The Community Rewatch Podcast is Here! [Contributor: Jenn]

It's been a while since we visited Greendale Community College, but all of that is about to change. We've officially launched the Communtity Rewatch Podcast! Right now it's available to listen to on Spotify. Be sure to follow us there so that you're the first to know when new episodes drop.

Community aired on NBC a little over 10 years ago, and yet it's still one of the most impactful shows for many people, including us. The homages, jokes, and tone of the show informed a lot of what followed in pop culture. And while yes, the show did stumble a bit in its later years, one of the best things it taught us all was how to love something that was flawed.

You can listen to and follow the podcast below. Stay tuned for more episodes soon!
 

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6x13 "Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television" (Farewell, Greendale. Again.) [Contributors: Jenn and Deborah MacArthur]

"Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television"

Original Airdate: June 2, 2015

I'm currently in the process of packing up my life again. After three moves within the last three years, I've started to become a lot like Coach in New Girl: a lot less sentimental about the essentials I need to take with me to my next place. My room is in current disarray, filled with cardboard boxes and suitcases of clothes, decorations, and jewelry. This weekend, I spent the better part of six hours binge-watching Scrubs while I threw away years of my life into a giant trash bag and unflinchingly tossed clothes into the discard pile to donate. Years ago, I would have mulled over a decision to keep or discard a dress. This weekend? It took a few seconds to decide. See, when you move a lot, you just learn that there are essentials and non-essentials (thanks for that, too, New Girl). There are the things you keep for another move or two or permanently and there are the things you used to care about and you toss away without much feeling.

I used to have a difficult time saying goodbye to Community. When I thought the show would end after season three, I was kind of a mess and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Back then, my closest online friend group was from that fandom. We were bonded. We were close. I'm still close with a lot of them -- including some of the writers on this site, especially people like Deborah and Laura -- but not nearly as many and not as deeply. Sometimes you realize that the more things change, the easier it is to let people go. But not if you're Jeff Winger. If you're Jeff Winger, the more things change, the more determined you are to hold onto the things you know tightly, knuckles white and unrelenting. That's what Jeff tries to do in the season -- and probably series finale, but I say that every year so don't put too much emphasis on it -- finale, "Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television." And the episode WAS emotional. Alarmingly so, for a show that -- this year -- was severely lacking in any sort of heart or character growth and development. But Community is always at its best when it remembers where it started. This season finale remembered that. It was an eleventh-hour revelation, really: one that came a bit too late for my liking. But it was a revelation no less. And it was spectacular. The kind of development and genuine heart we saw this episode? It should have colored the entire season.

But since I didn't want to write this review alone, I enlisted Deborah who did a STELLAR job picking up Community reviews this year (everyone thank her in the comments and say nice things, please) to join me for a roundtable discussion. But before we do that, let me first take the opportunity to thank all of you who consistently read these reviews and who have been fans of them for the better part of nearly four years (I HAVE BEEN WRITING ABOUT THIS SHOW FOR SO LONG, YOU GUYS). There are so many things Community gave me, chief among which is a literal community of fans-turned-friends. So thank you to all who support these and who have embraced my opinions and Deb's opinions, whether or not you agree with them. I've loved the discussion this year even though I didn't love the season. And you all are what made that happen.

Now that all the mushy stuff is out of the way, let's talk about some MORE mushy stuff as we discuss Community's sixth finale!

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6x12 "Wedding Videography" (One Wedding and This Show's Funeral)

"Wedding Videography"

Original Airdate: May 26, 2015

Do you know why the third season of New Girl was problematic? 

It wasn’t, as many people surmised, because the romantic pairing of Nick and Jess sunk the show – that their will-they-won’t-they was more entertaining and engaging than the they-did. No, as I re-watched a majority of the third season recently, I realized that there were two main problems in that particular season of the FOX series. First, the story for Schmidt fell completely apart and turned him from an endearingly unlikable character to a borderline villain. He became abrasive and unbearable at points. The second problem was that in pairing Nick and Jess together so often in stories, the writers isolated them from the rest of the group, making episodes seem scattered and disjointed.

So in the fourth season, New Girl readjusted its trajectory and fixed the problems that originated the year prior. As a result, the series was one of the most consistently hilarious, heartwarming, and character-driven shows on the air last primetime television season. I admire Liz, Brett, Dave, and their team of writers not just for acknowledging that their show had missteps and problems that needed to be fixed, but also being willing to remedy those issues and knowing HOW they needed to be remedied. The producers and writers realized that the show needed to return to its origin: a group of messed up individuals who surround themselves with one another so that they can become better. The writers recognized the redemption in Schmidt’s arc and extracted every little bit of humanity and pathos that they could. This allowed Schmidt to become a fully-realized character who grew throughout the fourth season. His growth was real. It was earned, as was the rest of the growth exhibited in the characters (especially Coach and Winston) this year.

But what would have happened if New Girl hadn’t been willing to correct the issues that their characters had in the fourth season? Those characters, quite simply, would have regressed even further than they already had. This diatribe, as you might be able to surmise, brings us to Community’s penultimate episode of season six titled: “Wedding Videography.” I’m not going to be shy in this review (as if you all doubted I would be) and state that there was very little I enjoyed about the episode. In fact, I enjoyed the Glee re-run I watched this weekend more than this episode.

Yeah.

It was that bad.

It’s one thing to tell you that I thought an episode was bad. But it’s another to be able to articulate WHY it was bad. Let me take the rest of this post to explain what went horribly awry this season on Community and how – it’s very likely – nothing that the show does from here forward will be able to redeem it.

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6x11 "Modern Espionage" (That Was An Episode, This Is Paintball) [Contributor: Deborah MacArthur]

"Modern Espionage"

Original Airdate: May 19, 2015

Ah, Paintball Assassin. The Community tradition that started with "Modern Warfare" and, in my opinion, reached maximum quality with the "A Fistful of Paintballs/For a Few Paintballs More" two-parter. This week, our dose of paintball madness has the shiny veneer of a spy movie, and we get to see (almost) everyone in formal wear. Huzzah! I have to be honest and say that I don't watch a lot of spy movies, so if there are references that are really clever for fans of spy movies, I'm sorry ahead of time for not getting them or mentioning them or recognizing them as noteworthy.

The Episode

This year, Greendale really wants to put paintball in the past - at least according to Frankie. She feels bad for the custodial workers who have to clean up after the chaos and also thinks, you know - destroying their school every year with a paintball war isn't the most mature, professional thing for Greendale to do. I can't say she's wrong about that, but if Greendale gets all mature and professional, will it still be Greendale?

That (plus a cash prize) seems to be the idea behind the underground paintball tournament that’s taking place during the episode: doing anything else - trying to be mature and professional - just wouldn't be Greendale. Jeff, at the very least, seems to be okay with putting paintball behind him – the rest of the group, not so much. Jeff is only really roped in when everyone realizes that there’s a conspiracy afoot on Greendale grounds, and they might be the only ones capable of stopping it. In an attempt to catch an underground paintballer who goes by the moniker “Silver Ballz” and possibly protect the custodial workers who appear to be the main targets for Silver Ballz’s silver (paint)balls, the group decides to join in on the fight in secret. They try their hardest to espionage their way through a gala for custodial workers and keep the paintball-shooting to a minimum around Frankie, who - as previously mentioned - seriously disapproves of Greendale’s paintball past. Stuff goes down at the gala and a shootout means that Frankie learns about the continuation of the secret underground paintball tournament before everyone - except Jeff and the dean – get taken out.

Jeff confronts one of the custodial workers who, we discover, started the underground tournament in order to keep their occupations necessary as well as a way to just accept that paintball war and weirdness is what Greendale is. Frankie is trying to change Greendale, and doing that wouldn't be honest or long lasting - so why let her try?

Apparently Jeff really believes in Frankie all of a sudden, because he has faith in her being able to turn Greendale from a "cigarette" to a "carrot stick" (which is the healthy form of a cigarette - I had no idea) and wants everyone else to just let her do it. I have no idea when Jeff and Frankie got so close, because I always just got the impression that Jeff acknowledged Frankie as a sane, competent individual but not a whole lot else. Now he seems to think very highly of her.

