The first person to call Britta the worst was Señor Chang in season one when she mispronounced the word “bagel”. From there, the catchphrase took off and Britta became known as the worst, aka the AT&T of people, the human tennis elbow, the pizza burn on the roof of the world’s mouth, and the opposite of Batman. “To britta” something even became a synonym for messing up.
However, it should be noted, that even though Britta did have a tendency to screw up and get on everyone’s nerves with her preachy attitude, she wasn’t literally the worst all the time. She was actually a pretty good person who cared about her friends. That being said, here are the ten times she was the worst, sometimes in the most adorable and other times in the most annoying way.
WHEN SHE DIDN’T GET ANALOGY AT ALL
Britta’s inability to understand basic phrases is one of the show’s running gags. She finds analogies particularly difficult to grasp, even though she gave kind of a spot on definition of analogy: “a thought with another thought’s hat on”. However, when it comes to using analogies or explaining what a particular analogy means, Britta is quite simply the worse.
In the season six episode “Laws of Robotics & Party Rights”, Britta explained the expression ‘hoisted by your own petard’ in the most adorable and hilarious way: “I guess I just assumed that in the old days a petard was a special outfit like a leotard, with a lot of fancy buckles and loops on it, and that rich people would wear them when they were feeling especially smug, but then poor people would tie a rope through one of the loops, and hoist them up a pole and then let them dangle there as punishment for being cocky.”
THE SAVE THE PELICANS INCIDENT
In the season two episode “Psychology of Letting Go”, Britta and Annie find a common cause to fight for: saving the pelicans who have been endangered by a recent oil spill. Unfortunately, they both kind of lose track of what’s really important when they start arguing about whose way of fundraising is “the right way”.
Britta disapproved of Annie’s use of femininity and called her out for selling out her gender. To prove how stupid Annie looked, Britta started impersonating her, causing Annie to start impersonating Britta. Honestly, they were both the worst here because they both forgot what was truly at stake here – saving the pelicans.
WHEN SHE TRIED TO BE A WAR PHOTOGRAPHER
When everyone at Greendale campus got dragged into Abed and Troy’s war of forts, each member of the study group had to either pick a side or go off on their own. And so, Annie became a nurse, Jeff gave inspirational speeches to both sides, and Britta decided to become a war photographer. Only one issue though, she britta’d it because she’s the world’s worst photographer.
No matter how hard she tried, Britta somehow managed to mess up literally every single photo except the final shot with Troy and Abed doing their signature handshake after finally agreeing to a truce.
WHEN SHE DID THE PIZZA SONG AND DANCE
Getting excited about eating pizza is perfectly normal. After all, who doesn’t love pizza? However, how many of us can actually say that the arrival of the pizza guy made us break out into an impromptu song and dance? Probably not many.
In the episode that created the different timelines, the hilarious “Remedial Chaos Theory”, Britta, who had just been in the bathroom smoking a little something, starts singing a pizza song while doing a weird dance. Watching her little performance is so awkward it hurts. It’s by far one of the most Britta things she’s ever done.
WHEN SHE DID THE CHRISTMAS SHOW
Singing isn’t for everyone. You’re either good at it or you suck. Britta sucks at both singing and dancing, but she still performed at the Christmas Pageant when the study group filled in for Glee Club in the season three episode “Regional Holiday Music”. Britta, who was supposed to be just a mute tree, stepped in for Abed, the main act of the show, and put on a cringe-worthy performance.
Convinced that she’s the one who can save the day and get the Glee Club to Regionals, Britta walked out on the stage and started singing an awkward Christmas song while performing an even more awkward dance. It was one of her most embarrassing moments for sure.
WHEN SHE DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO PRONOUNCE “BAGEL”
If you’ve seen Community and are somehow still capable of saying the word “bagel” without laughing, kudos to you for not immediately hearing Britta’s hilarious pronunciation in your head. In the season one episode “Physical Education”, Jeff knocks a bag of bagels off the table causing Britta to mispronounce the word.
What’s even worse is that she still wouldn’t admit she’s pronouncing it wrong even though everyone corrected her and laughed at her. Britta’s argument: “I lived in New York, Troy, I know what a bagel is”. Her mispronunciation of the word “bagel” even caused Señor Chang to call her the worst.
WHEN SHE FELL FOR SUBWAY
When a Subway corpo-humanoid started going to Greendale Community College in order for Subway to be able to open up a restaurant in the cafeteria, thus messing up Shirley and Pierce’s plan to open up a sandwich restaurant, Shirley and Pierce decided to convince Britta to use her “whoreswomanship” (Pierce’s word) to spy on Subway and get some insider information on the chain.
However, this is Britta we’re talking about and, of course, she managed to screw it up. Instead of using Subway, she fell for him. Sure, Subway was kinda hot, but still, all it took for Britta to betray her friends was a pretty face and an interest in feminism and George Orwell’s 1984.
WHEN SHE FAUGHT FOR GNOME RIGHTS
In the season two episode “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons”, the study group decided to organize a game of Dungeons & Dragons to help their friend Neil who’s been very depressed as of late. Leave it to Britta to somehow find a way to fight for social justice in a game of Dungeons & Dragons. The moment Abed mentioned beleaguered Gnomes, Britta couldn’t help but wonder why the Gnomes are beleaguered.
Instead of playing along with Abed’s story and inquiring about the Pegasus they so desperately needed from the Gnome, true to form, Britta went on about Gnome rights.
WHENEVER SHE WAS HOLIER THAN THOU
One of Britta’s defining characteristics that makes us love to hate her is her holier-than-thou attitude. In her continuous efforts to appear selfless and progressive, she comes off as hypocritical and pretentious due to her tendency to claim moral superiority which she clearly doesn’t have. Britta takes political correctness to insane levels, despises anything popular and conventional, and distrusts pretty much every institution, government, religion and so on.
In one episode she made a whole argument against weddings and marriage, causing Jeff to fittingly dub her pro-anti. Britta usually takes any given opportunity to lecture anyone who’ll listen (and who won’t) about every possible topic which gets pretty annoying pretty fast.
THE WEIRD CO-DEPENDENT RELATIONSHIP WITH SECURITY GUARD CHANG
In the season three episode “Geography of Global Conflict”, while the rest of the study group was busy with the Model UN Competition, Britta was raging against the machine, aka desperately trying to prove she’s a badass activist by provoking “The Man” to take her down. At the same time, the newly appointed security guard Chang was looking for a mark to make him feel like he’s doing something important.
The two end up in a co-dependent relationship that leads to some very awkward encounters, which is honestly one of the weirdest things to happen on the show. More importantly, though, this whole debacle proved that Britta only cares about how she’s perceived and not about actually accomplishing something through her activism, which kinda makes her the worst.
