Community: The Dean’s 10 Best Outfits, Ranked

When Jeff Winger and the rest of his study group decided to go to Greendale Community College, they might have turned back if they found out what was waiting for them before their courses started. Describing that place as absurd does not quite do it justice.

The problem is that specialized absurdity starts from the top down. Dean Craig Pelton is an earnest and caring man who is beyond ridiculous. He seems to spend about 50% of his day on the intercom and holds almost weekly dances to celebrate everything from Christmas to Thursday. Plus, he has a special costume for every occasion, again from Christmas to Thursday.

10 Shirley’s Baby

When Shirley became pregnant with her third child, she naturally assumed the father was her formerly estranged husband. That was because she, and everyone else on campus, had been brainwashed by the government into forgetting their horrifying Halloween party.

It was at that party where she and Chang hooked up. This was eventually revealed, throwing the child’s lineage and ethnicity into question. Always trying to be sensitive and respectful, the Dean showed up wearing a costume representative of the child’s potential Asian and African heritage. As usual, the costume was really just offensive.

9 Hunger Deans

In order to give the students a chance to decide who got first dibs on the popular History of Ice Cream class, Pelton held a competition he called the Hunger Deans. The man had the annoying proclivity to insert the word “Dean” into some very strange conversational places, mostly by accident.

This time seemed very much on purpose. The costumes themselves were lovely but a little mundane. What was impressive was the costume changes he went through during the events. The man does have a certain flair for the dramatic.

8 Lady Justice

With a vacancy in the cafeteria, Shirley put forward a plan to create her own sandwich shop with Pierce’s financial backing. After receiving approval for the shop from Greendale, Shirley and Piece got into fight over who got to sign the contract which in turn led of a legal proceeding of sorts.

It’s hard to imagine that it was a legit court at all since the Dean was the judge. He started off as a classic powdered wig judiciary but used a recess in the court to change his costume to Lady Justice. Unfortunately, Lady Justice is blindfolded and the Dean walked into stuff.

7 Serious Dean

When it was revealed to the Dean that the vast majority of the funding for his school came from the Air Conditioning Repair School, he decided it was time to take things seriously. That’s when, for the first time ever, he donned the Serious Dean costume. It consisted of an awful brown suit and a goatee.

What made this costume so funny was that this is what Pelton thought being serious at his job looked like. In reality, he was just mimicking the Dean of the Air Conditioning Repair School.

6 Catwoman

This episode of Community was a clip show filled with clips of things that fans were never shown until this episode. The premise was hilarious on its own. It featured a montage of costumes worn by the Dean with little or no context outside of what he said in the moment.

He dressed like Tina Turner to remind the students of Daylight Savings Time. He dressed Amadeus, aka AmaDEANus, to announce that the music department was Baroque and was having a fundraiser. But the best of them was when he showed up dressed as Halle Berry’s Catwoman for Feline AIDs Awareness Day. The funniest part about the costume was that he chose the worst Catwoman of all time. Sorry, Halle.

5 Uncle Sam

When Joe Biden announced he was stopping by Greendale to meet the student body president, Dean Pelton realized that it was time to elect a student body president. As such, debates would be a necessity as would a vaguely appropriate costume.

The Dean showed up dressed as Uncle Sam in what appeared to be a woman’s Uncle Sam costume based on the short shorts. This was at the point when the Dean was still insisting that many of his costumes belonged to his non-existent sister, a lie no one believed or even needed to hear.

4 Duali-Dean

The Dean really outdid himself on this one. He came in dressed with one half of his body clothed as a man and the other half as a woman, a classic costume brilliantly executed by professional. But it’s also the one that broke him.

The Dean started second-guessing himself and his love of costumes, particularly when he realized that he had to go to the bank dressed like that. He left as a sad and defeated man. But he did return re-energized after everyone at the bank loved his costume. Everything was coming up Dean Pelton that day.

3 Lady Gaga

When the Dean throws a Halloween party, you know it’s going to be epic. Not because it’s a really great party or anything like that but because he served a strange, meat-like substance that turned everyone into flesh-hungry zombies. This was the party that Chang and Shirley hooked up at, leading to the drama of who her baby’s father was.

The government eventually showed up to save the day and make everyone forget what happened. The upside to the evening was the Dean’s incredibly sweet Lady Gaga costume.

2 Sadie Hawkins Dean

When you have as many dances as Greendale does, you eventually have to dig into the past to find one you haven’t had before. Enter the Sadie Hawkins dance. For those who don’t know, a Sadie Hawkins dance is an event when women ask the men to go, which is the reverse of the traditional convention.

But the Dean took his announcement of this dance to a new level. Specifically, he dressed like Donna Reed, going so far as to put on makeup to appear like he was on a black and white TV.

1 Fire Dean

The Dean showed up in the study room dressed like a firefighter in short shorts. It certainly wasn’t his best or most inventive costume, but it was memorable for an entirely ridiculous reason. A fire had just broken out in the building and he was making an appearance to warn the study group to get out.

Instead of immediately evacuating the building, the Dean stopped for a costume change, then went to evacuate the building. While his commitment to the bit is admirable, his lack of commitment to the safety of his students is not.