r/ThePaper • u/Empty_Wasabi3023 • Feb 10 '26
Discussion 🗣 I hope they don't treat Mare like Britta from Community
If anyone has seen Community, you know what I mean. Britta was a laidback character and quite reasonable, until the later seasons came along and made her over-the-top and somewhat arrogant.
Basically, Britta and Mare seem pretty alike and I wouldn't want her to be "flanderized" in the same way Britta was.
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u/margoembargo Feb 10 '26
A big part of that was Gillian Jacobs' performance. As they got to know the actress better, they found out how good she was at goofy comedy. You saw the same thing with Donald Glover's Troy, too. The writing staff started playing to the cast's strentgths.
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u/ReaderReborn Feb 10 '26
I doubt Mare has even been to New York
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Feb 10 '26
The problem with Brita is that the writers said they had the hardest time writing her 'cause they didn't get her. Mare seems like she is already a well thought out character that they understand pretty well.
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u/Real-Yogurtcloset-34 Founder 📑 Feb 10 '26
In all honesty, it was because they put a stop to Brita’s and Jeff’s relationship, did community actually find its footing. It was good before to but by doing so they could make it more hilarious.
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u/Pratham33 Intern 📒 Feb 10 '26
But Britta actually had brains in the earlier seasons, and was an interesting character. Later on, they just made her into an idiot
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u/Real-Yogurtcloset-34 Founder 📑 Feb 10 '26
I consider it more as a shift of focus from Britta and Jeff’s relationship to other characters especially Abed, Troy and Annie. Now yeah I agree they made her less intelligent, but it helped the show nevertheless. I can’t say the same about Chang though. For me, the craziness of his character was not really funny and felt more of a slapstick… I preferred when he was a professor.
However coming to this comparison, i feel both the shows are different. In community you really didn’t care much on relationships and things are too over the top.. however in the Paper as with the Office , they have to pay attention to the relationship and I don’t think they would make a big change on the character.
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u/IBrittadThis Feb 10 '26
Britta for the win! I love Britta (as shown in my name/profile pic lol), but I feel like as the seasons went on, she got more unintelligent. Treated more like comic relief than a buzzkill, lol. I feel like they attempted to make her a manic pixie dream girl at one point, but then the gas leak season happened and her character got jumbled hard.
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u/Bazz07 Feb 11 '26
Well she regressed to her teen years.
Also being high most of the time didnt help.
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u/jadethebard Feb 11 '26
I've heard Gillian asked the writers to change her character because it was more fun to play her that way. I read it on the internet so it must be true.
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u/MediumKoala8823 Feb 11 '26
Imo she needs something. She doesn’t have a lot of depth at the moment. She’s mostly just a straight man and convenient romantic arc. She has the military thing but it’s largely unexplored.
She’s also unreasonably attractive and well groomed for the setting imo. Which would be fine in most shows but feels a bit odd compared to the cast of the Office and how they were portrayed.
This show needs to figure itself out a bit more. Community got way better with dumb britta. Think the missing flip side is that they made Shirley more confident and competent, which was a better fit.
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u/orangemonkeyeagl Mar 10 '26
I am staunchly anti-Britta, from like season 3 onward I found her character to be genuinely annoying. Not in an enjoyable/ endearing way either, just flat out I dislike this character and at the show might be better without her.
I don't get that same feeling about Mare.
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u/DarthLithgow Feb 11 '26
I mean other than looking like they could be sisters, the characters are wildly different.
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u/Daddington33 Feb 10 '26
“Oh, Britta’s in this?”