Abed Nadir

Abed Nadir is the deuteragonist of the NBC/Sony sitcom series, Community. He is a pop culture fanatic and aspiring filmmaker who becomes a student at Greendale Community College in 2009, during his time there he makes several friends, most notably Troy Barnes and becomes a member of the Greendale Study Group.
He was portrayed by .
== Biography ==
Abed had a difficult life growing up, due in part to his parents. His father is a Palestinian from Gaza and his mother Polish American, which was a source of cultural discord. Abed also has an undiagnosed psychological condition which makes it hard for him to understand people. His mother left his family when he was 6 years old and Abed assumed his father blamed him for it. This created distance between them and resulted in Abed alienating himself further by immersing himself in American pop-culture. His father allowed him to enrol at Greendale Community College primarily so he could take classes which would help him one day take over his dad's Falafel restaurant. Eventually he convinces his father to let him study Film making instead. After four years at school he graduated with a film degree but was unable to find work as a filmmaker besides doing a commercial for Jeff's law firm. After an unexpected reunion with his study group at Greendale, Abed decides to re-enroll in order to learn how to work better with people. He and his study group also join a special "Save Greendale Committee" tasked with improving the school.
== Character History ==
==== Season One: ====
In his first year at Greendale, Abed introduced himself to Jeff and provided him detailed information not only about himself but also their Spanish 101 classmate Britta Perry. Abed is later asked by Britta to join her and Jeff for what they believed to be a Spanish study group. He in turn invited a number of other students from their class and the study group was born. Abed was enrolled in business and restaurant management classes to take over his fathers Falafel restaurant, despite his desire to take film classes and become a director. Britta convinced Abed to pursue his dreams of making movies and he switched his major to film. His father Gubi disapproved until he viewed a short film Abed made and was moved by how he was finally able to express himself. Aside from his filmmaking abilities, Abed also makes a name for himself on campus by orchestrating a Chicken Fingers syndicate and acquitting himself quite well during the schools annual Paintball Assassin game. Throughout the semester he becomes close to Troy and by the end of the year they became the best of friends. After Troy is kicked out of his dad's house, he tried to suggest to Abed that he move into his dorm room. Abed refuses, stating it would be too much of a strain on their relationship. Although disappointed, Troy ultimately sees the wisdom of Abed's decision and moves in with Pierce instead.
==== Season Two: ====
Abed's second year at school sees his friendship with Troy become even stronger. He takes part in various campus shenanigans, such as the launch of Greendale's space simulator, building a blanket fort in his dorm room, filming a documentary on Jesus, and a mysterious outbreak on Halloween. He also is forced to deal with some personal issues and suffers an emotional breakdown at Christmas. As the year continues, Abed is enlisted by Jeff to act as "Dungeon Master" and oversee a game of "Dungeons and Dragons" with the study group and a fellow student named Neil. He later films a documentary of the group when they visit Pierce in the hospital after he overdoses on pain meds. On Abed's birthday, Jeff tries to throw him a "Pulp Fiction"-themed surprise party but it turns out Abed has his own plans to celebrate the occasion. He ends the year by participating in the annual Paintball Assassin games. The stakes are raised when City College joins the game and he assumes a Han Solo persona to help lead the Greendale student body against the invaders.
==== Season Three: ====
Abed's third year at school sees him moving into an apartment with Troy. When his favorite TV show went on hiatus, Britta introduced him to "Inspector Spacetime", which becomes his latest pop culture fixation. A house warming party for his new apartment had him imagining various scenarios including a dark reality with which he becomes obsessed. It also leads to Abed inviting Annie to move in with him and Troy. A psychology test he took suggested he might be the sanest one in the study group, but his actions the rest of the year prove otherwise. His addiction to celebrity impersonators puts him in debt and causes a rift with Troy. This comes to a head when they have a disagreement over the creation of a new Fluffy Town fort. Although Jeff helped resolve the conflict, Abed feared Troy's budding romance with Britta might also tear them apart. However, a bigger concern arises after the study group is expelled from school thanks to Chang. Eventually he and the group are reinstated at school but not without losing Troy to the Greendale Air Conditioning Repair School. This causes Abed to retreat into his fantasies via "The Dreamatorium" and assume the identity of "Evil Abed". A "Winger speech" snaps him out of his delusion. Abed is then reunited with Troy, who managed to free himself from his obligations to the AC school.