I don't want to imply that the "Core Four" are the only members of the group allowed to have meaningful connections with each other, but it kinda feels like, if things had gone a bit differently regarding character development this season, Annie would have been the one Jeff made his speech about in this episode. If Annie had continued the do-gooder leadership role she had last season, she basically would have been Frankie this season... But, alas. Frankie is the leveling force for season six, and even though Jeff's faith in her feels a bit weird due to the lack of interaction between the two characters, anything else would have made even less sense with the way the season has gone.

Overall, this was a fun episode. Had it been situated in a season with more arcing development and plot, it probably would have been one of the best episodes of season six. The problem is that - although the paintball specials of the past have seemed like out-there, stupid homage fun, there has always an underlying “real world” plot to them. There’s always something that still exists when the paint is cleared away and the Community universe gets (comparatively) more sane.

In the first season, it was pretty simple: the season-long “sexual tension and lack of chemistry” between Jeff and Britta had to break, soon, or the group was going to fall apart or kill them or both. In the second season’s paintball episodes, the mystery of what had happened before the game had started led into the realization that the group - minus Annie, the Ace of Hearts - no longer wanted Pierce around, something that the show had been working up to all season with Pierce’s increasingly erratic behavior. Season four had Jeff’s paintball daydream stem from fear of his post-graduation future, only to be broken by his realization of how much he loved his friends.

Season six’s "Modern Espionage" doesn’t have a revelation or big development that happens after a whole season of foreshadowing to make the episode more than just very entertaining TV. Although we get Jeff respecting Frankie and believing in her ability to make Greendale better, that is something that only exists within the half hour of this episode - not a culmination of season-long worries, grudges, sexual tension, or... anything.

It's paintball war with a spy twist, and it has some great moments and some funny lines but there's not a whole lot underneath all the neon and silver paint. Sadly, this is pretty much what I’ve learned to expect (and hope for) from season six and while I liked the episode, I still can’t help remembering when Community gave us a bit more.

Other Stuff:

• "Occasionally our campus interrupts into a flawless post-modern homage to action-adventure mythology, mischaracterized by the ignorant as 'parody.'" Is it just me, or has there been a significant increase in meta references this season?
• "I'd call him Silver Ghost, but that's probably already taken by an indie comic book or a terrible tequila." I’m not sure, Starburns, but I do know it’s a kind of Rolls-Royce car from like, the 1920s.
• "WHAT THE HELL?!" I love it when Joel has to yell, because he gets all shrill and hilarious. [Jenn's note: I don't know why, but I always find it SO hilarious that his voice jumps 10 octaves to yell like that.]
• "That was instinct. I can't help being a badass."
• Jeff taking Britta's glasses to look at the computer made me laugh. It was really silly and I don’t know, I just liked it.
• There's a Greendale club called "Club Club" where people "party the way they do in clubs."
• Annie doesn't want to say "Silver Ballz." I don’t blame her. That name is dumb.
• "Mr. Winger, you clean up nice!" "Oh, come on, I'm always good looking."
• Apparently "Daybreak" is the only thing that plays in the elevator! It’s also the only thing that plays in my head for at least a day after hearing it.
• The "Custodial Innovation Award" is a push broom. Never stop being Greendale, Greendale.
• I really liked the exchange between Kumail Nanjiani's character and Abed during the gala, when Abed was heckling him.
• "Did you do stand-up? Is that how you became a custodian?"
• I’m assuming that Annie and Abed were doing a Mr. and Mrs. Smith thing, since they were spies dancing with each other at the gala, but I don’t think it landed as well as it probably could have.
• Did I miss it, or was it not really clear who Silver Ballz was?
• I like that they finally, FINALLY showed that getting hit with paintballs actually really, really hurts when Jeff, the dean, and Lapari all shoot each other.

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6x10 "Basic RV Repair and Palmistry" (And The Record Keeps On Playing The Same Old Song)

"Basic RV Repair and Palmistry"

Original Airdate: May 12, 2015

I still hold fast to the idea that the first season of Glee was really, truly good. I mean, sure, it wasn't flawless. It certainly wasn't the best thing I've ever seen on television, but it was moving. It had trajectory. It focused on characters. It seemed to care about what happened to them and cared about them becoming better or different versions of themselves. It cared about creating moments -- emotional ones -- that felt earned, not shoehorned into a scene for the sake of plot. That was the first season of Glee. And then... everything went downhill from there. Fast. People may disagree over where the problems began, but you'd be hard-pressed to find someone, whether fan or critic, who would disagree with the notion that the series declined in quality over the years. What happened to Glee was tragic and simple: it stopped caring about its characters and forgot who they were. All it cared about were songs and guest stars and plot and as a result, the writing suffered. There were "very special episodes" not because they made sense but simply because the show wanted to do them. The writers abused their characters, crudely forming them into whatever they wanted regardless of whether or not it made any sense whatsoever.

When a show begins to care more about plot and more about homages and more about scenes than it does the actual characters in them, it becomes extremely easy for the series' writers to dismiss the notion of character growth altogether. In fact, it's common for series to neglect their characters or to progress them in one episode only to regress them in the very next simply for the sake of story. Stories should be built around characters, not the other way around. Because what happens when you build a story or an episode and then try to mold your characters to fit exactly what you need for that particular story, you get Glee.

You also get "Basic RV Repair and Palmistry."

It's no secret to anyone (and if it is... where have you been all year?) that I've had numerous problems with the way the characters on Community have been -- or, in this case have NOT been -- written since the fourth season. I think season five was in complete and total disarray -- a season that began with promise and trajectory (remember the fact that Jeff was supposed to be a teacher? HAAAAAAAAA.) and quickly dissolved into one-off episodes that furthered character growth and development very little and actually regressed numerous other characters. Season six has been a lot of the same: there are some good moments, some heartwarming scenes, and some funny lines but nothing is connecting, nothing is resonating, because nothing is -- quite honestly -- important anymore. There are no stakes because the show has taken its nuanced characters and warped them into whatever stereotypes or caricatures they need for the week.

That's exactly what "Basic RV Repair and Palmistry" did to Abed and Jeff, specifically. It's an episode where there is very little plot (Dean Pelton buys a giant hand, it's a stupid purchase and the group makes him sell it to someone, they use Elroy's RV to transport, the RV runs out of gas/the battery stops working) but also negative growth and rehashing of elements that have been a part of this show since the first season.

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6x09 "Grifting 101" (Treading Water) [Contributor: Deborah MacArthur]

"Grifting 101"

Original Airdate: May 5, 2015

The theme for this week's episode is "treading water." No, wait -- it's "grifting." Grifting is the theme. The theme for this review, however, is "treading water," because that’s what Community has been doing a lot this season.

Last week they gave us a season 6 version of the perfect Community episode ("season 6 version" because a truly perfect Community episode would mean the return of Troy and Shirley, and maybe a visit from Pierce's ghost). “Intro to Recycled Cinema” checked off the two fundamental requirements for a good episode: high-concept surrealism grounded by honest humanness.

That's the stuff that makes up episodes like “Contemporary American Poultry” and “A Fistful of Paintballs/For A Few Paintballs More,” which were great because they mixed the weird and wonderful nature of this show with its core concern for the humanity of its characters. In “Contemporary American Poultry,” Abed wants to connect with people and Jeff wants to control people and those are both very human desires, but Community filters them through the lens of mafia movies with a side of chicken fingers. “A Fistful of Paintballs” and “For a Few Paintballs More” take Pierce's fear of being left behind and Annie's need to help the people she cares about and surrounds it with paintball chaos, Westerns, and Star Wars.

The key to really good Community episodes that are distinctly Community has always been the humanity in the eye of the weirdness tornado. Striking that balance between strange and sincere is difficult to do, but the series used to be pretty good at accomplishing it – unfortunately, “Grifting 101” fell a little short.

The Episode

Here’s the thing: it’s not that “Grifting 101” completely left out the character in favor of the concept. This episode wasn’t a cold, unfulfilling nothingness encased in pop culture references and I don’t think it exists purely because one of the writers watched The Sting on the night before the script was due. But “Grifting 101” fell back on some tired old character traits for the “human” part of the plot and those tired old character traits cannot fool us anymore, nor do they make us think actual progress is being made in character development or story arcs. This is where the aforementioned theme of treading water comes in. The show isn’t moving anywhere and I’m starting to suspect that it’s not even trying to move anywhere.

