The Pop Culture Pundit

“Come with me if you don’t want paint on your clothes.” These words, spoken by Abed Nadir (portrayed by Danny Pudi), mark the beginning of a longstanding tradition on the 2009-2015 NBC (and briefly, Yahoo! Screen) TV show Community: the paintball episode. Over the course of six seasons, the gang would partake in many paintball battles. But none are as iconic as the original, “Modern Warfare,” the twenty-third episode of the first season that sees the gang parody various action movies while fighting for their lives–and priority registration–in a cutthroat game of paintball. Under the helm of Fast and Furious director Justin Lin, “Modern Warfare” isn’t just a clever sendup of the best action flicks–it’s also an episode marked by milestones, with character growth, relationship revelations, and the beginning of Community‘s beef with its sworn television nemesis, Glee.

The episode starts as any other: Jeff (Joel McHale) and Britta (Gillian Jacobs) bickering. Abed, Community’s resident TV troper compares their will-they-won’t-they chemistry to Ross and Rachel of Friends. Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown) compares them to Sam and Diane, while Annie (Alison Brie) asks who Sam and Diane are. Dean Pelton (Jim Rash) comes by to casually mention a campus-wide paintball game, with a prize to be announced at a later hour. Jeff, bored by all of this, decides to take a nap in his car. 

But when he awakens one hour later, everything changes. 

We cut to Jeff walking through a campus that’s become a vast wasteland similar to 28 Days Later:

^{Screenshot/Fox Searchlight Pictures via YouTube}

^{Screenshot/NBC via YouTube}

Is this all a dream? One may wonder. 

No. It is very real. 

Jeff walks into one of the buildings and sees just how real these stakes are. When Leonard (Richard Erdman), a fellow student, attempts to take down Jeff in a vicious paintball attack, Abed saves the day. He takes Jeff into a nearby classroom where he explains the stakes of the game: whoever wins gets priority registration. 

“You could schedule all your classes on a Monday and take a six day weekend,” Jeff muses. In a moment of weakness, Jeff debates turning on his friends to take the prize. But Abed and Troy (Donald Glover) quickly explain that other groups have formed alliances–including the Glee club, who sing hit songs to lure people into their paintball trap.

“People fall for that?” Jeff asks, clearly skewering Community’s television competition, Glee. “Let’s not resort to cheap ploys,” he continues, before taking off his shirt, revealing a Die Hard-style white tank top (and loads of muscles to compliment it). 

^{NBC/via Giphy (Kate Jakubowski)} 

After taking out the chess team, Jeff, Abed and Troy find Pierce (Chevy Chase), before the locating the rest of the friend group–Britta, Annie, and Shirley–sitting on top of toilets in the men’s bathroom to take out their competition (“camped on a crapper” is how Jeff’s put it, which eventually inspired the creation of a TV Trope). 

Soon, the gang is outside, trying to find their paintball enemies–but it looks like they’re the ones being found. Troy is the first one to be taken out after attempting to form a side alliance with Shirley. Pierce is taken out second while Jeff tries to find the location of their assailants, while Annie is the next one out after calling out the glee club’s “uninspired” cover of Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me with Your Best Shot.” (“Write some original songs!” Jeff yells, once again roasting six-time Emmy award winner Glee. Community only won one Emmy throughout their run). 

With the final four of the gang standing–Jeff, Britta, Abed, and Shirley–we cut to a quieter scene where they talk about what they would do with the prize over a makeshift indoor campfire. While Jeff would take a six-day weekend, Shirley would take morning classes so she could spend the afternoon with her sons. Britta vows to give the priority registration prize to Shirley should she win, but Jeff calls her actions “phony.” Shirley and Abed are tempted to end Britta and Jeff’s quest for glory here over their continuous bickering–but suddenly the gang is interrupted by the roller skating squad. Shirley is tragically hit from behind, while Abed is hit in the legs. Britta thinks Jeff has been hit too, but what seems to be red paint on his tank top turns out to be blood–prompting Britta to apply her first-aid knowledge on Jeff. 

While Britta attends to Jeff’s wound, she admits she’s a phony–and Jeff admits he can be a jerk. They both reassure one another, saying they are not as bad as humans as they think they are–while teasing out the future of their relationship. At first, it seems like they’re just joking about sleeping together, that they’d do it just to spite the rest of the group–but then they actually do. Not only is the paintball episode a fun nod to action movies, it’s a pivotal one too, with Jeff and Britta finally acting on their sexual tension. They may not have lasted as a couple in the series, but they didn’t need to. Their character growth in this episode and the rest of the show proves they can handle themselves maturely and still be friends even after sleeping together. 