==== Season Four: ====
During Abed's fourth year at Greendale, he continues his therapy with Britta and has anxiety about this possibly being the last year the study group is together, now that Jeff is graduating. He also deals with the fact that Troy is now in a relationship with Britta. He and Troy later go to an Inspector Spacetime convention where he meets up with another online friend named Toby Weeks. At school he is surprised to discover another online friend who is aligned with a campus clique the study group is feuding with. Inspired by their love of "body swapping" genre movies, the Troy & Abed duo decides to act out the phenomenon in real life. Abed attends a Sadie Hawkins dance with two different dates in order to live out a classic sitcom trope, only to be caught up in a real-life romantic plot twist. Eventually Abed accepts that Jeff is moving on from school and he creates a special graduation gift for him. He researches and maps out a detailed timeline of each study group member's life before Greendale, hoping to show that it was their destiny to become friends.
==== Season Five: ====
After graduation, Abed found it difficult to find a film job. He did a commercial for Jeff but wasn't paid when he left the project due to creative differences. Once Jeff accepted a job at Greendale as a Law professor, Abed and the rest of study group re-enrolled. His first class back he has a nervous breakdown studying actor Nicholas Cage's body of work. Abed joins a special "Save Greendale Committee along with the rest of the study group. He later comforts his best friend when at Troy is assaulted by the "Ass Crack Bandit". Upon learning of Pierce Hawthorne's death, Abed joins the study group in mourning him. A man named Mr.Stone, acting under instructions from Pierce's will, gives the group a polygraph test. It's revealed Abed has access to Jeff's Netflix account, installed geotracking devices in each study group member and manipulated Annie with a fake Facebook account. Stone told Abed that Pierce always thought he was crazy and bequeathed him a liquid nitrogen cooled cylinder of Pierce's sperm. Abed is later forced to say goodbye to Troy who is leaving Greendale to pursue an amazing opportunity. In his honor, Abed hosts a campus wide game of "Hot Lava" to say goodbye to his best friend. Abed reunites with Rachel and tries to convince Annie to let his girlfriend be their new roommate. He bonds with Professor Hickey after they are forced to spend a night together and along with the committee helped Buzz reconnect with his son Hank over a game of Dungeons & Dragons. When Greendale is about to be sold to the Subway corporation, Abed, Dean Pelton and Annie lead the rest of the committee on a desperate quest to save the school
==== Season Six: ====
Abed returns for a sixth year at Greendale triumphant after having rescued the school from closing. However, one task that Abed's Save Greendale Committee did not complete which led to a disastrous outcome. This required Dean Pelton to hire a consultant named Francesca "Frankie" Dart to join the committee. Although worried at first, Abed accepted her and inventor Elroy Patashnik into the group. He and Annie agreed to let Britta stay at their apartment after her parents reached out to them on Facebook. He teamed with Elroy to protect a birds nest and was tricked by Britta to throw a party at his apartment. Abed and the committee dealt with a hacker leaking their personal emails and convicts attending school via telepresence robots. Abed reluctantly agreed to shoot a film using unused footage of Chang, who had briefly become an Internet sensation. During production he learned about Jeff's growing depression about his friends leaving him behind. While on a road trip with the committee, Abed envisioned several flashback scenarios he wished could have happened. Later, Abed filmed Garrett's proposal to his girlfriend Stacy and then for his own personal amusement documented the committee attending the wedding. He competed in a secret campus paintball game and worked with the committee to find out who has organized the contest. At the end of the year Abed announced his summer plans to work as a production assistant on a new TV show. When it was time for him to go, Jeff drove him to the airport to catch a flight to Washington, D.C. along with Annie who had a summer internship at the FBI.
== Quotes ==
“Come with me if you don't want paint on your clothes.”
: “ Chaos already dominates enough of our lives; the universe is an endless raging sea of randomness. Our job isn't to fight it, but to weather it, together, on the raft of life. A raft held together by those few, rare beautiful things we know to be predictable.”— Abed
: “Ropes? Vines. Vines? Let him finish!”— Britta
: “Us. It won't matter what happens to us as long as we stay honest and accepting of each other's flaws and virtues: Annie will always be driven, Shirley will always be giving, Pierce will never apologize, Britta's sort of a wild card from my perspective, and Jeff will forever remain a conniving son of a bitch.”— Abed
:: “What happened to just being a fly on the wall?”— Dean Pelton
:: “Some flies are too awesome for the wall.”— Abed
::
:: “Britta, zoom in there. There's a clock on the wall.”