We know that Jeff gets unreasonably angry and bothered by people being better than him at something or belittling him in some way. We’ve seen that story play out multiple times over the course of this series (we’ve even seen it this season – four episodes ago!) and bringing it back up doesn’t add anything new to the character of Jeff Winger or to the story. Last week gave us something new when Jeff revealed his fear that his life was going nowhere and he could be stuck at Greendale forever while everyone around him moved forward. The difference between last week and this week is the difference between a sandwich and a mass of cotton candy: yes, they are both edible and delicious but one is an actual meal and the other is mostly air. I can’t live off of cotton candy, Community.

And having a character hang a lantern on the rehashing of old ideas does not excuse the rehashing of old ideas. Annie calls out Jeff for “getting jealous of something dumb” when he tells them not to take a class in grifting and yep, that’s what happens. Jeff gets jealous of something dumb. This dumb thing is a grifting professor who’s better at… lying? Is it lying, or is it just that Professor DeSalvo wasn’t impressed by Jeff’s years-long lawyer scam? Either way, it’s dumb and it makes Jeff angry.

Jeff’s dumb jealousy has him team up with the group so they can grift the grifting professor, and they’re really bad at it. He uses telegrams and bad actors to try and sell a grift – but it’s not a grift! At least, it’s not the real grift, which involves 1) Britta tempting DeSalvo into collaborating with her on a grift, 2) Britta punching DeSalvo and chasing him through the halls, 3) Professor DeSalvo faking a fall down the stairs, 4) getting a payout from the school for $50,000 in cash, 5) getting the briefcase full of money lost within the school, 6) causing DeSalvo to reveal his fake injuries for the fakes they are, 7) giving him an ultimatum: pretend the $50,000 payoff never happened and admit the group grifted him, or pay the school the money he lost.

DeSalvo says that he was grifted, the group celebrates together, and it all ends well for them. I will give the episode credit for the group being very unified and good to each other throughout the whole thing. Even when they were making fun of Jeff (and Jeff was making fun of them) it all felt very lighthearted and had a fondness to it that undercut the mockery. Not devolving into any in-group fighting or pettiness was probably the saving grace of “Grifting 101,” but just a taste of character development akin to what we saw with Jeff last week would have made it so much better.

Other things:

• Annie is adorable when she brings up the grifting class. She's still so excited by taking classes with her friends!
• "Who's gonna come with me and show this guy what's up? I'll pay you back!" "I'll get it from your parents!" "Tell them I spit on their wealth! And thank you." Cute, but also: Britta, what do you do with your money from bar tending? You have to have an hourly wage, and you're a good bartender so I'm willing to bet you're getting tips, so where is your money going?
• In this episode, grifting names are ridiculous. In the TV show Leverage, which is about a bunch of grifters and thieves, the grifting names are references to Doctor Who and Star Trek. I don’t know what I’m saying here except that I really like Leverage.
• Does Add/Drop Week not exist at Greendale? If it's the first class, they should just be able to drop it and get a refund if they don’t like it.
• "The African telegram! The Jim Belushi of grifts!"
• Because the Internet.
• How many pairs of the same style glasses in different colors does Elroy own?
• Jeff was Britta’s boyfriend? Really? Unless that was just a line to catch DeSalvo’s interest, I’m not buying it.
• "That movie was terrible!" "You slept the whole time." "Yeah, that's worse - the dialogue seeped into my dreams – my whole brain was long and quiet."
• Britta lived in New York!
• Dean Pelton was counting the stacks of money in the briefcase and somehow ended up with (at least) two layers of two rows of six stacks adding up to 21, which goes to show exactly why this school has no money and why Frankie is so desperately needed.
• Look, Community, I don't care how many times you call Britta the heart of the group. That is not her role. The heart of the group was Troy and you will never convince me otherwise. [Jenn's note: Amen, sister friend.]
• The audio on the cardboard boxes when Abed was switching out the briefcases was hilariously loud, which makes me think it was intentional. Was the obviousness of this switcheroo another reference to The Sting?
• Being on Yahoo means that Leonard was able to give the finger!
• I guess we were supposed to assume that the group not knowing how to grift/yelling at Jeff for not having a grift planned was for the benefit of Chang?
• And yes, Matt Berry (who I know from The IT Crowd) was very fun throughout the episode so, points for that?

Do you agree or disagree with Deb's assessment of this episode/season as a whole? (For the record: I agree.) Hit up the comments below with your thoughts about the episode, try not to grift each other, and come back next week for another episode and review of Community by Jenn. Until then, folks. :)

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6x08 "Intro to Recycled Cinema" (Nodus Tollens)

"Intro to Recycled Cinema"

Original Airdate: April 28, 2015

There comes a point in time in your life where you realize that you're standing still and other people are moving on around you. Your friends are moving into houses and you're paying rent on your apartment. You keep getting invitations to wedding after wedding and you haven't found a decent person to date. Your friends are starting families of their own and you're still trying to avoid spending time with yours. No one tells you this, when you become an adult. No one tells you that eventually you're going to feel like you're stuck in life, wading through quicksand that just keeps feeling harder and harder to trudge through. There was a Buzzfeed article that I read yesterday featuring "a compendium of invented words" that are used to describe emotions you never realized anyone else actually felt too. Here's one of my favorites that ties in directly with what I stated above and also the theme of this week's Community:

In "Intro to Recycled Cinema," we learn a little bit more about Jeff Winger than we did before. Realizations that occur between Jeff and Abed are usually more poignant than most and this episode was no exception. So let's talk a little bit more about science-fiction, Chris Pratt, and Annie's boobs (not the monkey), shall we?

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6x07 "Advanced Safety Features" (Six Seasons And One More Dance) [Contributor: Deborah MacArthur]

"Advanced Safety Features"

Original Airdate: April 21, 2015

First off: it's really bizarre that this episode with a running plot line about liking each other came right after the episode where we questioned why these guys liked each other. No mention of last week's episode was made and none of the characters seemed to think the reason why some members of the group might not like other members could be because of the massive invasion of privacy that happened a week ago.

Is it possible that this episode was actually meant to air before "Basic Email Security"? Nope. That's very unlikely, since even the production codes line up one after the other.

So the only logical explanation here is that "Basic Email Security" took place in an alternate reality where our lovable misfit characters are all awful to each other. Ta-da! Mystery solved. Moving on to this week's Prime Reality episode, entitled “Advanced Security Features”.

Britta/Rick

I was going to try and make a Romeo and Juliet prologue parody here, but it's 9:00 in the morning and my Shakespeare parody powers don't kick in until at least noon. Just acknowledge that the tale of Rick and Britta is a tale of star-crossed lovers, torn asunder by the addictive high of selling stuff to people who don't need it. It started with Subway (although I guess people occasionally need a sandwich?) and now Rick is doing guerilla marketing for Honda, Community's other very forgiving, very in-on-the-joke sponsor. Britta is less than happy about this, not only because Britta's anti-capitalist, but also because it means that she can't be with Rick. Again. Like I said: star-crossed lovers.

This episode is kind of a revisit of the last time Britta and Rick wanted to be together but couldn’t be ("Digital Exploration of Interior Design"), but I think I like this one because it shows a growth – especially in Britta’s character. She actually takes Rick to see her parents, repeatedly mentions that she wants a real relationship and not just sex in the back seat of a Honda CRV, and even joins Rick in guerilla marketing for Honda even though she considers herself morally against it. Maybe Rick grew as well, but no one except Britta can figure out which parts of Rick’s personality are carefully chosen affectations meant to sell products and which are genuine, so Rick’s character growth will remain a mystery.

I do love that this is another episode that proves that Britta isn't completely incompetent at everything she tries. We learned in season three that she’s excellent at design – especially for weddings – and now we learn that she's actually pretty good at selling stuff to people, which is a valuable quality in a bartender as well as a guerilla marketer. I’ve always had this theory that Britta is incredibly perceptive and that means stuff like planning weddings (because being perceptive visually is still being perceptive) and selling people what they might want or need would definitely come easy to her. It’s only when her own ego gets in the way that she messes up, like whenever she attempts psychology/therapy and ends up insulting her patients in some way. But egoless Britta? Or a Britta that isn’t wholly invested in what she’s doing? Naturally skilled and very wonderful.