The next morning, Jeff once again awakens to a not-so-nice-surprise: Britta’s holding a gun, ready to shoot. Any moment she could pull the trigger, and she does–except it’s empty. 

Jeff had anticipated this is exactly what she would do. “Uh-oh. No paintballs, Hans?” he asks, holding up her stolen clip, in another nod to Die Hard. 

But before either of them have a chance to act upon each other’s betrayals, Señor Chang steps into the room, guns ablaze, in nods to both Scarface and Face/Off: 

^{Screenshot/ Universal Pictures via YouTube}

^{Screenshot/NBC via YouTube}

^{Screenshot/Paramount Pictures via YouTube}

^{Screenshot/ NBC via YouTube}

Chang has now entered the competition as a student to foil everyone else’s victory. Britta decides to sacrifice herself, and the bullet time effect from The Matrix is implemented while she and Señor Chang eliminate each other simultaneously: 

^{Warner Bros. Pictures/via Giphy (Kate Jakubowski)}

^{NBC/via Giphy (Kate Jakubowski)}

But that’s not all. Señor Chang, laying on the ground, begins to laugh maniacally like The Predator and reveals his paintball bomb, along with some bad news: giving priority registration as a prize for a paintball competition is not allowed, so no one is going to end this competition with a win. Seeing the clock tick down on the paintball bomb, Jeff makes a run for it, jumping out of the study room in slow motion as the scene behind him becomes filled with paint. This might just be the coolest shot from all of Community: 

^{NBC/via Giphy (Kate Jakubowski)}

Afterwards, Jeff makes his way over to Dean Pelton’s office–and he is not happy. Limping, sweating, and covered in dirt, Jeff looks an awfully lot like Bruce Willis at the end of Die Hard–and even goes as far to mimic the hidden gun trick, shooting Dean Pelton with a bright pink paintball to get the prizes he wants (and at this point, deserves): priority registration. 

The next day, everyone is back at Greendale Community College. Jeff and Britta agree to not tell anyone about the night before–but Abed immediately senses something is different. Jeff and Britta brush it off, and things largely go back to normal. The end tag sees Troy attempt to leave a message boat meeting Abed at the flagpole. 

But reader, things would not be the same after this. “Modern Warfare” is not only one of the best episodes of Community, it’s one of the best episodes of television. It was featured in TV Guide’s “65 Best Television Episodes of All Time” in 2018 (along with “Remedial Chaos Theory,” which saw the creation of another Community staple: the Darkest Timeline). Its homages, parodies, and nods to some of the most iconic movies of all time shows us how in-depth the Community writers researched pop culture history. Not only are there references to influential action movies such as Die Hard, The Matrix, and Predator, but there are references to others including The Fifth Element and Wanted. Plus, with Justin Lin at the helm, there is never a pause in the action and the plot, even in the episode’s quieter moments. Justin Lin has directed other action shows such as Magnum, P.I. and Scorpion–as well as five Fast and Furious movies, including the best one of the franchise, Fast Five, so it only makes sense that he would take the reins here. 

What pushes “Modern Warfare” to the next level, however, is that goes even deeper than just the action. There are important plot developments such as Britta and Jeff admitting feelings for each other as well as discussing their own insecurities. Although Jeff and Britta did not stay together as a couple, they remained friends, and matured as humans throughout the course of the show. We can see the beginning of this with their playful banter evolving into deeper conversions throughout the episode. Besides, at the end of the day, Community isn’t just about its insane amount of pop culture references–its about being human. There’s a reason Greendale’s mascot is the Human Beings, after all. 

It is clear that on the fifteenth anniversary of “Modern Warfare” there is a lot to revisit. Paintball may not be life-or-death stakes in real life–but the stakes have never felt higher here. “Come with me if you don’t want paint on your clothes” from the beginning of the episode is a clear homage to The Terminator franchise’s iconic quote, “come with me if you want to live.” Community is a show full of life–even in an episode parodying over 20 action movies in 20 minutes, we get meaningful character growth and plot development. That’s something not a lot of shows can do–but Community pulls it off with ease.