these have a particularly good answer and as such Jeff is just logically off the list Danny on the other hand is a suspect that requires a much closer look if her hope is to pull the Krakens in order to get Jeff to define their relationship that complaint on the bandits phone call makes a lot more sense she's also the one who comes to the realization at the end of the episode that the bandit might be a girl don't worry I got a feeling he'll be back [Music] is it a realization that it could be a girl or a slip-up admitting that it's her honestly this moment in the episode is too vague to tell but what isn't vague is her reaction in the final episode of the series when Jeff brings up the ACB one final time and annie has herself a very suspicious reaction you remember the ass crack bandit doesn't everybody but the most damning piece of evidence of all against Annie comes from the script itself when fans question what the deal was with Annie's awkward reaction in the final episode community writer Alex Ruebens did this picture supposedly from the episode script that seems like it should be an open and shut case write the script for the final episode of the series outright says that she was probably the band at the entire time and yet I am convinced that it wasn't her and I have the evidence to prove it Annie being obsessed with a Seabee case keeps a scrapbook binder of all the key newspaper coverage pieces of evidence and her own theories in the episode that scrapbook is only shown for a few minutes during the opening credits crawl but that prop went on auction back in 2017 selling for the not too shabby price of 800 bucks as a part of the auction loss they displayed high resolution photos of what is actually inside the binder some of which are never-before-seen pages that didn't make it into the episode and in those we actually see two full pages of Annie's thoughts on the case not only would it be insane for her to be keeping such meticulous notes and theories on a crime spree she herself was committing but what's more interesting isn't what she's writing it's how she's writing it throughout the episode we're read multiple notes written by the ACV but were actually shown two of them one at the top of the episode and a second later in the episode that in order to actually read you have to pause flip and color correct and for both of those letters Annie's scrapbook handwriting just doesn't match the ACB's letter handwriting and this isn't just me overthinking things either since in zodiac one of the David Fincher movies that this episode is parodying handwriting is the damning final piece of evidence so it makes sense that it's important for solving this episode's little miss long story short it's just not in Annie's character it's a juvenile prank that she doesn't find funny she's a goody two-shoes who gets mad about her pens not a prankster out to cause chaos and fear across the campus but you know who would enjoy this sort of prank Britta in season one we learned the type of pranks that she likes and they're well they're just kind of lame in there frog and tomorrow when Senor Chang's class is coming in there will be a frog on his desk when where oh you're done and at the end of this episode Britta commits the Freudian slip of typing her name instead of the bandit onto her project but given that she can't even say bagel properly it's a pretty easy detail to overlook know the suspicions on Britta actually go a lot deeper Britta doesn't have an alibi for any of the for cracking x' that we see and we know that she has regular access to change she's also the single likeliest person to be upset at all the time that Annie and Jeff are spending together trying to solve the case so that part of the bandits phone call would make sense if it's coming from Britta the victimology also makes sense for Britta Troy broke up with Britta at the end of season four so it's conceivable that she'd want to crack him given Duncan's general creepiness towards Britta not a surprise that she would want to crack him as well and in season two she was just coming off the heels of being rejected by Jeff so again a spree of cracking immediately after getting dumped except there are two main pieces of physical evidence with Britta as the culprit and it all begins with the first note from the Bandit that we see in the episode which contains even more lines that are left unread on camera if you pause the moment when the letter is shown and zoom in you can see this line that's not read aloud quote it's not my hand that drops the coin it's God's and that is something Britta would never say even if it was joking even if it was trying to make a point yeah but your religion isn't the same as morality and Kali a moral because I'm atheistic is religious persecution but it's not just that note here either physical evidence on the Bandit is slim but there is a bit that we can use to finally eliminate Britta once and for all in this shot right before Troy's cracking we get to see the Bandit standing relative to a real-world object a six shelf school library bookcase researching these sorts of shelves we know that they're typically seven feet tall or about 2.1 meters the Bandit is standing around the height of the sixth one putting his or her height between five foot ten and six feet tall or just around one point seven seven meters the actress who plays Britta Gillian Jacobs is only five foot four inches and while Britta may wear high boots throughout the series a six inch platform heel is just crazy even for her it can't be Britta which leaves us with one Abed Abed is known for pulling the strings around campus to make real life feel more like a TV show now what you have done tell me I got 24 hours to solve the case they do you have 24 hours to solve it to Ralph that's the poster and yet he's oddly disinterested in the crime drama that's happening around him can't you just stand at the singing of the crime and see what happened I see a man using a social disorder as a procedural device pain painful writing hurts could it be he doesn't want to be in the role of the detective because he's already in the role of the criminal it does seem unlikely given that he'd have to crack his own best friend in the course of this episode but he's been shown to be willing to hurt his own friends for the sake of a bit before so this wasn't a real conversation you were doing another movie this is why we don't hang out and here's the thing he has no real alibi during any of the cracking 'he's in fact his behavior is extremely suspicious in two key moments first right before Troy's cracking Troy calls abend and it goes directly to voicemail potentially because he's right there lying in wait outside of the study room more suspicious though is Abed right before Vicky's cracking during the assembly to discuss Roy's law for a split second we can see Abed next to Dean Pelton through the crowd a few seconds later he's gone and seconds after that Vicki gets cracked by someone under the bleachers is it just a con new or is it a hint that Abed is the true culprit let's continue though because the evidence doesn't stop there Annie is convinced that the ACB has a shortcut through the faculty lounge the bandits most daring spree he cracked three people in a row my quickest time was 20 minutes the ACB did it in ten except here's the thing Abed is shown in season one to be the best athlete in Greendale with an unusually fast running speed even for Troy who himself was a big-time play school athlete I need you to run to my office Dean I am NOT best athlete on campus so what Annie can do in 20 minutes Abed can most likely do much faster but here's the kicker the thing that absolutely solidifies Abed as our ACB when it comes to the two main pieces of physical evidence in the case Abed fits both Danny Pudi the actor who plays Abed is 6 foot tall the exact height that we need him to be to measure up properly against those library book cases and the piece of evidence that absolutely seals the deal his handwriting matches the ACB's notes in season 1 episode 21 contemporary American poultry Abed makes a chart mapping off the likes and dislikes of all his fellow study mates on that board we get a good sample of his handwriting which we can then compare to both of the bandits letters in this episode his capital B's are bubbly just like the bandits he dots his lowercase eyes just like the Bandit his lowercase B's P's and d's all seem to match the bandits notes but most convincingly of all is how he writes his lowercase M's two little humps in one continuous stroke just like we see in both of the bandits letters just like a little but the intricate nature of the ACB's crimes is consistent with how immersive Abed can be and his little projects he's one of the few characters who'd be willing to commit to a bit for literal years just to see it pay off and here just like in the crime dramas that he watches he laid out clues that would point to everyone else mentioning God to make Shirley a suspect citing Dave Matthews to make Duncan and Jeff a suspect calling out Jeff and Annie's relationship to force Britta into the spotlight cracking his own friend Troy to avoid suspicion himself it's actly how these crime dramas seeped out red herrings to point to everyone else until it's finally revealed that the detective was in on it the entire time but only Abed has the means the opportunity the motive and properly fits all the physical evidence that we have to do the deed he only quits his crimes because Pierce dies at the end of the episode and Troy leaves on a boat with levar burton shortly thereafter his life from that point forward in the series becomes a lot more serious and his high jinks become a lot more muted but it's important to remember Abed didn't assume the role of ACB to be malicious like the contrary he did it to help him understand the world just a little bit better to relate to others just that much more it's TV it's comfort it's a friend you've known so well for so long you just let it be with you and it needs to be okay for it to have a bad day or phone in a day and it needs to be okay for it to get on a boat with levar burton and never come back i think at this point in time we can all relate to the feeling of comfort that comes with immersing yourself in a fictional world but hey that's just a theory a film theory and a movie you [Music]

