NBC s sitcom Community was many things very, very many things but one thing it wasn t was static.
Actors, writers, showrunners, all came and went; the show seemed determined above all
else to shake up its tone, look, and, just vibe at every chance it got and this dynamism was equally
present when it came to character. Some of the cast, some of the main cast changed drastically
over the 6 years they spent at Greendale. 4, in this case. Because I want to talk about Pierce
Hawthorne. The ups and downs. The birth, death, and rebirth of this character and see if we can
make some sense of it all what s the core of this character, and why does and doesn t he work? Now
if you re thinking, jeez Pillar man, this is kinda coming outta leftfield given the videos
you ve been making in the past few weeks sure, I guess it kinda is. But this channel s sort of like
the Delta Cubes I don t like to be pinned down by a dean, OR by a predictable video-creation niche.
Oh, it s also because this guy Jontoven s requested a video on Pierce for, like,
a while. And if people ask me to do a specific video enough times, if it s
about something I ve already, yunno, watched I usually end up doing it. Albeit months later.
The Pierce we meet in the pilot is actually not a complete joke. He s still mostly a joke, but
he does seem to be a semi-respected businessman. We re given no real reason to question this. He
comes across as offensive and a bit harass-ey at times, even by 2010 standards, which is a little
bit of a yikes but it is mitigated by the fact that he really isn t being a prick on purpose.
He s just lived a privileged, sheltered life, and can t really conceive of lifestyles and lived
experiences beyond his own. He s self-absorbed. And from the start we get a pretty good sense
of his other, related major flaw insecurity. This is probably the part of Pierce s characterisation
that ll remain the most consistent going forward he s got this compulsion to be liked and respected
by others. He wants them to think he s cool and ironically this impulse for instant appreciation
often gets in the way of developing actual, meaningful relationships with the study group.
But there is something that mitigates this, too. The unique quality which characterises Season 1
Pierce, as opposed to his characterisation in later years, is his willingness and ability
to change, or try and change. He doesn t always succeed, he s rarely in the right,
but in moments like this we see there is a kernel of wisdom in the heart of Pierce Hawthorne,
a little speck of insightfulness that shows itself now and then and I think that s why a
lot of people even now tend to prefer this version of the character. He was more 3D, more realistic,
not so limited to the role of offensive old man . Ultimately, you could sum this Pierce up as a
well-meaning but utterly oblivious fool, one who s got a lot of reflecting and growing to do before
he d be able to be a well-adjusted, net-positive impact on modern society. But at this point
he seems capable of this personal growth, and we see it here, in little drips and spurts.
Things began to change pretty drastically in Season 2, with perhaps the major overarching
story this year being Pierce s sort of villain arc. At it s core, this fall from grace happens
through a repeated pattern Pierce feels excluded, so he acts like a tool, which leads to him being
excluded more, and so on. I think we see this fairly clearly in the first real part of the
heel-turn saga, Aerodynamics of Gender. At some point before the episode s start, the other guys
had been playing with remote control drones, or something, and Pierce d felt left out so he
barges into this basketball game, which he wasn t there for because he was getting his own drone,
and interferes, when it turns out his drone didn t bring him the attention he thought it would.
It's after this that the trampoline is found. If you ve not seen this show or this episode, this
story may not make the most sense, so apologies, but we see Pierce missed out on that because,
again, he was off trying to belatedly gear up for the basketball game he d missed and helped end.
He ended up being excluded from that initial trampoline discovery, due mostly to his own
actions and due TO his actions, as well as, perhaps more importantly, their promise to Joshua,
Troy and Jeff don t let him in on the discovery. Because of this exclusion, he pries, and upon
finding the trampoline he, yep, acts like a tool. This acting out, as always, comes back to bite
him. And this accident leads to longer-lasting, almost season-spanning consequences.
This dynamic is broadly the pattern by which Pierce intensifies the divide between himself
and the study group throughout season 2. It s not always exact, it plays out a little differently,
for example, in the episode where Pierce ruins the play, but that s the core of
it. Pierce s own actions end up damaging his relationships. Until at the end of the season,
the group votes to kick him out. We ll come back to that, but it does bear mentioning
that in the course of this collapse, Pierce does some pretty nasty stuff like faking his
own impending demise to mess with the group, and pretending to have called Jeff s estranged dad.
It's not entirely clear why the show decided to give Pierce this recurring antagonistic role.