Jeff + Elroy

Here’s where the storyline about liking people comes in, and I guess it’s a good one even though it’s short and barely-there, because it does at least show a growth in Jeff over the course of the episode. Now if the show could just expand that whole “character growth” thing a bit and make it happen over the course of the season (or the series), that’s be nice.

Jeff starts his story when Annie and Abed find him in his office, drinking and playing on his phone (Bejeweled? Texting mysterious people we never see? Who knows!) and tell him that they’re going to play a game with Elroy in order to get him to like them more. Jeff, because he can’t show he cares about anything, ever, without fearing that his coolness will come into question, dismisses this as lame. Of course he does. His theory is that showing aloofness = people thinking you’re cool and liking you. Annie makes fun of this theory, because of course she does – for Annie, caring about people is about as cool as you can get.

When Jeff realizes that Elroy likes the group just fine, but might not like him, he starts freaking out and trying to find ways to win Elroy over. At first this B-plot seems like another case of Jeff simply not liking when people don’t like him [Jenn's Note: or don't like him as much as they like others ("Beginner Pottery," "Asian Population Studies," etc.)], but it turns out in the end that Jeff is upset because he does like Elroy and wants to be his friend and never knew that Elroy disliked him. It’s not the fact that he’s disliked that’s the problem; it’s the idea that Jeff is disliked by someone he respects and thinks of as a friend.

Jeff’s original plan of aloofness in order to gain likability flies out the window when he gives in to Annie and Abed’s advice to just be vulnerable for a change and flat-out tells Elroy he likes him. When Elroy calls him a good guy and says they’re going to be friends, though, Jeff weakly attempts to go back to his aloofness and responds, “Yeah, fine, whatever.”

Yeah, I said Jeff grew, not that he changed. The way things are going, Jeff will always be the sort of person who tries not to care, or at least tries to look like he doesn’t care. The fact that he attempted to push away his instincts and opened up this episode, though, at least shows that he’s capable of moving past them just a bit. Should Jeff be more evolved than this at this point in the series? I definitely think so, but I also think there’s a comfort in falling into old habits for some people and I just suppose Jeff is one of those people.

It looks like the writers of the show also seem to be those people, since these characters haven’t been changing much over the years. This is unfortunate because falling into the comfort of old habits is as true to humanity as it is bad for storytelling.

Other Stuff:

• Greendale’s having another dance! [Jenn's Note: How many actually is this? Can someone count? I feel like we're up to seven or eight dances already, but maybe I'm making that up.]
• “Do you believe half your own politics?” “Yeeeeeeeah(?) …Yeah!” A+ delivery, Gillian Jacobs.
• I agree with Abed’s theory on DJs and have expressed this to my brother, who listens to music with DJs, on several occasions. He does not take it well.
• Jeff’s off-screen response to Abed on the topic of guerilla marketing was PERFECT. Is it weird that that one little joke was my highlight of the episode? I just really appreciate the editing choice of having Jeff’s line off-screen.
• “I’m just gonna give this school’s assets a quick freezy-weezy.”
• What was so special about Troy, Frankie? LITERALLY EVERYTHING. HE WAS THE HEART AND SOUL OF THE GROUP AND I MISS HIM MORE WITH EACH PASSING DAY. [Jenn's Note: What Deb said.]
• Was Jeff’s “Troy was very gifted at steel drums” line ADR’d? I think he actually said… kettledrums? Could they not get a kettledrum?
• Annie cares enough about Britta to warn her about Rick being in the parking lot! These little moments of care between Annie and Britta are great, now DO A WHOLE EPISODE OF THEM.
• “Now, I have one more class, but if you can wait forty minutes, I will meet you – NUH UH!” A+ delivery, Alison Brie.
• Annie and Abed trying out new handshakes is great, but I think they should go back to that one they did in the first season finale as Annie was leaving with Vaughn.
• Okay, maybe Annie and Jeff going “MNEEEH!” at each other is the highlight of the episode for me. That was adorable. [Jenn's Note: So adorable that it deserves inclusion into this post.]

• I found little things like Jeff saying “Hey, party people” and calling Annie and Abed “goofs” to be charming and indicative of Jeff’s affection for his friends, which I really needed after last week’s trip into that alternate reality where everyone’s awful.
• “Would you say that I’m Level 7 Susceptible?” “No, because why would I? Because that’s moon man talk.” A+ delivery, Paget Brewster. Wow, the ladies are owning the line delivery this episode.
• Frankie and the Dean had a funny little plot but it wasn’t really big enough to include in the main review. I loved Frankie’s inability to comfort the Dean without calling him an idiot (and variations thereof) though.
• “It’s Elroy’s favorite band, too. I once hallucinated one of their music videos in his RV!”
• “’Fine!’ That’s you. That’s my impression of you. Jaded hipster a-hole.”
• Did Elroy start singing some “I Love You (For Sentimental Reasons)” at the end there? Yay! I love you, I love you, I love you, etc.
• The running gag of the Honda guy trying to disappear mysteriously was fun, especially when Britta just humored him at the end.

What did you all think of Community's half-way point this season? Did you miss Subway... er, Rick? Let us know what you think in the comments below. Jenn will be back next week for the review of "Intro to Recycled Cinema." Until then! :)

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6x06 "Basic Email Security" (What A Hack)

"Basic Email Security"

Original Airdate: April 14, 2015

Do you ever look back on some of your friendships -- be it a year ago, two years, or ten -- and think: "Why was I ever friends with them in the first place?" I know that I do. In high school, you think that your friends and your cliques are the most important things in the world. And you treat them like they are: like people are irreplaceable and you'll be friends forever. And sometimes you will. My best friend of nearly thirteen years is the person who sat next to me on the bus in middle school. But a lot of friendships don't last and the majority of people I went to high school with, apart from a handful, are now strangers to me. So when I look back on my time there, sometimes I wonder why I wasted so much of my time and energy trying to please people who -- eight years down the road -- I would never really stay friends with. I think that the goal of friendship is to be united by something other than a similar circumstance or a similar, but temporary, situation in life. My best friend isn't my best friend because we spent five years together in chorus classes or because we lived in the same neighborhood.

No, my best friend is my best friend because she's been beside me through every season of my life, the good and the bad. She's watched me move away to college and saw me move back home. She's been beside me when I've lost people really close to me. She's been there for all of the inside jokes. She's been there for the break-ups. But I've been there for her, too: for the times she's felt uncertain about her future, the times she's needed someone to cheer her up, the times she's just needed someone to vent to. Friendship is all about reciprocation and a deeper level of understanding. I have a lot of acquaintances on social media, but not a lot of friends. Friendship means a deeper level of connection than just live-tweeting the same show or retweeting a funny post. So yes, it's easy to look back on people we used to be friends with and think: "How was I ever friends with them?" And the reason why we do that is because we've grown and evolved and changed and the other person hasn't. Or we realize that our "friendship" was based on superficial things to begin with. Friendships like those don't last. They can't.

Which is why "Basic Email Security" rubs me the absolute wrong way. Deborah talked last week about how she struggled to find a common thread or a theme between the A and B-stories in the episode. This week, the show did the work for us and told us -- flat-out -- that there was no real lesson to be learned.

 I had a lot of problems with this episode and more than just problems, I had a lot of confusion and anger. But the one question that bubbled to the forefront of my mind after the episode ended was this: "WHY are these people still friends with each other?"

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6x05 "Laws of Robotics & Party Rights" (All Hail Annie) [Contributor: Deborah MacArthur]

"Laws of Robotics & Party Rights"

Original Airdate: April 7, 2015

There are some things that I really liked about this episode and nothing I totally hated, but I was struggling to write this because there was nothing big I could actually grab a hold of and use to fuel a whole review. There were themes, but not broad ones or ones I think are meant to carry on throughout the rest of the season. The A and B stories only seemed to relate to each other in terms of two characters learning lessons at the end of them, and that's not exactly breaking new ground as far as sitcoms go.