Channel: The Film Theorists

Views: 4,167,074

Keywords: community, community show, ass crack bandit, community easter egg, community easter eggs, easter eggs, community netflix, community bloopers, troy and abed, community running gagas, community season 4 bloopers, community season 6 bloopers, community troy leaving, troy leaves community, best of community, abed, troy and abed in the morning, community dean, joel mchale, donald glover, community spanish rap, film theory, film theorists, matpat, community paintball

Id: 5tA-aqhz_Ig

Length: 19min 31sec (1171 seconds)

Published: Thu May 07 2020

Reddit Comments

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[u/ty-rant_13]

MatPat kind of addressed why it couldn’t be Annie, but I wish he said something to excuse her awkwardness in the final episode.

In my opinion, this could simply mean Annie knows who it was (Abed), but didn’t want to let the others know. She was trying to protect Abed because she knows how bad the repercussions would be. She’s seen being very awkward when hiding something before, so I think that checks out, but it’s all just a theory... A film theory!

[u/TheGoogleSpider]

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but while I agree Abed is the most likely ACB in the season 5 episode, I still think Duncan's behaviour was really suspicious and everything was pointing to him until he got cracked... it's also interesting to note that Duncan's absence from Greendale roughly corresponds to the ACB's inactivity (Seasons 3 and 4).

So my theory (my Complimentary Theory, if you will) is that Duncan was the original ACB mentioned in S2, coming back to campus after Abed started acting as a copycat to investigate who was impersonating his old secret identity. That would explain both his odd behaviour with Annie while being innocent of the new wave of crimes (as he could be feeling an urge to essentialy relapse into his old ways) and how he could have been cracked by Season 5 (being a victim to the new ACB, Abed) while still being the perpetrator of the original crackings.

TL;DR: Duncan could have been the original ACB mentioned in Season 2, with Abed taking his mantle only in Season 5.

[u/ICrazyInMovie]

Matpat's conclusion makes sense but for many yrs deep down inside of me, I've always wanted it to be Leonard

[u/geeky_nerd16]

Six seasons and a movie!

[u/Ithrawn]

Wait... they did a COMMUNITY episode????

[u/ScratchCat458]

Bald guy kinda do be lookin like Mat tho

[u/MeSoCornY420]

Great Show, happy to see MatPat do a theory on it.

[u/SniperGG]

Can any one tell me how much of the show it covers . Like what season . So I can know if we should finish the whole show before watching please !