Community: "Competitive Wine Tasting"

Season 2, Episode 20

A “normal” episode more or less delivers

“I want to be interesting. I want to be able to fit in with you guys. I want to be an actor.”

-Troy

Two weekends ago, using some birthday money, I went out and finally purchased the first season of Community on DVD and proceeded into a productive-free state. I bring this up not to brag (though seriously, it’s a pretty sweet DVD set, you should get your own copy), but rather because it has some relevance to tonight’s relevance. As I was blitzkrieging through the season, I couldn’t help but notice pairings that the show had part of its original incarnations: Troy and Pierce, Troy and Annie, and Troy and Britta.

Yes, Troy and Britta. Though it wasn’t as fully formed as the other abandoned pairings, there were some implications that maybe Troy was attracted to Britta, and those implications returned tonight in its most overt form tonight. Troy was obviously spurred to spin his lies in part to get Closer to Britta, a woman attracted to broken men.

But luckily this wasn’t the only desire driving Troy’s actions, for while they made some sense to me, not everyone has watched the first season a second time – if it all. (Also, faking being molested? That’s a weird move to impress a girl, even for a girl like Britta.) Instead, the far more powerful – and logical – force was Troy’s desire to fit in. Back when Troy was in high school, Tory was popular because he played football; it was effortless. But now that he’s found a real group of friends, and shed his manufactured personality for a real one, and he has become an outcast. So while “fake molestation” jokes are always my cup of tea – they feel either too “topical” or too mean – here there was enough motivation behind Troy’s actions to make them funny. (Plus they worked in an Arrested Development reference, and that’s usually enough to win me over. I know, I’m weak.)

“I think what you were trying to do was prove that no one could love me.”

-Pierce

At this point in the season, any Pierced-based storyline is inherently problematic. The character has been taken to an ugly dark place this season, that it’s hard to a) believe that he’s still able belong to this group and b) connect to his emotional storylines. Tonight’s story asked me to do a lot of the latter and very little of the former. For most of its running time, the story rested on Jeff mocking Pierce, something that I’m okay with, even if I shouldn’t be. Pierce is the needed butt of the jokes, both for the show and the study group (as was proven in “The Art of Discourse”), and though that may fly in the face of the show’s mission to have fully-rounded characters, I’ve always accepted Pierce in his simplified role.

Which means it’s always a bit hard for me to accept Pierce as a real character. While I liked the idea of Jeff being forced to recognize how mean he often is to Pierce, it didn’t work as well in execution, if not only for the reasons listed above, but also for lack of setup to the moment where Pierce called Jeff out on his shit. And even though it ended with a nice, conciliatory moment for the two where Jeff more or less apologized, I’m not sure if this is meant to be one of these moments that is meant to have long-term effects or not. In short, I’m torn.

“There’s a path you take, and the path untaken. The choice is up to you my friend.”

-Abed

And here is where I admit that I didn’t really get the Abed plot, which is perhaps a first for me. I don’t want to say it’s not funny (I particularly enjoyed Stephen Tobolowsky’s guest turn as the professor), but I kept feeling like I was missing something. Perhaps it was meant to play off of the line from theater professor Sean Garrity about how actors don’t need resolution to the story. Or maybe it all predicated on having some cursory knowledge of Who’s The Boss, a show I’m sure I saw in syndication as a child, but that I don’t really remember. (Though I do remember not being a fan.) Post you own interpretations below in the comments.

What did everybody else think?

Additional Thoughts:

“The professor is so old…”

“We don’t discuss the special gym.”

“There’s still plenty of room in my PA Announcements class. Just 10 bucks an hour!”

“That’s the first time sexism has made me hungry.”

“Cause my stick is ribbed for her pleasure.” “I think those are wrinkles.”

“Early childhood is a treasure trove of pain.” “That happened this morning.”

“He refused to drink pinot noir because he thinks it’s French for ‘black penis.’”

“Don’t preach to me about romance, Annie. I had a three-way in a hot air balloon.”

“Uh, for homework, drink a glass of cognac in a bathtub.”

“Listen, I’m gonna bust into her apartment. Do you have any grappling hooks?”

“That why they call me Irony-free Annie.” “That’s not what they call you.”

“You are funny AND you are like Oprah.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re a baboon everywhere.”

“I wasn’t so much ‘molested,’ so much as I ‘made it up.’”

“Very impressive, Veronica Mars, you learned how to use Google.”

I would get so much use out of a record-scratch app.

“It was hard to understand him; he was pretty hopped up on paint thinners.”

“It’s called ‘Fiddla, Please!’”

“How about Thai. They’re like Chinese Mexicans.” “So true.”

“It’s hard to be Jewish/It’s hard to be Jewish/It’s hard to be Jewish in Russia.”