::
:: “Eight plus two, times five...”— Abed
:: “Ten after eight.”— Troy
:: “I'm gifted in other ways.”— Abed
::
:: "Yes, that was a test. You guys are bad friends." "I remember when the show was about Community college."
: "We can re-pilot. This can be like Scrubs: Season Nine...a revamp, a do-over. Jeff could come back to Greendale as a teacher."
: "Chaos already dominates enough of our lives. The universe is an endless, raging sea of randomness. Our job isn't to fight it but to weather it together on the raft of life. A raft held together by those few, rare, beautiful things that we know to be predictable."
: "I am hoping we can move away from the soapy relationship-y stuff and into bigger, fast paced, self contained escapades."
: "Britta, I've got self-esteem falling out of my butt. That's why I was willing to change for you guys because when you really know who you are and what you like about yourself, changing for other people isn't such a big deal."
:
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== Gallery ==
File:Screenshot 2023-06-21 8.32.42 AM.png|Abed during the Blanket wars
File:Screenshot 2023-06-21 8.32.58 AM.png|Abed in season one
File:Screenshot 2023-06-21 8.33.16 AM.png
File:Screenshot 2023-06-21 8.34.11 AM.png|Abed with his girlfriend
File:Screenshot 2023-06-21 8.33.38 AM.png|Abed with his best friend Troy wearing inspector space time costumes
== Trivia ==
* Abed's favorite movie is a tie between Ghostbusters, An American Werewolf in London, Back to The Future, Blade
Runner, Stand By Me, Stripes, Star Wars IV through VI, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Jaws, Raising Arizona, Jurassic Park, Seven, The Matrix, Goonies, Breakfast Club, Real Genius, Better Off Dead, The Fog of War, and Pulp Fiction. ("[[1]]")
* In the Season One episode "The Art of Discourse", Abed and Troy figure out their porn star names by putting the name of their grade school and favorite soda together. Abed's name is "Henry David Thoreau Diet Squirt".
* Abed often does movie spoofs, though he prefers the term homage.
* Abed has trumped two professors' research thesis: He was the exception to Ian Duncan's Duncan Principle, and he disproved Professor Sheffield's analysis of the TV show "Who's the Boss?". Though in reference to the Duncan Principle, Ian Duncan thinks Abed is the exception, but the Duncan Principle is still in effect - it's just that the scientists fell for it before Abed (the test subject) did.
* In the Community College Chronicles, Abed is played by Alan Bruder.
* His age has never been directly stated. It is suggested that he is at least 21, since he was seemingly able to enter The Ballroom and buy drinks for himself during Troy's birthday party with no trouble. This would place him somewhere in between Troy and Britta.
* In the episode "Applied Anthropology and Culinary Arts", Abed mentions that he delivered a baby in the back of a car. In the episode "The Psychology of Letting Go", several scenes show Abed caring for a pregnant woman, fighting with her boyfriend, and finally delivering it in the back of a car.
* Although he is never shown behind the wheel, it has been indicated in the series that Abed drives: Jeff asks Abed to park his car for him in Spanish 101, and in Pillow and Blankets Part 2, the narrator points out that Abed's parking fine goes unpaid.
* Prominent TV blogger, Todd VanDerWerff of the The AV Club considers Abed "the most original character of the past decade."
* Danny Pudi was one of several actors associated with "Community" that was hired by former Executive producers Joe and Anthony Russo to appear in the 2014 film "Captain America:The Winter Soldier". He played a S.H.I.E.L.D tech who encounters Captain America, The Falcon and Maria Hill.
* The script for "Mixology Certification" has an unused scene where Abed declares he is 28 years old to Troy in 2010. Had this become canon he would have been born in 1982 and 33 by the end of the series.
* Abed is present in every episode of the show, but does not appear onscreen in the penultimate episode "Wedding Videography".
* Abed's character is at least partially based on actor and writer Abed Gheith, whom Dan Harmon worked with before Community.
* Abed apparently has trouble reading clocks, as shown in Basic Lupine Urology.
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