Jeff and the Dean (and My Confusion)

The A-plot involves a bunch of convicts attending Greendale via remote devices that look like tablets on wheels called telepresence robots (actual things that exist by the way), and Jeff is initially very pro-convicts because if the school accepts them, it gets $300,000. The Dean fights him on it for about three seconds before caving, and then the convicts arrive. One of them, Willy, is in Jeff's Fundamentals of Law class and doesn't seem to enjoy the way Jeff teaches. That is to say, Jeff doesn't teach at all: he puts on a video and makes jokes about his life and how he ended up a teacher at Greendale, and how he's not that much different from a convict like Willy – other than the fact that Jeff's never murdered anyone, of course.

But then Willy tries to murder Jeff by nudging him down the stairs in the parking garage and when Jeff goes to the Dean, the Dean sides with Willy over Jeff. This sends Jeff into a spiral of irritation and anger because he's right and Willy is wrong but no one's listening to him. Jeff hates people not listening to him, and he hates that he loses control over his class because he lets Willy get under his skin. Because even though Jeff never cared about his class before, he did care about them thinking he was cool and funny and Willy ruins that.

This story was thematically all over the place. What was the arcing motivation/idea? Was it about Jeff's inability to cope with his feelings? (Jeff says to Willy: "I hear you have to have strong feelings for someone you kill. I try to reserve that stuff for myself," and that gets paid off later when his feelings of anger cause him to throw Willy's telepresence robot down a flight of stairs, thus "killing" him.) Was it another revisit of one of Jeff's key character traits: his hatred of being on the "losing side" of anything, especially other people's opinions of him? The way the story ends implies that it was about Jeff's friendship with the Dean and Jeff accepting that, yes, he considers himself the Dean's friend – but that's literally just the end of the storyline. The only instance of that particular theme creeping in is when the Dean sides with Willy over Jeff and Jeff gets mad about it.

One thing that isn't really dealt with in this plot is the thing that kind of started it in the first place: Jeff is a really bad teacher. Willy doesn't like that Jeff's a really bad teacher. It could be argued that Willy would have tried to murder Jeff even if he had been a decent teacher, but he wouldn't have had anything to hold over him and discredit him when he went to the Dean if Jeff had tried a little harder.

The way the narrative of the plot progresses gives the impression that Jeff's halfhearted methods of teaching Greendale students instigated Willy's murder attempt, and a logical conclusion would have been Jeff actually trying to teach the class about law because he's learned that caring about something is important and it is possible for him to care about things that aren’t himself. But that doesn't happen. We don't get a follow-up with Jeff actually teaching a class instead of putting on a video of Planet Earth and playing on his phone the entire time, and I think the storyline is missing something because of that.

Britta and Annie (And Abed)

The other story we're dealing with in "Laws of Robotics & Party Rights" involves Britta wanting to throw a post-midterms party in the apartment she shares with Annie and Abed. The problem: there's an established rule against parties with more than eight people in attendance, and Britta doesn't think eight people is much of a party.

So Britta convinces Abed to let her throw the party as a "movie" about partying like there's no tomorrow and Abed, of course, approaches this with extreme seriousness. He continues trying to get good partying footage well after the actual party Britta wanted is over, and it's implied that he'd probably keep trying forever and deprive Britta of sleep the entire time. Because Britta sleeps on the couch. In the living room, where parties happen.

Annie had predicted this would blow up in Britta's face as soon as the plot was laid out before her, because Annie knows Abed and she knows that rules exist for a very good reason and that skirting around them only ends in everything blowing up in your face (this episode lacks a cohesive connection between the two plots, but "skirting around the rules will end in everything blowing up in your face" could be considered a good running theme in Community overall). She tells Britta that she's going to regret manipulating Abed later, and she's right.

Annie's a real badass in this episode and Britta's likable and foolish rather than an over-the-top screw-up and these are both excellent things. The B-story ends with Annie getting Britta to confess to Abed about her scheming and Abed likely going on to make Britta’s life hell for a good long while.

Annie and Britta’s story in this episode concludes with a weird handshake and another fake show title card, this one reading "Female Friends!" (accompanied by a cheerful little music sting), which is charming but almost as misleading as Britta's party movie script because the friendship between the two women is still shaky at best and always has been, and maybe the ship has sailed on it ever being anything but shaky. That's incredibly unfortunate because this is a show about very different people finding a way to fit into a family with each other, and I don't think Annie and Britta have ever fit as well together – in different ways – as, say, Jeff and Annie, or Britta and Jeff, or Annie and Shirley (when the show wasn't ridiculously revisiting their brief season one rivalry, of course).

We got a brief mention of them shopping together a long, long time ago but nothing since then, and no other hints that they spend time with each other off-screen. Even on screen, we don't get many stories with Annie and Britta together or about their friendship and when we do they're usually at odds with each other in some way. There never seems to be much of a long-term resolution to their relationship, or an implication that they might one day become closer or could be considered “close” now, even after six years of knowing each other. Sticking a fake title card for a fake TV show about their friendship up on screen doesn't solve the basic problem of the writers repeatedly pitting them against each other for some inexplicable reason.

Aaaand, that's pretty much all I have to say about the episode, which was funny - don't get me wrong. I liked it, but it was a struggle to figure out what it was trying to say and what these things all mean in the long-term. Will a future episode have Jeff actually teaching his class because he learned his lesson in this episode even though that plot thread wasn't resolved within this episode? Will Annie and Britta have more stories together, or develop their friendship in some way? I have no idea. I'm thinking probably not - but Community has surprised me many times before.

Other things:

• "I have a brain the size of Jupiter, I'm nobody's fourth Ghostbuster." I could quote pretty much anything Elroy says in the cold open. He's fitting in with the group incredibly well and I love it.
• BRITTA LIVED IN NEW YORK!
• "If I see any race gangs forming, I'll have no choice but to adjust the contrast on your screens until you all look the same."
• Jeff is a teacher! You guys - the show remembered that Jeff is a teacher! I think I'm more excited by this than I should be.
• Aw, a brief cameo from Fake Troy's arm. I miss real Troy's arm. And his face. I miss Troy. [Jenn's note: After re-watching a bunch of seasons 1-3 this weekend, I wholeheartedly agree. There's something missing without him and no one can convince me otherwise.]
• Now, I definitely wouldn't throw anyone down a flight of stairs, but - if I had a professor as careless and lazy as Jeff, I'd be pretty pissed too. Try harder, Jeff. Just think about Annie’s disappointed face every time you decide to put a movie on instead of actually teach.
• If Britta's script was just that one page Annie read out loud, what were the other thirty or so pages? Party plans?
• "When this is over, you'll beg for my forgiveness." All hail Annie!
• Was I the only one amused by Jeff’s repeated use of the word “murder” instead of, say, “kill”?
• I like Britta the Therapist Bartender so, so much more than Britta the cartoonish idiot. Like, she's still a bit silly because she's Britta and she doesn't know what a petard is, but she's a good kind of silly and she doesn't steal children's tricycles or poop her pants.
• Jeff attempting to “party like there’s no tomorrow” for Abed’s movie is a very simple, brief example of how Jeff has grown. An earlier version of Jeff would have given Abed an unamused look and walked away. [Jenn's note: It's also a hilarious example of how Joel McHale, much like Jake Johnson, cannot dance and the shows they're on both insist on forcing them.]
• "Don't question rules. Rules are good. I'm bad. All hail Annie." Jenn says "All hail Annie" should be the new mantra. And I agree. [Jenn's note: It's so true that I made it the subtitle for this review. Don't underestimate the Edison.]
• Why did Jeff steal an overhead projector, though? What is he doing with it? The roll of carpet, I get - rolls of carpet are very useful - but an overhead projector?

