Community - "Digital Exploration of Interior Design"

Season 3, Episode 13

“Another pillow fort? Kind of repeating yourself, aren't you?”

Few things are as intrinsic to comedy as repetition. There are so many ways in which it can used to great effect, from simple exchanges that hinge on the same or similar phrases being used throughout, or simply just mining laughs from something happening over and over and over and over and over again, like Sideshow Bob and his cursed foe, the rake. However, when it comes to comedic storytelling, the use of repetition isn't necessarily required, and using it become much trickier. While it can be the sign of a show that's run out of ideas, repeating storylines purposefully is also problematic, as it can lead to diminishing returns and/or dashed expectations.

Logically, I get why Community would return to the idea of the blanket fort, as it was a key element of one of the show's finest episodes, and making it part of a two-part episode makes sense as well, since it worked fairly well for the paintball theme to close off season two. (It's also a move that appears to be overwriting any sort of paintball episode for the season, which is probably a good idea.) And given that the show is using the pillow fort/blanket fort as a way to tell the growing deterioration of Troy and Abed's friendship, it would be a lie to say that it isn't working on a narrative level.

The problem, as I see it, is that there's very little reason to make a two-parter out of this particular subject matter. The first time around, the blanket fort was relegated to the B-plot of the episode, a curio in an episode that also dealt with the much grander conspiracy angle by the way of the A-plot. Thus, I'm not sure if this is the sort of plot that can handle being treated in such a grand fashion. Don't get me wrong, there are certainly elements of it that feel worthy of a two-parter, like the dissolution of Troy and Abed's friendship, and the general “this means war” of it all that worked so well for “A Fistful of Paintballs” and “For a Few Paintballs More”. Yet pillow- and blanket-forting just doesn't hold the same sense of epicness that paintballing does, mostly because the latter is able to connect to a wide variety of large-scale genres, and the former, well, doesn't.

But that's not to say that there was nothing good about this episode, because despite all of the problems that were in the A-plot, a lot of good things happened in the B- and C-plots as well. The best of these was Britta's plot, which found a way to put it's own spin on the Citizens United case, which decreed that corporations are people, by having a man (Travis Schuldt, who I feel never got enough work after all those seasons he played Keith on Scrubs) actually become the human face of the Subway company, who have since moved a franchise into Greendale. While there was a lot of great stuff here about Britta finding someone who is (or rather, was) as needlessly pretentious as she is, the real power of the story came from how the show satirized the idea of corporate sponsorship, especially considering that it was Subway who held up another low-rated NBC show, Chuck, for something like three seasons. (Of course, I'm still pretty sure that Subway's giving sponsorship money anyways, which just makes the whole thing even funnier.)

The C-plot, which say Jeff facing up to his general self-centered, was a solid if unremarkable one, most notable because it related to his desire last week to shed some of his most self-destructive habits. Yet there was also a flip-side to this plot as towards the end it became less about Jeff and more about Annie's lingering resentment of how he treated her at the end of the first school year and the beginning of the second. While I think I was more interested in seeing the show continuing the story of Jeff's more conscious path to self-improvement (odd considering how the explicit nature of it all turned me off last week), I'd admit to be fairly intrigued by the Annie angle, especially her admission that she still believes in outdated gender roles. That's something we as a society often credit to males exclusively, but it's important to remember that women can suffer from such backwards thinking as well, and that they too have to grow out of it, so I hope the show continues this character arc for Annie.

Throughout all of these plots, I couldn't help but notice the problem that has plagued the last two episodes, and that is the lingering effects of the screwed up production orders. As I said last week, the show sacrificed some plot continuity for the sake of a stronger sense of character continuity (and, also likely, in order to bring in new viewers), and while the character arcs still ring true – I like seeing Abed pushing Troy away after “meeting” with Evil Abed last week – the overall plot continues to devolve by small degrees. Now we have Subway moving into Greendale two weeks after the idea was originally introduced, and while that logistically makes sense, I'm not sure the move holds as much power as it would have coming just a week after “Urban Matrimony and the Sandwich Arts”. Of course, then we still would have had the similar character arc continuity problems had “Contemporary Impressionists” aired as originally intended, so the show was kind of screwed either way with that one. Since I prefer character over story, I think this way works best, but either way would have had their flaws.

It's especially important to note these problems with continuity considering the questionable lingering nature of the some of the plotlines at the end of this episode. While we know for certain that we will see the conclusion of Troy and Abed's blanket and pillow forts going to war next week, it's less clear what else is going to transfer over from this episode, and how. There's obviously room for both B- and C-plots to transfer over as well, but they would probably turn some narrative corners in order to work. Britta might have to investigate why Subway changed appearance, and we could get a better look at how Jeff's insensitivity has affected Annie. Both of these are solid ideas, but in light of the off-putting narrative and thematic shifts that happened in order to make “For a Few Paintballs More” work, I'm a little worried about how the show is going to handle those effectively, assuming they continue them at all. (And how weird would it be if they don't?)

Oh well, that's a problem for next week, and it's not like I'm not going to watch anyways. Let's just keep our fingers crossed that there's a lot of worthwhile pay off in part two.

Quotes and Other Thoughts:

I know that the the show has had to stretch in order to make it's academically-themed episode titles to work in the past, but I think the “Digital Exploration” part of this title was too large of a leap. They probably shouldn't have tried to include the “Interior Design” part in the title in the first part either; we would have known where the pillow/blanket forts had come from anyways.

“Come on, Subway, there is no way you are 5'10''.”

“Eat fresh?”

“Wow, did you know Greendale Students are technically in the Army Reserves? Let's say a little prayer for peace.”

“Wait, that's saved Garrett?”

“I totally wrote about this in my school newspaper column, 'Britta Unfiltered'.” “Unfiltered, I get it.” “Get what?”

“I was just Googling record lengths of things...”

“Reggie is trained in zero-gravity Marshall arts.” “Plus he has a whistle.”

“You should read Orwell's 1984.” “I have. It really awakened me in high school. I think kids should be forced to read it.” “Me too.”

“Now, please turn your head while I crawl away. I'm going through some stuff right now, and I'm very vulnerable.”

“Corporate America had destroyed love.” “Again?”

“I would elaborate, but I am out of breath because I walked here very briskly.”