Community: "Critical Film Studies"

Once I purchase my own copy of My Dinner with Andre, I’ll offer up a review of tonight’s episode, after the jump….

“If I’m the person who watches Cougar Town, how can I be in Cougar Town?” – Abed

At the risk of sounding simplistic, Community is best known for three things, in this order:

1.       Pop culture references

2.       Breaking the fourth wall/meta humor

3.       Burying a heavy layer of sentiment under numbers 1 and 2.

In fact, as long as the show elements actually stay in that order, the majority of Community fans tend to be pacified. When “Mixology Certification” decided to forgo the jokes, and just tell a serious, emotionally affecting story, fan reaction was much more mixed that usual. The same thing happened with “Messainic Myths and Ancients Peoples,” when the show added about 3 layers of complexity more than it should have. For these reasons alone, I suspect many people will turn on “Critical Film Studies.” Yet I greatly enjoyed this episode, even more than the other two mentioned above – and I REALLY like “Mixology Certification.”

Since all three of the show’s signature elements were present tonight, I will go ahead and tackle them in order. The pop culture reference tonight – Pulp Fiction – initially had me worried. The movie has been so ubiquitous in pop culture – both in spoofs and all of the imitators that flooded the cinemas in the years after the film’s release – that I doubted that the show, as brilliant as it is, could have come up with anything that wouldn’t feel like a rehash of something that’s already been done. But here’s where the show surprised me: it mixed overt references with the more subtle ones, assuring that the show could both reference the film, yet remain above the base, tired references that we have seen before.

Let me explain: tonight we had the overt references expressed as references within the show itself. People dressed up like characters from the film, in a restaurant meant to evoke the film, with gifts that also referenced the film, and it was all acknowledge as the characters making their own references to the film in order to make Abed happy. But the show itself also made it own references, though it was very subtle. Scenes like those in the fancy restaurant, the opening and closing narration, and the overt violence as Chang beat up Troy, all evoked stylistic touches not only from Pulp Fiction, but from all Tarantio films. In this way, the show got to both have its references and mock those that have been done before.

But that wasn’t enough for you, the show also made sure to bring the meta humor to an extreme, losing the audience for a little while as it reflected the fourth wall back upon itself. While Abed, a television character, having problem being a character in another TV show, and then creating a fictional character that could exist in that TV show is needlessly complicated, there is a point to all of this madness. Abed is, for most people, a meta creation in and of himself, which means that the show is essentially making a comment about their most meta character by having him act in a meta fashion. Brilliant, huh?

“We lie the most when we are six inches from the mirror.” – Jeff

But even if you didn’t catch all of that (heck, the content in the previous paragraph is more of a theory than anything), that’s okay, because they best part of this episode wasn’t the humor it employed, but the emotions that it unearthed (which of course recalls “Mixology” both in terms of emotion and that fact that both scaled back the jokes).

Though one would expect that the character with the most to gain tonight would have been Abed, that expectation would be wrong. (Though admittedly he, Troy, and Britta all had their own small beats, and I get the feeling Britta’s will be dealt with in the next few weeks.) Instead, tonight’s episode turned its attention to Jeff, in what was a glorious monologue of self-reflection brought on by Abed’s own assistance to act “normal.” Jeff not only fears winding up alone, but he also calls sex lines and pretends to be fat, and once when he was little, he was forced to dress up as a little girl for Halloween. For a cool a Jeff may seem on the outside, it’s all just a character, no more real than “Chad,” the persona that Abed created. It was a brilliant little moment for the show, one which was able to comment on the fragility of all people, regardless of where the fall on the spectrum of weird.

Yet if the ending of this episode in any indication, Jeff is going to be okay. For as much as Abed may have been fearing that he was losing Jeff as friend, Jeff probably needs him just as much, and Abed will be there for him, in the ways that only Abed can; who else would redo their own botched surprise party just to make their friend happy?  In fact, as that closing party scene made clear, all of these people need each other. They are all broken in their own ways, and only through this ad-hoc family will they have a chance to survive in the real world.

Because who else would put up with throwing such an elaborate themed birthday party?

What did everybody else think?

Additional Thoughts:

Chang didn’t get much to do tonight, which I’m sure will please Jessica Grose.

“He watched Cougar Town..it’s as if he didn’t want people to like him.”

“Abed was being weird. And by that, I meant he wasn’t be weird.”

“I’m hot and my balls are touching a zipper.”

“What, I have 3D vision now?” “Yes, you do.” “You don’t know me!”

“If you want me to take it seriously, stop saying its name.”

“Excellent choice.” “Yeah, I really nailed it.”

Ants get right down to brass tax.

“Baby chickens, tiny forks, brand name sodas.”

“Chang made me do it. He seduced me with his dark Chinese powers.” “WHY DO YOU LEAVE HIM ALONE WITH ME?!”

“Oh, no-no juice.”

“I got Indiana Jones’ real whip from him. He’s moves about 70 a year.”

“I prefer the term homage.”

“Tight, heavy lid.” “Cool, THL.”

“WHAT MARKET AT YOU SHOPPING AT?!”

Did I catch the Hop hidden Easter egg during the show? No I did not, NBC. No I did not.