Jeff and Annie’s age gap.
A quick note on the ages of Jeff and Annie. One of the arguments used against Jeff and Annie by fans who opposed the pairing was the age gap of the characters. So what are the ages of the characters? Unfortunately, there isn’t a straightforward answer.
The easy starting point is with Annie since there is little controversy about her age. In season 2 her birth year is stated to be 1990 and in s6e3 (Basic Crisis Room Decorum) her birthday is clearly established to be December 19, 1990. So early in season 1 she would be 19 years old and by the series finale she would be 24 going on 25.
On the other hand, determining the age of Jeff is a little more complicated. It is clear Jeff is supposed to be somewhere in his 30’s during the first year and there are multiple episodes that establish three different potential ages for the character. The first one is s2e15 where we see a clear shot of Jeff’s license that has a birthdate of November 11, 1971. However, this was indicated, in the DVD commentary, to be a mistake by the prop department who just used the birth year of Joel McHale as the birth year for Jeff Winger.
Jumping ahead to s5e11 there is an episode that focuses on an emotional breakdown Jeff has. In the episode Jeff indicates that the reason for his breakdown was that he turned 40. This would suggest that Jeff was born in 1974 making him 35 in the first season of the show. However, there are two episodes that occurred in earlier seasons that directly contradict this age and several episodes that provide supporting evidence contracting 1974.
In season s2 e17 (Intro to Political Science) during a student presidential candidate debate Annie shows an embarrassing Real World audition tape that Jeff made in 1997 and Jeff says he was only 19 at the time. Doing the math that would have made Jeff born in 1978 and thus 31 during the pilot.
In s4e5 (Cooperative Escapism in Familial Relations) Jeff confronts his father, who had left him and his mother as a child, and in one scene Jeff shares a story about some get well cards he got in 7th grade from his classmates and that he still has them 22 years later. Assuming a typical age of 13 for a 7th grader and adding 22 years would make Jeff 35 in season 4 (31 during season 1) and with a birth year of 1978.
Finally, there are also multiple episodes where Jeff references being a lawyer for 7 years before coming to Greendale. Knowing that Jeff faked his bachelors and assuming he did so around 19 or 20 years old and accounting for 3 years for law school, time to study for and pass the Colorado Bar, and the 7 years as a lawyer you get Jeff being about 31 in the pilot season…which also aligns with the 1978 birth year. It is also establish that Jeff’s parents were married between 1974 and 1983 so a 1978 birth year fits in well in that regard.
All these points clearly establishing Jeff as 31 in the first season were unnecessarily ignored and discarded in order to facilitate a single “gimmick” episode at the end of the 5th season (e.g. G.I. Jeff). While there is no definitive explanation for this decision it may have been just lazy writing in the moment and using 40 as an easy excuse for Jeff to have a breakdown. However, many fans feel that the age retcon was a direct attempt by the writers (and mostly Dan Harmon) to throw shade at the fans of the Jeff and Annie relationship by making the age gap even bigger. Dan Harmon has made public statements that he was at times personally attacked by critics over the Jeff and Annie paring. The critics tried to claim that Dan was living out some personal fantasy through his characters and this directly led to Dan refusing to have a Jeff and Annie relationship established during the shows run. This may be why he waited until the last scenes of the final episode of the series to address the Jeff and Annie of it all and allow them to finally be together.
While Dan Harmon and a few fans try and make an issue out the 12 year age gap between Jeff and Annie it is an interesting side note that on the same station (NBC) on the same night (Thursday) there was a show (Parks and Recreation) that had a relationship between two characters with almost the same age gap. In Parks and Rec Chris Pratt’s character Andy Dwyer was about 30 in the first season of the show while Aubrey Plaza’s character was 19 and those characters started dating in season 3 and were married shortly after. But I’ll have more to say about that later…
I wonder what the TV critics who attacked Community, and Dan, over Jeff and Annie had to say about Andy and April?
