Community - "Remedial Chaos Theory"

Season 3, Episode 4

Let’s all prematurely cry “Community’s back!”

“Just so you know Jeff, you are now

creating six different timelines.”

“I wonder what happened in all the other timelines.”

-Abed

Perhaps the worst thing about being an amateur television critic, or at least the thing that frustrates me the most, is that I don’t have access to those sweet, sweet screeners that professional critics get. (That, and the fact that I can’t write off my cable bill as a business expense.) So when the time came this afternoon for critics to start talking up the quality of the episode ahead of its airtime – both in reaction to the premature cries that the show was creatively in trouble, and to drum up viewers in response to the actual problem of audience drop-off – I became really excited. Not only was this to be a high-concept episode, which are traditionally among the show’s best, but it was also described as a cross between my perhaps two favorite episodes, “Mixology Certification” and “Paradigms of Human Memory”. (Yes, I know I talk up those two episodes a lot, but there’s a reason – they’re fantastic.)

Perhaps the best part of Community is the fact that it became so unpredictable in the second season, and by clicking those links, especially this one by TVLine, I robbed myself of the element of surprise that I love about this show. (I know I brought this one myself, especially with that TVLine one, but I was just so excited!) Having watched the second seasn again as it rotated through Hulu this summer, I became aware of just how important that element of surprise was in my enjoyment of it. The episodes aren’t any worse for me knowing the hook ahead of time, but the excitement and thrill are gone, and that takes some of the joy of watching these things unfold for the first time. And though I inadvertently ruined my favorite experience of the show, I didn’t ruin the episode as a whole, as it was a well-constructed 22 minutes, and luckily I wasn’t spoiled as to any of the moments of pathos.

The episode’s concept is a relatively simple one: While gathered together at Troy and Abed’s apartment for a house warming party, the gang gathers around to play Yahtzee, and when the pizza guy comes, they use the die to determine who goes down to get it. This leads to six different stories in six alternate timelines, and in addition each timeline also served up a moment of pathos for each character, as well as an exploration of their current role in the group as a whole. Let’s go through each of the timelines, in order, as designated by the dice roll and who goes to get the pizza:

#2 –Annie: Britta mysteriously sneaks off the bathroom, we find out Annie’s hiding a gun in her purse

#4-Shirley: Her pies burn and she leaves in anger, frustrated with the fact that she doesn’t have as interesting lives as everybody else.

#3-Pierce: Troy and Britta share a moment in the bathroom, and a look or two while eating pizza

#6-Britta: We find out that Pierce gave troy the troll figurine to punish him for moving out of his mansion and in with Abed

#1-Troy: Through a comedy of errors, Pierce gets shot in the leg while the apartment gets set on fire; this later leads to Jeff losing his arm, Troy losing his vocal cords, Pierce dying, and Shirley falling off the wagon

#5-Abed: Troy thanks Pierce for the time they lived together, and Pierce tries to take back his gift; Britta spills the “no-pie” agreement to Shirley; Jeff and Annie finally kiss, possibly because Jeff reminds her of her father

Of course, that’s not all there is to these timelines. Since they share the same starting point, there were several repeating elements among the stories; Jeff always hit his head on the fan, the group always refused to eat Shirley’s pies, Pierce always mentioned his rendezvous with Eartha Kitt, Britta would put on The Police’s “Roxanne” and go the bathroom to get high, Pierce gave or intended to give Troy the creepy troll figurine, et cetera. Even better, each timeline built on the ones that came before it, so that information we learned previously would get play later on, like how Annie’s gun in TL #2 would pop again in TL #1 so as Pierce gets shot in the leg. In much the same way, the minutes leading up to the first die roll also setup a lot of what was to come, by establishing Shirley’s love of baking, Abed’s Indiana Jones model, Pierce’s bottle of scotch, and so forth. (Undetermined: If Britta was already high when she arrived at the apartment.) It all could have felt like a messy pile of Chekhov’s Guns – especially the actual gun – but it all came together in such a beautiful way, and the setups were so subtle and efficient that it all worked like gangbusters.

If I have to find fault with this episode, it’s that Abed’s two bookending quotes above, which did a great job of efficiently informing the viewer to the episode’s hook/structure, quickly grew grating with each repetition. It’s a small complaint in the larger scheme of things, and given its current lack of viewers, I can forgive the episode for trying to make a high-concept hook easily understandable to a new or infrequent viewer. But as someone who’s usually quick on the uptake (and as someone who knew the conceit ahead of time), I found myself wishing that the show would have found a less obvious way to start off the alternate timelines, like say cutting to the next roll of the die and skipping the repeated dialogue. That being said, I did like how the first two commercial breaks were bookended the same way, with Abed’s warning leading to the cut, and the die roll bringing us back.

