Who is Jeff Winger in Community?

Show

Community

Played by

Joel McHale

First episode

“Pilot”Season 1, Episode 1, aired September 17, 2009

Role

Lead

Network

NBC

Occupation

Disgraced lawyer turned student, then teacher

Show run

2009 to 2015Its sixth and final season streamed on Yahoo! Screen.

Also known as

Jeffrey Winger, Jeffrey Tobias Winger, Winger

Jeff Winger is the sarcastic, charming ex-lawyer at the center of Community, who arrives at Greendale looking for an easy shortcut back to his old life. Played by Joel McHale, he starts out as the study group's cool, detached leader and ends up as the one who needs them most.

On Community, Jeff Winger's story runs through Britta Perry (Ex-girlfriend), Annie Edison (Love Interest), Abed Nadir (Friend), Troy Barnes (Friend), Craig Pelton (Admiring Dean), and Ben Chang (Spanish Teacher).

Who is Jeff Winger?

Jeff was a successful criminal defense attorney at a big firm until a colleague discovered that his bachelor's degree from Columbia was fake. To save his law career he has to earn a real degree, so he enrolls at Greendale Community College, a school whose standards are generous, to put it kindly. He assumes he can coast through on charm and favors.

In the pilot he invents a Spanish study group as a ploy to spend time with Britta Perry, a classmate he is attracted to. Britta invites Abed, and the group quickly grows to include Troy, Annie, Shirley, and Pierce. Jeff becomes its reluctant leader, the person the others look to for advice and for big speeches.

Personality and comedy

Jeff is vain, quick-witted, and allergic to sincerity, at least at first. He is a gifted talker who can win almost any argument, and the show regularly builds episodes around his rousing Winger speeches, which tend to arrive just as everything is falling apart. Much of his comedy comes from the gap between how cool he wants to seem and how much he secretly cares.

Creator Dan Harmon modeled Jeff partly on himself, drawing on his own experience in a community college Spanish study group. Over six seasons Jeff sheds much of his self-absorption, and the series is in many ways the story of a loner learning that he needs other people.

Key storylines

Jeff's love life is a constant thread. He and Britta sleep together during the campus paintball war at the end of season one and keep it secret for a year until Abed exposes the affair. He also shares a kiss with Annie at the end of that first season, and their slow-burning connection, complicated by their age difference, runs through the rest of the series.

Jeff graduates at the end of season four, but his new law practice fails and he returns to Greendale in "Repilot," this time as a teacher. In season five he spirals on his 40th birthday, and in the final seasons he helps lead the Save Greendale Committee while his friends gradually move on. The series finale finds him facing the possibility that the group is breaking up for good.

Behind the scenes and legacy

Joel McHale was best known as the host of E!'s The Soup before Community. He has said Jeff's history of faking his way through school drew on his own experience with dyslexia, and Harmon has said McHale was cast for his likability, which let the writers give Jeff plenty of unlikable traits without losing the audience.

McHale earned Critics' Choice Television Award nominations for Best Actor in a Comedy Series in 2011 and 2012. Jeff's surname is a nod to Bill Murray's character John Winger in Stripes, and the character's original last name in development was Crocker.

Jeff Winger: frequently asked questions

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