Did you all enjoy "Laws of Robotics & Party Rights"? Let us know what you thought of the episode in the comments. Jenn will be back next week with a very meta episode titled "Basic Email Security." Until next time, folks! :)

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6x04 "Queer Studies & Advanced Waxing" (Chang, Chang, Chang)

"Queer Studies & Advanced Waxing"

Original Airdate: March 31, 2015

We don't like being vulnerable with each other. It's a fact of life, really, because being vulnerable means that you need to let people in and when people are let into your life, you cannot control how they respond to you or what they think of you or what they say or do to you. Being vulnerable is terrifying, really, because it means letting a person understand what makes you inherently you and when you do that, there's a chance that they will be horrified at what they see. There's a chance they'll bail. There's a very good chance that they won't understand. So to protect ourselves, we construct these lies about our life: we call them "walls" or "boundaries." We only let people up to a line that we draw in the sand and not any further than that. Walls protect us. They also keep other people away -- away from seeing our insecurities and the depth of our problems and our confusion.

But walls are dangerous. And we weren't meant to live behind them. We build walls emotionally every day because we are afraid. But when we allow other people into our messy, weird, broken lives, sometimes they run away, yes, but sometimes people will stay and will sit with you in your brokenness and will understand you because they're broken, too. That's the real definition of a relationship, actually: being unafraid to be broken with people who are broken just as badly as you are. Community has always been a show that has centered on the idea that broken people need each other if they have any hope of becoming better. That's the series' goal in a nutshell. And Greendale has always been this zany place where the weirdest loners find a home and where the young and irreparably broken sink into love. .... Wait, no, that's a line from The Fault In Our Stars... 

Nevertheless, Greendale is home to a lot of weirdos. And they're the best kind of weirdos. They're the weirdos who care. This week in "Queer Studies & Advanced Waxing" we examined three different stories of three different weirdos and their journeys, so let's talk about them, shall we? 

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6x03 "Basic Crisis Room Decorum" (The Annie Of It All) [Contributor: Deborah MacArthur]

"Basic Crisis Room Decorum"

Original Airdate: March 24, 2015

There are two plots happening in the blessedly tame 100th episode of Community, "Basic Crisis Room Decorum." The A-plot is about Annie and the rest of the group trying to stop City College from running a commercial about how Greendale once gave a degree to a dog named Ruffles. The B-plot is that the Dean has been texting a student in Japan, thinking he’s actually texting Jeff Winger. I’m going to talk way more about the former than the latter in this review.

I liked the A-plot of this episode, not only because it revolved around Annie and I love Annie, but also because I think it was a pretty good reflection of the show itself and that’s really good, since this is Community’s 100th episode and all. A hundred episodes is a huge milestone for a TV show, especially one that seems to live perpetually on the bubble of cancellation like the series has during its entire run.

Community has always been a show about hope to me. The series was birthed during a time when cynicism was the key to “good comedy” and even though this show is sharp and jagged sometimes, even though it dips briefly into moments of despair, it always seems to float back up again.

One of my favorite episodes – if not my very favorite episode – is “Mixology Certification,” which is generally considered a “dark” episode by viewers and critics because there aren’t very many jokes and wacky hijinks throughout it. It’s an episode that touches one of those aforementioned moments of despair as all our characters get drunk in a bar and realize they’re unhappy with who they are and what the world has in store for them. They yell at each other, they lie to strangers to make themselves feel better, they get drinks thrown on them and they get trapped, separated and alone, in a bar entryway. It isn’t a good day.

But at the end of the episode, when Troy is driving his friends home after what seems to be a terrible 21st birthday meant to celebrate him becoming a man, Troy smiles. Because he still loves his friends, he still has hope, and the future is brighter than one bad day.

That’s what Community is about. It’s about a world of broken people who still manage to make a loving family and find joy in each other in spite of all their faults and strangeness and bad days. For the most part, it’s a show that says, no – you don’t have to reject love in order to be cool, or funny, or smart. You don’t have to stoop to lower levels to win. You don’t have to give in to the hipster notion that liking things and loving people means you’re less than the people who don’t like things and don’t love people. Liking things, loving people – that’s how you show the world around you that you’re alive and paying attention.

I don’t know if I can say that Community has absolutely stuck with what I believe to be its core concept through all its ups and downs as a show, but Annie’s role in “Basic Crisis Room Decorum” and the resolution of its story makes me think it’s still trying. I hope it continues to try.

“Basic Crisis Room Decorum”

In the case of Annie's story, this episode looks like a rehash of the season two's episode "Basic Rocket Science," in which Annie threatens to transfer to City College because she's ashamed of Greendale and its apathetic, ridiculous students.

The difference between the two episodes is that, in "Basic Rocket Science," Annie is ashamed of how Greendale makes her look.

In "Basic Crisis Room Decorum," Annie is ashamed of how Greendale makes her feel.

In season two, Annie couldn't stand that Greendale was a place that accepted and flew a butt flag. Greendale was a joke, and she didn't want a joke of a school to be on her resumé. She had too much self-respect and pride to stick around.

By season six, Annie's moved past the idea that maybe Greendale doesn't look so great on a resumé. She's accepted the school and its quirks and still takes pride in her success, her good grades, and her ability to run the "Save Greendale" campaign in spite of how Greendale looks on paper because, up until this episode, Annie's always believed that whatever problems she might encounter can be conquered with hard work, dedication, and the help of her friends. That's why she calls them in to help her stop City College's attack ad, only to end up horrified by their methods of doing so.

A fundamental trait in Annie Edison is that she wants the people around her to be the best people they can possibly be. She likes highlighting the good in others and trying to get them to see it in themselves, because Annie always sees it. But what if she stops seeing it? What if she starts only seeing the underhanded, manipulative, defeatist parts of the people she's spent all this effort trying to lift up? What if the people she's trying to help flat-out tell her that there's no reason to try and be good and that hope is pointless?

I'm sure that Annie is sick and tired of being the optimist in a sea of pessimism. After all: what's the point? Her friends apparently haven't grown in the six years she's known them, and even the new people in the group seem eternally fatalistic.

Annie thought she had an ally in Frankie, had another person with an A-Type personality and go-getter attitude to help inspire the people around her and bring Greendale out of whatever new darkness it might find itself in. Then she hears Frankie's declaration that she gave up hope a long time ago and was better for it, and Annie realizes that even Frankie is just the same as everyone else, just as pessimistic and just as content with her apathy and cynicism. If Frankie, a woman I'm sure Annie saw a lot of herself in, couldn't even keep herself from nose-diving into hopelessness, what chance does Annie have? If she's in a school full of people who have no drive, no ambition, and don't feel like they need to change anything – how long will it take before Annie is just like them?

So Annie wants out. She claims she wants to go to a place where her grades matter (and I'm sure that's a part of it), but the real motivation in her decision to bail on Greendale is watching her friends use dirty political tactics to fudge the truth instead of owning up to that truth and being better than it. She doesn't like seeing proof that her belief in the people around her was ill-founded and pointless, that maybe the goodness she saw in all of them was just an illusion brought about by the pointless trait of "hope." She cleans out her locker and thinks that, just maybe, things will be different at City College.

But then Abed brings Annie the new campaign commercial for Greendale, where a happy Dean Pelton is sitting with Ruffles the dog and promoting Greendale not as a place so terrible it give degrees to dogs, but as a place so full of hope and the possibility for improvement that it gives degrees to dogs. Annie is overjoyed; even when Jeff tells her the commercial was just a good tactical move. She doesn't care, because it finally looks like hope wins. Her belief in the people around her didn't let her down in the end, which means that she can keep on believing in people. She can keep being an optimist in that sea of pessimism and, just maybe, she might be able to make a difference.

She hopes.

Other stuff:

• I was pretty happy with Chang in the previous two episodes, but he really fell flat in this one. I can’t pinpoint exactly what it is that works and doesn’t work about his character anymore.
• The Dean/Jeff plot fell flat, too, and I think too much time was dedicated to it. It might have been better as a one-time joke, but they kept revisiting it and it wore reeeeally thin.
• I think I felt more for Britta during the brief moment where she tells Elroy about how everyone treats her like a joke than I did during the entire previous episode. Because, let’s face it, the previous episode… treated her like a joke.
• “Could you guys be bigger nerds?” “No, most of us have achieved our maximum potential.”
• I’m so glad that they don’t seem to be trying to do Annie vs. Frankie in any real way. I just wanted to say that, because there was a lot of buzz about Annie vs. Frankie pre-season six and it made me really nervous.
• "I assume Chang thinks I sound like distant explosions and crying babies."
• We get a slow, sad reprise of "If I Die Before You" as Annie's packing up her stuff to leave. Because "Greendale Is Where I Belong" wouldn't really fit, would it?
• Hello there, confirmed birthday for Annie! 12/19/1990. I can't believe I'm older than Annie. [Jenn's note: Geez, I can't believe I'm older than Annie, too]
• “Yes, Jeff, don’t worry. I promise I’ll never mistake you for having a heart.” Oh, please, Annie, you know very well that Jeff has a heart. YOU’RE IN IT.

