From: Community
Genre: Television
Who said it?: Abed Nadir
The story behind the quote: This week’s quote comes from the geek cult comedy Community. Created by Dan Harmon, the show focuses on the Greendale Community College and a specific study group of six eccentric personalities. The show has become a geeky cult classic and fans may have gotten their six seasons… but fans are still screaming for six seasons and a movie.
The quote comes from one of Community’s most popular episodes, Remedial Chaos Theory, during the credits. It’s revealed that, in the timeline where Jeff Winger (played by Joel McHale) throws a 1 on the dice, a lot of terrible things happens to the study group, with some losing their voice, losing their arm, dying and getting a washable blue strip in their hair (Britta is the worst). Abed Nadir (played by Danny Pudi) notices this and, remembering he knew Jeff was creating different timelines when he was leaving his choice to chance by throwing the dice, he delivers the quote.
Despite Community not being an incredibly mainstream show, the quote itself, although shortened to “The Darkest Timeline“, has become a meme in itself, describing when some extremely bad event occurs.
Geek wisdom: Life can feel really terrible at times and it can feel like we are indeed living in “the darkest timeline.” But just because things are bad now, that doesn’t mean we are unable to do things to try to make things better.