Maybe the show realised, even for the time, Pierce s racism, sexism, and homophobia
resulted in a fairly unlikeable character. Maybe it was to do with behind the scenes drama between
Chevy Chase and Dan Harmon, which we ll talk more about later. Either way though this villainy kinda
works for the show. Maybe because of this latent dislike, episodes which pit the group against
Pierce, such as Advanced Dungeons and Dragons or Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking are some of
the show s best, and because this antagonism is more developed, more natural than, say,
Napoleon Chang or the Air Conditioning Repair School, the conflict is more engaging. The whole
time this villainy isn t constant. Pierce does have some nice, positive moments in season 2.
But generally he stops growing. He stops empathising with others experiences.
So even if this isn t a total heel turn, it does seem in many ways to be the downfall of
that original Pierce. All this eventually comes to a head when he s kicked out of the group,
before speedrunning a redemption arc in the finale s paintball extravaganza but the season
ends with him seemingly poised to leave for good. Yeah, he s back in Season 3, with a lot of the
rough edges shaved off. The whole first episode sort of functions to rehabilitate the character.
Jeff wants him to stay out of the group. But this episode flips that pattern of exclusion around,
putting Jeff in the role Pierce had played last year. This whole thing makes Pierce look
a lot better by comparison especially since it kickstarted Season 3 s habit of over-exaggerating
its characterisation. The episode concludes by critiquing the process of exclusion itself,
rather than any personal actions or responses Pierce or Jeff take before or during this process,
which largely works as a route back to normalcy, but to me? feels maybe a little too simplistic.
We see a similar thing a few episodes later, in the episode Advanced Gay. The introduction
of Pierce s dad, who out-theworsts Britta by a country mile, pushes us to look at Pierce with
a more sympathetic eye. In his father, we see the roots of his disfunctions,
and the idea of Pierce as a semi-successful, If privileged and out-of-touch, businessman,
is well and truly put to rest. Hawthorne wipes success had very little do with him. As a result,
we see Pierce as sympathetic, but also, more just, pathetic. I never loved the way this
episode affected the Pierce character, and I think now I see why. It takes away some
of the blame for the way he acts, but it also takes away a lot of the character s sense of
agency. We no longer understand Pierce s more repulsive traits as personal flaws he
s responsible for, but as direct results of a shoddy and sheltered upbringing. When it comes
to that cycle of exclusion and misbehaviour, this development is interesting for the kinda
chicken and egg dynamic it brings in, but this new understanding of Pierce as an elderly child,
stuck in some sort of arrested development, does maybe cheapen his earlier issues. Because
now there s an excuse. This Pierce has a reason he didn t change his ways, break that cycle back in
Season 2. The original version of this character didn t. It works to re-integrate Pierce into the
core cast, and into our sympathies, but it does pay a cost to do so. Otherwise these two episodes
do work pretty well on the Pierce front, largely because they develop the Jeff/Pierce relationship,
and that s always been one of the best aspects of this character, one we ll talk more about soon.
For the rest of the season, Pierce kinda settles into the role of the old,
curmudgeonly punching bag he s kind of at peace with it now, though. The flipside of the fact
that he s stopped actively trying to develop or grow is that he s more at peace with his age,
and his role as elder statesman , so to speak so there s less friction which arises from attempts
to seem youthful or cool. No, after that whole Season 2 ordeal, it seems like Pierce is just
happy to be there. Largely, the show seems happy to have him there, too for instance, I think
there s a bit of a shift away from more offensive Pierce gags to jokes at the expense of his age.
But from a writing perspective, this perennial role as the butt of the joke may have come
from an emotional place as much as an artistic one. Dan Harmon and Chevy Chase famously didn t
really get along during this general timeframe, with the latter, for instance, leaving long,
sweary voicemail rants for the former, and the former then going on to play one publicly onstage.
Chevy also didn t like the shooting schedule, and on one occasion, just didn t.. show up for
a crucial scene. So it had to be cut. In any case, there s rumours that Harmon s treatment of Chase s
character was influenced by these events so maybe there s more to Pierce s new status as Greendale s
resident punching bag than meets the eye. Season 3 Pierce does end on a kinda positive note, though.
That s not much, but it s something. So maybe the Pierce of season 1 is still kinda visible here.
