Community - "Geography of Global Conflict"

Season 3, Episode 2

Do “normal” episodes still work?

“Maybe I don’t want a new path. Or any path.”

-Britta

Two episodes. Two episodes are all it takes for people to start trying to analyze how the new season of Community is panning out. Todd VanDerWerff, for example, wrote afairly lengthy review over where he thinks the season is heading, and then went and had another lengthy conversation with Alan Sepinwall in much the same vein; I’m sure there’s more out there. Now, it’s a critic’s job to comment on and analyze shows, and for a show as dense as this one can be at times, it only feels natural to want to delve into the show on a deep level.

Problem is, the show hasn’t really given us anything deep yet, and fans and critics are chomping at the bit. While critics mostly miss the delving into a meaty half-hour of comedy every week, most fans are more likely missing the highs that would come from watching one of the most wildly unpredictably comedy currently on air – most, but not all. Last season created some division among fans, as while many enjoyed the show’s repeated forays into high-concept, pop culture parodies, another section of the fan base decried the lack of “normal” episodes.

Of course, the only real reason that this matters is the ratings, which declined steadily over last season, as the episode become more ballsy and unpredictable, and last week’s premiere garnered less that 4 million viewers. Given how much of an internet presence that Community has, and how gaga most sites go for the spoof episodes, it may be hard to believe that those were what drove people off throughout last season. But if you consider that not every person in the show’s already small audience is a diehard fan of the show (I myself know a couple of people who think the show is “all right”), then it makes sense to believe that some people were put off by season two’s ambitious nature.

But that isn’t to say that Harmon’s plan to avoid the high-concept episodes in favor of the more normal episodes is some sort of ploy to pull in more viewers. If the show actually cared about viewers, we would have seen vast changes in its style back in season one, and the show has proved time and again that it does care about making sure episodes prove something about these character. This move away from the high-concept episodes is just an extension of its ethos. But here, with what seems like only the diehards remains, the question now is when exactly is the show going to go back to doing the episodes that only the core audience seems to enjoy?

For one, I’ve never felt cheated when the show goes for the normal episodes. Admittedly, in comparison to the more ambitious outings, these episodes can feel a bit under-ambitious, and by extension something of a letdown. When one of the show’s strengths is its unpredictability, and it ends up serving a slightly more predictably episode, it can feel as if the show is taking a dip in quality. But the normal episodes are important, not just because it serves as a break from the homage episodes, ensuring that both the writers and the audience doesn’t get burned out on them, but they can also serve as better instances of character-building. (“Mixology Certification”, anyone?)

What’s more important- and what I think is getting lost in the dialogue just a bit – is the fact that being a normal episode doesn’t have to mean that the episode is automatically inferior.  Season one was built on many normal episodes, some of them quite good, and they’re were quite a few classic normal episodes in season two as well. What makes these two latest episodes somewhat disappointing – and what has invariably led to this worry that the show is only going to do inferior (i.e. normal) episodes – is the fact that the stories haven’t been as well executed as they were in the past. Last week, the episode was too busy; this week, there were a couple of tonal problems.

The major problem this week was the Jeff/Annie storyline, which is surprising considering the chemistry that those two characters have. The show teased us once again last week with the idea that Annie and Jeff might actually hook up, but when the show once again played with those beats this time, it felt too overt, and it lost some of its inherent comedy. Thought the show has never shied away from the fact that this pairing is somewhat creepy, that quality always made for a good bit of humor for the two, but when the show actually had these two character acknowledge this fact aloud, it stopped being funny and began being, well, creepy. I’m not sure if this was the point – that the show was trying to rub our noses in the creepiness of it all, as VanDerWerff suggested – but it certainly resulted in a few minutes of screen time that were far too serious for their own good. I liked that the episode was trying to use this show how Annie is maturing as well as much farther she’ll have to go until she’s an adult, but I don’t like that the show had to sacrifice my favorite romantic pairing to do it.

Britta’s storyline, meanwhile, was perhaps too surreal for its own good. Though the show has done surrealism before to great effect (take last week’s 2001 homage, for instance), the fact that this storyline was just Britta and Chang, off by themselves while the rest of the group did something relatively normal, only helped to highlight the silliness and lack of emotional core at the heart of their plot. While I like the fact that the show finally gave Change something more concrete to do (in fact, I just like the idea of Chang as a security guard, period), this story felt far too flippant for a show such as this. While I got the joke that they were striving for, the fact that it was so light only made it seem as if it belonged on a different show.

But let’s go back to the fact that the Model UN competition was only “relatively normal”. Despite the fact that this story ostensibly dealt with an everyday aspect of college life, there is an extended riff on the dual universes of Fringe, which is one of those references that you would probably have to get, or else the whole thing might seem too weird. (Luckily, both show have a large nerd audience, so I’m guessing the crossover is pretty high.) It was a highly enjoyable reference to be sure, but it raises the question: Are the normal episodes save from the reference humor? Is the show trying to serve both masters at once? Or, as this episode as whole brings into question, can the writers even do normal episodes anymore, or are they just stuck in homage mode?

Quotes, Etc:

“Somebody just won a ride in the wheelchair.”

“She’s locked up by an oppressive regime halfway around the world, and I’m what? In college? Where are my values?...And she has a Facebook group?”

“My first cop flashlight! I can’t wait to get some brains on this bad boy!”

“I SWEAR THEY’RE JUST FOR SEX!”

“How progressive of you to have a multi-cultural evil twin.”

“An Asian Annie. Obama’s America!”

“Be careful Annie, they are ruthless.” “What?” “Not Asians! Women!”

“I haven’t been tear-gassed in so long…”

“Okay maybe I went too far. Maybe I don’t want to offend my African American friends…”

“Raging against WHAT? That sounds dangerous.” “Don’t worry, she’ll be bad at it.”

“You just got yourself a warning.” “I piss warnings, pig!”

“Sneak attack! That’s just like them…Not women, Asians.”

“They used to call me ‘Model UN Guy’ back in college. Well, that’s not…don’t research that.”

“WELL IT EXISTS, BABY!”

“That’s right, capital city of Tbilisi. Former member of the Soviet Union. And we kindly request ya’ll mind your p’s and q’s.”

“And maybe at the peace summit we can discuss the possibility of opening a portal to Earth-2.”

“Is anybody seeing this? Is the world seeing this? Are we Facebooking this?”

“Uruguay sounds like ‘you’re-a-gay’.” “Uruguay kindly asks that Somalia stop pronouncing it ‘you’re-a-gay’.”

“I did more that make a mess. I turned your system inside out!”

“Annie, stop! You’re acting like a school girl, and not in the hot way.”

“Well, that made me sound creepy. But here’s the thing…”

“If embarrassment were bountiful zinc deposits, I’d be Zambia.” “There’s nothing to be Zambia about.”

“I’m farting now.”

“Abed, what did I tell you? You can’t just mumble nonsense. No one’s cutting away.”

“They can’t do this!” “No, the science works out.”