Community - "Pillow and Blankets"

Season 3, Episode 14

 “Some conflicts are so pointless, you just have to let themselves play out.”

After last week’s cliffhanger left so many things unsure – which is notably different from “unanswered” – I was perhaps a bit skeptical of how tonight’s resolution to the two-parter would play out, and not with out precedent. Yet while my concerns proved to be unfounded on a narrative level, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something missing from “Pillows and Blankets”, a je ne sais quoi that would have pushed this entire storyline into overall greatness, and have made up for all of the doubts I felt last week.

Perhaps my biggest concern going into this episode was that we would see a repeat of the thematic cognitive dissonance that plagued the second part of the season two finale, where the show shifted the narrative style it was aping for no real reason. While that fear was mostly unfounded at first, it took on new life on Wednesday when I learned that this episode was going to function as a Ken Burns-style documentary, a style shift that would be particularly pronounced considering that “Digital Exploration of Interior Design” didn’t even ape any sort of genre/style in the first place. And as the show soon reminded me, the documentary style was something that had already been done earlier this season, placing the show in danger of diminishing returns yet again.

Yet despite all of these complaints, this episode worked really well, and for reasons that I can’t fully explain – though I’m certainly going to try. For starters, I found the thematic shift to be far less jarring this time around since there was no such thematic styling going on in last week’s episode. (It turns out that thematic shifts work better on this show when it goes from a non-themed episode to a themed episode, as opposed to going from one themed episode to another.) The reuse of the documentary conceit, meanwhile, worked well this time, and with a renewed sense of vigor, because unlike “Documentary Filmmaking: Redux”, the narrative use of the documentary crew differed. Even if to the character the presence of these “cameras” was the same all three times they were in use, for this last time the “footage” that was shot was repurposed in a different way, as the narrative use goes from recording a breaking of a world record as it happens to being part of a documentary on the Pillow & Blanket War.

But what really makes this work was that unlike so many of the others theme/homage episodes that the show has done, the use of the Civil War metaphor as a way to express the break in Troy and Abed’s friendship. Yes, the Civil War metaphor is one that’s perhaps been overplayed in popular culture, a go-to for hack writers looking to symbolize a broken relationship, but here the metaphor felt apt and earned. Much like with last week’s episode, and the one before that, the show really played up the darkness of this broken friendship, especially with the emotionally vicious potshots that the two took at each other in addition to the physical, tactical-based war they were fighting. True, these were all things that the audience, and likely the characters themselves, knew long before they were spoken aloud, but that simply uttering simply proves how far the friendship is broken that such automatic niceties have been thrown out the window.   

Similarly, the episode continues the thematic, if not narrative, thread of Jeff (re?)discovering his humanity, thanks in large part to Annie. While their early exchange of text messages seemed to point to a continuation of their simmering romance, it quickly shifted into another morality lesson for Jeff, as he switched from making inflammatory speeches in order to keep the battle going and thus delaying classes, to making an earnest speech in an attempt to reunite Tory and Abed. Obviously, there exists a connection between the Jeff and Annie romance and Jeff’s steps towards being a better person, but the ending scene where Jeff runs all the way back to the dean’s office and goes through all the motions of picking up the imaginary friendship hats proves that it’s more than that. Jeff’s connections reach deeper than he cares to admit, and while this is a well that the show has gone to in the past, the extent to which feels a connection to the group, that he’s willing to go through with an idea he originally tossed off ironically, even when he didn’t have to, speaks a lot to his growth.

As with any good spoof, detail was key, and a lot of the laughs in this episode came from how the show was able to adopt Civil War-style actions and language to the modern, pillow-and-blanket using age. As such, I’m a bit lighter on quotes this week, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t laugh heartily. It was also this attention to detail that allowed the episode to use the other characters, as Pierce and Shirley were simply pawns in the larger war, and Britta served as a (not very good) photographer, reminding us once again why she is just the worst. (It also allowed Change briefly in through the use of his child army, which I’m assuming is part of the slow build-up until this storyline explodes later.) I’ll admit I’m a little disappointed that there wasn’t any follow-up to the Subway storyline of last week, but not all episodes of the show can use all of the players to the same extent, and I’m willing to forgive the show since it downgraded some characters so that the larger focus could be placed on Troy and Abed.

That is, up until the end. The episode had done a really good job with showing just how mean and vicious Troy and Abed were to one another during the war, and it was a perfect reflection of the darker tone that the show has been achieving with fantastic outcomes this season. So it was a little disappointing how the show managed to wrap it all up fairly neatly at the end of the hour. I get that the show was trying to demonstrate the power of Troy and Abed’s friendship that they would realize how stupid and petty their fight was and reach the realization that they would rather being together through hate than apart by any means, but it all feels too pat and clean. When you compare it too what the show did in the second season with Pierce, you know that it’s capable of carrying out these larger, darker character arc for a greater period of time without disrupting the show’s format/flow. Obviously the Troy and Abed dynamic is not synonymous with that of Pierce and the group, but I would have like to see the show give it the weight that it seems to deserve based on the build-up that we saw.

But that again might be part of the problem with the documentary format, or at least as one as academic as what Ken Burns does. While the true documentary format also for some fairly direct emotion, the “academic documentary” often tells of historic events that are removed by time, and thus takes a more aloof approach to the subject matter. That the show would ape that aspect is positive in terms of the quality of the homage being done, but it doesn’t make the character analysis as strong as it could have been. That’s also true in regards to the Jeff/Annie storyline, which was perhaps stronger on the intellectual level in regards to how it furthered Jeff’s current arc, but didn’t hit on the pathos as strong as past episodes have.

Quotes and Other Thoughts:

That was Keith David doing the narration of the episode. He also narrated the Burns documentary Jazz, and yes, he did star in The Cape.

I can’t tell if that PBS-style tag was terrible or brilliant. I mean, I enjoy when the show keeps whatever theme it has going on up through the last moments, but something about Troy and Abed making that joke over something that they went through and would most likely want to forget seems a bit to meta to be believable. Or maybe I just saw it as adding on to the pat ending of the episode proper.

“A loving wife and mother, who would prove to be as skilled at kicking asses as she was at wiping them.”

“Friends so close they once graced the cover of Friends Weekly, a pretend magazine of their own design.”

“I’m giving you an all tomato. Meaning you given me the whole tomato, or else.”

“Blanketsburg will draw first blood. Pillowfort will draw First Blood: Part II.”

“Unfortunately for Britta, and thousands of photographers across the country just like her, just because something’s in black and white, doesn’t mean it’s good.”

“They were later called Changlorious Bastards. Like Inglorious Bastards, but with ‘Chang’ instead of ‘In’…Yeah, I don’t really get it either.”

“Leonard likes this post.”

“If I write stuff down in a Hello Kitty book, will you like me again?”

“He’s been fired in what he calls ‘The World’s Biggest Mistake.’ Somehow I doubt that will make the next edition.”

“Hey, were you in The Cape?” “…No.”

“I was on the edge of my seat, and I was in it."