But there’s another timeline on display here, which for the sake of simplicity we shall call Timeline 0, both because no number was rolled, and because it’s the reality from which all the other timelines spun off. In this timeline, Abed stops the die before it has a chance to hit the table, and comes to a realization:

“Chaos already dominates enough of our lives. The universe is an endless, raging sea of randomness. Out job isn’t to fight it, but to weather it together, on the raft of life, a raft held together by those  by those few, rare, beautiful things we know to be predictable…us. It won’t matter what happens to us as long as we stay honest and accepting of each other’s flaws and virtues. Annie will always be driven. Shirley will always be giving. Pierce will never apologize. Britta’s sort of a wild card, from my perspective. And Jeff will forever remain a conniving sonofabitch.”

After being called out for devising a system that would keep him from getting the pizza, Jeff is shamed into getting it himself (after once again hitting his head on the fan), and when he leaves, things for once don’t turn out for the worst. Britta puts on “Roxanne” and, able to sign the song, can now stay and dance with the other girls. Pierce doesn’t gross out the group with his Eartha Kitt story and throws away the gift before Troy can open it, Abed offers to let Annie move in, and Jeff returns with the pizza uneventfully, and we are left to presume the rest of the evening goes off without a hitch. It’s a happy ending to counter the darkness of the other timelines.

So what does that mean for Jeff? If his departure coincides with nothing going wrong in Timeline Zero/reality, than he’s the reason for the trouble that happen in the other timelines as well. And given that seasons three is shaping up to be about the problems in the group dynamic, it’s an interesting theory that Jeff, the man who brought the group into being, is also the one that causes so many problems. (All though considering how combative the group was in the pilot, that had its own inane logic.) Given how the rest of the group came together without him, I’m interested to see how this story in going to evolve in the future.

But for now? “Remedial Chaos Theory” was a fantastic episode, and it for those of you who were worried about the future of the show, it’s a return to form, and a reason to have faith again.

We’ll be back in two weeks for the Halloween themed episode.

Quotes and Other Thoughts:

As I helpfully learned on Twitter, part of the reason that Community’s numbers are so low is that The Big Bang Theory, which airs opposite this show, isn’t available (legally) online anywhere, and those that are fans of both shows – and given that both appeal to the nerd demographic, it’s more than one would think given the gap of quality between the two – are forced to watch TBBT live and Community online next day, where it generates less revenue for NBC. So if you are one of those fans of both shows, and you want Community to keep going, please watch it live; even if you don't have a Nielsen box, watching it live - and telling your friends you do so - should in theory affect audience numbers indirectly, and this show needs all the help it can get. 

Yes, Pierce made that Eartha Kitt comment last week as well, the reason being that the episode order got switched. I can only assume this means that Pierce tells them the story sometime between these two episodes as they were originally meant to air.

I like how the tag took TL #1 – the darkest of all the timelines – to the extreme. However, I’m not sure what to make of the fact that Abed woke up at the end. Does that mean that all the timelines – including TL 0 – didn’t happen, or that all the fake timelines went through Abed’s head before the caught the die, and he just continued the events of TL #1 in his dream later?

Speaking of which….Favorite timeline, go!

Another thing to hate about this episode: I haven’t been able to get “Roxanne” out of my head the entire time I’ve been writing about this review.

“TROY AND ABED’S NEW APARTMENT!”

“Rule #2: Avoid touchy topics, like the negro problem….the book was written in the 40s.”

“Chop bustin’, fellow adult, chop bustin’.”

“I’ve hardly missed you at all since I’ve had you removed from all my portraits.”

“There’s no such thing as Single Malt Platinum Booze and Billiards Club? Agh, I guess I never said it out loud.”

“Call it Yahtzee all you want, everybody knows it’s Puerto Rican Chess.”

“The pizza guy was way creepy.” “So you’re saying he was a pizza guy.”

“Dr. Shirley says mini-pies are the best medicine.” “Then I’d like to see her degree.”

“You’ve got a bowl of olives next to the toilet?” “It’s a fancy party, Britta.”

“Man, pizza guys are getting worse and worse looking. I guess all the good one’s went into porn.”

“Wait, there’s other timelines?”

“Oh god, they taste just like regular pies.” “Yay!”

“I want to give you something else. A water pick! A speedboat!”

“Give it Pierce! It feels fun! I want to be house-warmed!”

“I wonder what happened in all the other timelines? I gotta say, I hope that this is the real one, because I just found a nickel in the hallway.”

“Jeff, you crafty jackrabbit!”

“It’s called friendship, look it up. Encarta it.”

“Britta, you put one wash-away blue streak in your hair, and I lost an arm.” “Exactly! Life got dark!”

“EVIL TROY AND EVIL ABED!”