What did you all think of "Basic Crisis Room Decorum"? Did you enjoy the A-plot? Also, be sure to hit up the comments below and welcome Deb as my weekly co-reviewer this season for Community! (Also welcome her because she'll be sticking around to review Sleepy Hollow next season. I basically hold my writers captive, is what I'm saying.)

Until then, folks! :)

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6x01 "Ladders" & 6x02 "Lawnmower Maintenance and Postnatal Care" (Once More Into The Fray)

"Ladders" & "Lawnmower Maintenance and Postnatal Care"

Original Airdate: March 17, 2015

To say that I had a lot of problems with Community's fifth season would be an understatement. In a year that began with promise, the series quickly dove into its stale bag of tricks (Everything is so meta! Look, we did an homage just for the sake of an homage! Why don't we just re-visit Jeff/Britta/Annie again? We haven't done that in a while! When all else fails, have Joel lose his shirt!) and I found myself longing for much more than the show was delivering. I ached for the days when characters shared meaningful scenes together. You remember these people, right? Seven unique individuals with their own backstories and tragedies and quirks who were more than just punchlines or archetypes. Instead of growth, I found that the fifth season displayed stagnation at best and downright regression at worst. With two fewer study group members, I expected stories to focus on Shirley as a character or Annie or maybe even the relationship between the three remaining women. Instead, not a single character grew (well, maybe Abed a bit but even that's a stretch) throughout the year and we were plopped down in the exact same place we began: the study group failing to succeed in the real world, having to save Greendale, and then being forced to essentially stay there forever.

If it sounds like I'm bitter, it's because I am. Community is what started this blog in the first place. And it wasn't flawless when it began, but it WAS focused on a trajectory -- it was centered around growth and development and change and friendship and acceptance. And somehow, along the way, love triangles and homages and over-the-top antics watered down those messages and made them less powerful, less frequent, and -- consequently -- less important. The characters sort of blended into this weird and wild and crazy world of Greendale to the point where the school itself actually became a more important character over the years than anyone in the study group. What should have been a show about people learning to accept others became a show focused on GREENDALE as the star. And that's when the fissures began to occur, really: when the school is more important than the people in it, there are problems.

Now, I know this all sounds like I hate the once-NBC series. I don't. I don't hate Community at all. It's because I love it so much that I'm more hurt at how it's disappointed me over the years. But I genuinely want the show to succeed. I want it to return to the exploration of human nature and friendship and love and -- very appropriately -- community. And that's actually something that you need to do in order to examine television critically: you need to look at where it is flawed and where it is successful and evaluate how the series can grow and develop and what is hindering that development. Oh, sure, I fangirl over things still in the series just like everyone else. But for a long time, whenever I watched a television show I loved, I would gloss over its flaws in favor of squeeing. That's... well, not what I want to do anymore. And that's not what my reviews will be anymore (I can't speak for Deborah who -- in case you didn't know -- I am SUPER pleased to announce will be co-reviewing with me this season!)

So if you would like to find a place that fangirls over Community and worships at the feet of Dan Harmon, I can kindly direct you to a few places. But if you want to have some frank discussions about what works when the show is at its absolute best and what completely and totally does not work (*gasp!*) then this is the place for you this year! 

Because, as Orlando Jones so brilliantly said: "Criticizing something doesn't mean you want it to fail. A passionately engaged audience is better than an indifferent one."

So here we are, six seasons into the series (now airing on Yahoo! TV because why not) and I'm ready to embrace this new year provided it delivers some great character arcs. And given this Debbie Downer introduction, I bet you're just dying to know what I thought of the one-hour return to Greendale Community College, aren't you? Well, let's get to it then and discuss where we are at the beginning of season six and where we could be by the end of it.

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5x13 "Basic Sandwich" (I'll Be A Story in Your Head)

"Basic Sandwich"

Original Airdate: April 17, 2014

"I'll be a story in your head. But that's okay: we're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? Because it was, you know. It was the best." -- Doctor Who

When you think about your life being a story, the most important question is this: what story do you want to tell? Sometimes I think about (when I’m feeling extra morbid) what my friends and family will remember about me after I’m gone. What kind of story did I tell during my life on Earth that would echo long after I’m gone? The Eleventh Doctor made the wise observation that we all – each one of us – are just stories in the end and it’s true. So if today was your last day, what would you want remembered? Or, alternatively, if this your last episode as a television show, what message would you want to send? At this moment in time, it’s uncertain as to whether or not Community will be returning for that fated sixth season (and a movie). So “Basic Sandwich” is meant to serve as both a season finale and potential series finale. When you have a show runner with his own story circle, there’s a lot of pressure to tie up loose ends, mend fences, and bring closure while still remaining true to your characters in every episode, but there’s this added pressure for Harmon going into “Basic Sandwich.” It’s the question that I asked at the beginning of this post: what story do you want to tell? Do you want to tell a recycled story of a group of ragtag friends who manage to band together, outwit the bad guys, and save the day? Do you want to bring closure to your audience in terms of romantic pairings? Do you make your final episode an adventure or a subdued tribute to your characters? How do you handle the final page when you’re not sure if there will be an epilogue or not?

I’ve thought a lot about the fifth season of Community and I’ve made my feelings pretty clear: I don’t think it was astounding. I don’t think it was superb. Heck, I don’t even think it was GREAT. It was an okay season with some stand-out moments and some stand-out performances. But the writing was uneven. The characters never progressed beyond the assigned personalities and tropes that made them who they were in season one. Troy left. The dynamic shifted. Community is not the same show that it once was but this season felt like… it felt like it was a middle-aged woman who was still dressing like the twenty year-old she once was. The clothes didn’t remotely fit anymore, but she still tried to squeeze into them. Community evolved over the years and while last season was rocky at its best moments, I expected more from this season because of Harmon’s return. I expected a central theme that progressed the characters. I expected them to learn and to evolve, not to merely circle around the same themes and plots from years past like a hamster on a wheel or a person on a gym treadmill.

So if “Basic Sandwich” is the series finale of Community… what did I think of it, exactly? I thought it was a decent farewell to an okay season but that it was – when it boiled down to it – reminiscent of a hamster on a wheel. The study group returned to their old habits: Jeff being insecure and then needing the study group to remind him of what love really is, Britta being… Britta, Abed being meta, Shirley being a sidekick, Hickey being gruff, Annie being hung-up on Jeff, Dean being slightly-less-creepy than usual actually, Chang being evil (again). The season finale though does have some added bonuses that I enjoyed: it clearly explains exactly why Jeff and Britta acted the way that they did and it explained who Abed and Annie were in relation to those actions. There was meta commentary, which I appreciated, and there was SOME closure on the romantic/character development fronts. (In my opinion, it was too little too late with the characterization of Annie Edison.)

Overall, we were left in the same place we started and the same place we’ve always started: these people need Greendale because they’re terrified of who they are without it. And that’s fine… for a year. But after five years it becomes a bit more than worrisome that they cannot function as actual and real members of society without the school. And what, exactly, has Jeff learned if he is supposed to be in this “having changed” stage at the season’s end?

These questions and more ponderings as we discuss the plot below the cut!

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5x12 "Basic Story" (To Live Is To Change, To Acquire The Words Of A Story)

"Basic Story"

Original Airdate: April 10, 2014

"Listen, to live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow." - The Poisonwood Bible

There are a lot of us out there who want to settle down someday. I’m one of those people and as I roll through my 25th year of life, I’m realizing how weird it is to actually BE at the age where people start settling down and having a family all around me. They’re falling slowly, like time-lapsed dominoes, but I think the majority of us desire some sort of settling down, even if it isn’t marriage and kids. We desire a steady career or a happy existence. We desire the word that unsettled Abed in the episode: contentment. We want to buy the house and the dog and wake up in the morning to sip coffee on our front porches. So we work our crappy part-time jobs to put ourselves through school and we work through school to get a full-time job and eventually we find ourselves at the place in life we hoped we would be, even if it wasn’t where we anticipated we would be. The Greendale gang realizes in “Basic Story” that their time at the school they always presumed would be their destination in settling down was drawing to a very real, very unpreventable close. And everyone handles dealing with the loss of Greendale differently, some in more mature ways than others.