Aha! The gas leak year! I bet you re ready for me to lambast Season 4 and it s take on Pierce
but I m not going to. I think he s actually pretty good in Season 4 when he s there,
but we ll get to that. There s some fun stuff, and he doesn t totally spin out when the others do
stuff without him. There s even a kinda teachable moment where Jeff ends up actually connecting to
this surrogate father figure as a result of the group s maybe slightly premature assumption that
Pierce ll go nuts if he sees them rolling out the red carpet for the new whale. I think this is as
good a time as any to dig into the Jeff / Pierce connection, because it s a really interesting
one. As I ve suggested, they sort of see each other in familial terms Jeff s the son Pierce
never had, and Pierce is the dad that didn t run away. Various episodes explore this connection in
various ways, but I think the real heart of it, the reason it works at all, is that these two are
so similar. Remember that fundamental flaw we talked about earlier? Insecurity? The compulsion
to be liked, respected, the centre of attention? Yeah, that s Jeff too. The difference is, Jeff
s life wasn t sheltered. He got through life by being able to play people and he was great at it.
But there s playing people, and there s actually connecting to people, leaving behind the posturing
and the facades, the big speeches. Jeff hasn t cracked that, at least at this point and neither
has Pierce. That s the core of this link, and the way the show develops it is great to watch,
and even better to think about. Season 4, for all of its flaws, doesn t lose sight of this.
But this Pierce, the Pierce who s regained some of the equilibrium we d not really seen since season
1 is there less and less as the season wears on. That s because even after Harmon got kicked from
production, Chase kept being difficult to work with, let s say. At one point, production even
paused, because Chase dropped the gamer word, and his increasing discomfort with shooting
schedule meant he just kinda wasn t there a lot of the time. Some episodes just have him absent,
and in others, the character pops in and out of the narrative seemingly at random. That s because
before the fourth season had actually wrapped Chase had called it quits. He was out, he dipped.
Pierce isn t really in Season 5, not properly. A few episodes in he s killed offscreen, and there
s even jokes about how much of a non-factor his absence is. This is, of course, due to
his Season 4 departure. That was the real death of Pierce Hawthorne, the true death, and what we see
in season 5 is merely the narrative adjusting to this fact. But now that the production process was
freed from Chevy Chase, now everyone involved had a bit of space from him and his character
there must have been something of a reappraisal behind the scenes. Because while Pierce is dead
by this point, the show does something kind of unexpected and resurrects him. Not literally,
of course. Pierce doesn t return from the dead. Abed s tracking device proves that. But Pierce
does come to have an impact on the 5th season, a pretty significant, and entirely positive,
one. First, at the end of Repilot , Jeff comes into contact with what s essentially Pierce s
ghost. I mean, it s a hologram, but I like this hologram, I like the speech, and I particularly
like the later hint that Jeff maybe imagined the whole thing. That s an extremely powerful
payoff to this connection the show played with throughout the years, and it feels fitting that
this moment is in many ways the decisive choice Jeff makes to embrace interpersonal connections,
reject his lawyering and manipulation, and return to the school and his friends.
Next, and maybe more importantly Pierce s death results in the episode Cooperative Polygraphy,
which is one of this show s all time best. There s a reason they picked this script
for that Zoom reunion table read because it s Community firing on all cylinders
and even though Pierce isn t there, isn t in the room, he might as well be. This episode rebirths
the character fully, without ever needing him to actually be there. The questions being asked, the
questions Pierce left, the way they alternately tear apart and unite this circle is the perfect
tribute to the character s weird, contradictory balance between antagonism and true friendship.
This whole episode, and particularly the final gifting sequence captures the dualidean
of Pierce Hawthorne someone who could be a massive wanker, sometimes offensively so,
but also a really genuine friend. Pierce would have loved this whole mess, the chaos, the greed,
and ultimately the acceptance. And hey the fact that he was, in a sense, reborn like this kinda
makes you wonder, maybe there was something to that Laser Lotus theology after all.
So, that s Pierce. In all his infamy. A complex character, a DEEPLY flawed character, but
ultimately, a human one. A human being. If you ve liked this portrait, this pierce-trait I ve drawn,
a like and some feedback would be massive. Videos I do outside of the big franchise names like
Marvel or Star Wars often struggle to perform, so any engagement like that really goes a long way.
You could help me out, actually I really would like to do more stuff on Community, but I m not
sure what approach to take individually focused videos on characters or episodes like this one,
or longer, perhaps season-by-season general retrospectives, which would you rather I make?
I d love to know, so leave your thoughts below. Thanks for watching though! And
a special shoutout to all my Patrons onscreen now, especially Ian Fyfield and Kevin Douglas.