candychangs:

I just realized Jeff has a lot of insecurities that the show hardly ever addressed. In season 1, he’s so compulsive about his health and appearance that he won’t even eat a piece of cake and hearing that his cholesterol is a little high sends him spiraling. In season 4, he almost ends up overdosing because he feels like he’s getting old at age 40. And in the Thanksgiving episode, it’s revealed that he literally cut himself with a pair of scissors when he was a kid so that the other kids would believe he had appendicitis and said that he still had those get well soon cards. It seems like he was looking for any kind of positive attention because he secretly believes he wasn’t good enough and had some serious self-worth issues, and maybe if he pretends to believe he’s amazing, other people believe it, and maybe that’ll make it true.

I don’t want to detract from the point but two small corrections. It’s season 2 where he has the breakdown about his cholesterol (episode 3, The Psychology of Letting Go). And season 5 (episode 11, GI Jeff) where he had the semi-suicide attempt.

And your right they aren’t really dealt with or it’s inconsistent. In Psychology in Letting Go he learns to let go and comes to terms that he will die someday when he hears Pierce’s mother, but then he still continues to be overly heath conscious and it’s never brought up again. In season 3 Jeff starts going to therapy, but it’s mentioned too sporadically and there aren’t really any results from it. In season 5, that episode was mostly to fuel Harmon’s desire to do a GI Joe episode, but it brought up some serious issues that were just brushed past because it’s a sitcom. There are so many plot points, like the zombie Halloween episode, that they design to have temporary results because it’s a comedy through and through there’s not much room for darkness on a more permanent basis.