First off, I would like to apologize to the show's writers for not seeing the end to last week's episode was also the end of Peirce's arc, as so many viewers and critics did. Luckily tonight's opening moments cleared that up. Unluckily. I don't think it works. While I realize that the scene in which Jeff, while assaulting Pierce, realizes he sees him as a father-figure, was meant to clear the air between the two, I'm not sure that I have forgiven Pierce for all he did to the group. So it seems a bit off to see him back, interacting with the group as if none of that stuff happened. Even if he did go to rehab, this seems to be breaking Community's resolve for consistent characterization.
But let's not dwell on that, as it was only a small part of the episode, and thus only a small distraction. Rather, I would like to focus on the Jeff/Annie storyline (which, considering it took up ¾ of the episode, seems like a good place to start), most specifically its lightweight nature. Out of the past eight episodes, four of them have been considerably dark. Granted, that means the four of them weren't dark, but for a comedy, having four dark episodes in a run of eight is fairly significant.
So while part of of me is a bit disappointed with how simple tonight's emotional aspect was, I recognize the show needed this kind of plotline, in order to give itself a bit of breathing room. I understand that, and I can live with an episode like this every once in a while, no problem. It also helps that this story obviously serves as continuing setup for a possible Jeff/Annie relationship, yet it doesn't rely to heavily sexual tension, so even if they don't end up together, it won't become retroactively awkward.
In addition, I was pleased to see Community take a joke that has been done to death – modern democracy is a charade! - and actually mine some real humor. As apparent in Britta's self-righteous rants and Jeff spewing America-praising bullshit, the show did this mostly by grounding the direct jokes in its established characters. Every thing they did make sense, and that helped to make it funny. But it also helped that they show gave us more less pointed jokes, such as Magnitude and Leonard, the final two candidates, exchanging their closing remarks of “Pop-pop!” and farting noises, respectively.
The other ¼ of this centered around Abed and his proto-romance with a Secret Service agent. (And with Eliza Coupe as the female agent, and Micheal Mosley guest starring on Justified, it's been a good week for alums of Scrub's ninth season.) As cute as this plot was – and I do enjoy when the show lets Abed have his moments of humanity – I felt the show overplayed its hand in terms of meta-commetary. Despite Dan Harmon's assertions that Abed is one of the show's more realistic character (as real people do point out when something in their life is similar to any give movie or show – an argument I buy), he is still a meta character of sort within the show's universe, and the show making meta references about a meta character just breaks the 27th wall, and that's when things get a bit too crazy.
As for the rest of the cast – well they just mostly did funny things, especially Troy. (Though Shirley really didn't have anything to do. The show should look into that.) This is one of those episodes that Community used to do in it's first season – it was still quite funny, but after all of the stops the show has pulled, this doesn't quite do it anymore, does it?
What did everybody else think?
Additional Thoughts:
Today, Todd VanDerWarff over at the AV Club wrote an article listing the eerie similarities between Community and Glee. I suggest checking it out.
“I wanna go to rehab and compare penis with famous people.”
“I wanted ice cream, so I got in line....”
“I believe that human kind can't be governed.” [Silence] “I don't care.” “It's good to know there's a floor on this thing.”
“That's a real guy. He owns a mattress store downtown, You can look it up.”
“That assailant known only as The Ass Crack Bandit will be brought to justice.”
“I was only here to get back at her for not letting me borrow a pencil.”
“They have to stay tuned, it's closed circuit television.”
“I'm sorry you weren't a more obvious threat to the country.”
“Yeah, to be alone. We already established the men's room doesn't work.”
“I just had a dream that I was a regular president.”
We'll back for the next new episode, on March 17th!
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