But before we get to that, let’s discuss the plot of the episode, shall we?

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5x11 "G.I. Jeff" (Earning the Emotional Punch)

"G.I. Jeff"

Original Airdate: April 3, 2014

When I was a kid, the only cartoon I truly remember watching was Captain Planet. I wasn’t a huge Saturday morning cartoon girl, to be honest. I was much happier to be curled up with a book or outside in the back yard swinging on the swing set (a testament to my personality and how my parents never wanted us to be in front of a television set for too long, honestly). I know kids who grew up on Saturday morning cartoons and I know those, like me, who couldn’t tell you the plot of any cartoon in the 80s or 90s if our lives depended on it. All of this is to say that I was never familiar with G.I. Joe. Oh, sure, I know that he was an action figure. While boys went out and bought his toy and the accessories, I was playing with my Polly Pocket and trying to keep my Tamagotchi alive for longer than a day. The most recent Community episode titled “G.I. Jeff” was an homage to the G.I. Joe cartoon.

Now, here’s where I will be brutally honest and echo what I have read on Twitter: I did not like this episode. It’s not that I didn’t admire the work and effort that was put into recreating G.I. Joe and tailoring it to fit Community. Oh, that I totally and completely admired. But as someone who has never watched a moment of G.I. Joe in her entire twenty-five years of life and doesn’t intend to start now, the homage was lacking. And the reason why, to be honest, is because every other Community homage has been broad enough to connect with viewers. Even if you had never seen a moment of Glee, you could appreciate “Regional Holiday Music” because chances were you had seen a musical episode of SOME television show in your life. “Modern Warfare” was an action-packed homage: it didn’t matter what action movie, really, but you could connect with it stylistically and thematically. I feel like “G.I. Jeff” was not an homage to Saturday morning cartoons in general – it was a specific homage to one specific show that a lot of people (like myself) had never seen. And there is something lost on you when you don’t get the characters or the plot or the purpose of an homage. The point of “G.I. Jeff” is that you can regress and go back to your childhood and cling onto that in order to give you some sort of comfort. But in the end, that’s just futile. See, I get the underlying theme of the episode. What was difficult for me was to find any enjoyment in the story when all I felt was confusion regarding the premise and characters. That is to say that I felt, for the first time, what most people must feel whenever they watch an abnormal Community episode.

Even though this episode fell flat for me because I didn’t connect with or understand it, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy some bits of it. Before we delve into an interesting internal conflict or a resolution with the real-world study group, let’s talk about the plot and the fact that – for all of our insistence to the contrary – Jeff is likely the most mentally unstable member of the study group.

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5x10 "Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" (Of Interventions and Owed Endings)

"Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons"

Original Airdate: March 20, 2014

I have always had a pretty good relationship with my parents, with the exception of a few rough patches throughout my teenage years. I’ve always followed the rules, never really questioned their authority or rebelled, and never had a huge falling out. My brother and sister have had their fair share of fights and arguments and periods of silence with our parents, but for the most part we have all managed to coexist peacefully and respect and love each other. My mom’s side of the family was always dysfunctional and I think she knew that growing up and knew that she didn’t want to follow the same cycle that her mother and father and sisters did. My extended family fights with each other nearly all the time. My grandmother yells at my cousin; my aunt yells back at her. There’s this weird codependency that exists, though. Even though they fight and even though they argue… they still love each other and because of that, they still NEED each other. And, as weird and dysfunctional as it may sound, that bickering serves as a tie that binds them together rather than severs them. This is what “Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” focuses on for a good chunk of the episode: the relationship between Buzz Hickey and his son. The two don’t get along and have the kind of relationship that Jeff and William Winger had. It’s strained, to say the very least and it’s because both father and son (in each of these cases) are stubborn. It’s what happens when a powerful force collides with another powerful force spinning in the opposite direction. Those sorts of collisions are what create storms and cracks.

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5x09 "VCR Maintenance and Educational Publishing" (The Elephant in the Room)

"VCR Maintenance and Educational Publishing"

Original Airdate: March 13, 2014

Ensemble series are special because their focus is on the way that the show and the cast work together in a seamless and effortless way. But what happens when there is a shake-up within the ensemble? Imagine Scrubs without Dr. Cox. Imagine New Girl without Nick Miller. Imagine The Office without Jim Halpert. The longer a series runs, the more shake-ups it is prone to have. Recently, Rob Lowe and Rashida Jones left their respective roles of Chris Traeger and Ann Perkins in Parks and Recreation. Steve Carell bid adieu to Michael Scott before the series finale wrapped, and Chevy Chase and Donald Glover left Community before the show actually ended. Things like this happen all the time in television, really, but when a show is driven by such an ensemble-centric dynamic as Community is… well, the absence of Troy Barnes’ heart and soul is felt and hits the audience and the characters quite squarely in the chest.

I won’t pretend that I have loved every episode of Community, post-Troy Barnes. In fact, I’ve enjoyed some of the episodes but I have felt something quite distinctly missing and that – of course – is Troy himself. I miss his childlike wonder and optimism; I miss his humor and his one-liners; I miss his friendship with Abed; and I miss how he seemed to be holding onto the other end of one of seven ropes that anchored the study group on the ground. Without Troy Barnes or Pierce Hawthorne, Community doesn’t fall apart. Parks and Recreation continues to exist without Chris and Ann, and The Office  had its flaws, but Dunder Mifflin did not collapse under the weight left in Michael Scott’s absence.

However (and this is a BIG however), just because a show doesn’t crumble to the ground after a piece or two of the ensemble leaves doesn’t mean that it isn’t affected at all. We’d be foolish to pretend that season four wasn’t affected by the lack of Dan Harmon and we’d be foolish, too, to presume that Community could be the exact same show it has always been without Donald Glover and/or Chevy Chase. Acknowledging that this show has changed and it is NOT the same show it once was (and that's not to say that it is somehow a worse show or a better show: it is just a different show) is the first step of accepting the show that it is now. There’s one element though that I have failed to discuss, though: how a show deals with the absence of a character. This is really the first episode that acknowledged Troy’s absence. It’s the first one to talk about the role he played and the void that is left in his absence. A show like Community cannot pretend that Troy’s absence or Pierce’s absence doesn’t affect its dynamic and structure and I think that for the most part, the writers and Harmon have tried to distract us with guest stars and homages and pop culture references in hopes that we would simply forget that the Greendale Seven are now the Greendale Five. Until, that is, this episode.

No guest star, no homage, and no amount of paintball will fill the void that Donald Glover left in his absence. We cannot pretend it doesn’t affect the show and until the writers stop pretending that it doesn’t affect the show, Community will not and cannot accept the hand they were dealt and move on. I think that what this episode DOES do well is what Community has always done well: address an issue within the context of the characters and be very meta about it in the process. Anthony’s remarks cannot be lost on us, nor can Abed and Annie’s method of distraction. “VCR Maintenance and Educational Publishing” is a meta commentary about the white elephant in the room: Troy's absence. And though this episode was flawed, I am glad that the writers and Harmon finally addressed the off-balanced nature of the study group in Troy's absence.

Well, now that this is out of the way, let’s discuss “VCR Maintenance and Educational Publishing,” shall we? There are two plots for the episode, really: In our A-plot, Annie and Abed realize that they need a new roommate to help foot some of the bills and they decide, together, to play a VCR game in order to decide whether or not Abed’s girlfriend or Annie’s brother (yeah I’ll touch on that momentarily) move in. The B-plot finds Shirley, Jeff, Britta, Chang, and Hickey in possession of a hidden gold mine of new Chemistry textbooks. With money and lying involved, you can bet that things go from bad to hostage situation pretty quickly.

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