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!”
As someone who usually catches up on Community during the off-season,I'm really glad I caught this episode.
ReplyDeleteMy fav timeline was the one where Pierce leaves to get the pizza. I for one agree that the group would be better without Pierce (he is just so irritating and not even the slightest bit funny) It also brought up the idea that Shirley has the most to lose if Pierce ever does leave. She becomes the oldest and lamest member of the group, and as we saw with the baking thing, the group can and will turn on her as they have with Pierce. I may not be remembering season 2 correctly but I always thought it was Annie who was trying to keep Pierce in the group, but now I'm wondering if it was Shirley all along.
As for timeline '0', I do think it was the most accurate in terms of what we know about the characters and how they affect the group without having to analyze it. However, I like Jeff and I don't want this to be a hint to what may be happening in future episodes.
I'm not sure of what happened in the end. My guess is that timeline '0' is real and that Abed was caught up in the dream of timeline 1. Unless, we go back to episode 2 and the different dimensions...
What did you make of all hell breaking loose when Troy left? Was it coincidence or does it tell us something about Troy?
I went back and watched the episode, and here's what I noticed: In his eagerness to quickly gets the pizzas and thus not miss anything, Troy slams the door behind him, which causes the boulder in the Indiana Jones model to roll, thus setting off the larger chain of events. This means that Troy is a danger to the group insomuch as his exuberance and lack of forethought lead the group into trouble. However, this still doesn't make him as bad as Jeff, whose conscious planning leads to problems in most of the alternate time lines.
ReplyDeleteHere's a more thought out theory of what all these alternate theories might mean for the show. It's heady, but quite interesting: http://tvsurveillance.com/2011/10/14/investigating-communitys-alternate-timeline-possibilities/
Okay, never mind:
ReplyDeletehttp://danharmon.tumblr.com/post/11469117959/fine-were-geniuses-but-not-evil-geniuses