Not Even Hiding the METAphors Anymore

I am now convinced Community is completely about television. Last season, they obviated it by parodying every genre trope possible. In the Glorious Restoration, they’re doing it by making every plot point a metaphor for how weird and awesome their show is. Last night’s episode begins with the Dean introducing a “Subway sandwichery in our cafetorium,” followed by the revelation that “Subway” has become a person. He’s tall, handsome, and not allowed to discuss his past despite a deep love for 1984—right up Britta’s alley.

Subway being a brain-dead, emotionless humanoid is a comment on TV audiences. Television isn’t typically a thinking person’s medium—it’s an easy distraction from a more complicated life, and hardly ever a thought-out commentary on life. That’s why every new TV show has a ringing familiarity: they’re just copying one another. Community isn’t interested in doing that. It’s trying to be different, but that makes it weird and kills its ratings.

Pierce and Shirley, the spurned business investors whose sandwhichery was originally supposed to go in the cafetorium, quickly manipulate Britta into spying on Subway. The idea is to force Subway into screwing up somehow and betraying his corporate rules. This would force the Subway (the actual sandwichery, not the person) to close and allow Pierce and Shirley to open their business. They end up recording the two having sex by planting a bug on Britta. When the Subway corporate rep hears the tape, Subway is carted off by guards while Britta powerlessly pines for him. It’s probably the most Britta end to a relationship ever.

Before diving into the Troy/Abed subplot, allow me to introduce a new segment: Pierce Watch. Each week, we’ll examine if Pierce does anything worthwhile in the episode. He’s funnier this episode, but going completely insane. He’s taken to drinking ink (“pens are mini-flasks”) and calling 10 AM “this time of night”—all hilarious. But it doesn’t bode well for his character to become much more than a caricature.

Abed and Troy’s apartment building is being dusted for termites, so they’re displaced and decide to build a huge pillow fort at Greendale. Britta asks them, hey, didn’t they do that last year and aren’t they just repeating themselves (get it?), to which Abed replies “A pillow fort is way more difficult and way better,” (get it?) and Troy says “More difficult is always better.” So yes, Community is literally advocating that your fantastical artifices be as difficult as possible because it’s more satisfying. It’s not something I necessarily disagree with—Community and shows like it (Arrested Development comes to mind) are more satisfying because they force you to think about the jokes, don’t forcibly tell you what’s funny by relying on a laugh track, and keep you on your toes even with the cinematography (“that’s totally a Sergio Leone reference!”) It’s fun…you know, for film and TV nerds.

It soon comes to light that they could break the Guinness World Record for largest pillow/blanket fort, but thanks to some Iago-like manipulating from John Goodman’s character (the air-conditioning repair school dean who wants Troy to enroll because of his Will Hunting-like talent), Troy has started building his own fort. Abed refuses to compromise the pillow fort (“I won’t sacrifice quality for square footage…we don’t need a world record to tell ourselves we did something cool”) but Troy is trying to avoid being the Constable Reggie to Abed’s Inspector Spacetime. Troy gets it in his head that Abed is using him, and Abed returns to his Messianic complex, saying “It’s hard making something perfect, but it’s worth it,” and “I’d rather see my work destroyed than compromise it.” As with most tragic conflicts, neither is wrong: Abed is being arrogant and emotionally uncompromising, Troy is being selfish and selling out.

This is the central conflict of Community as a show. Dan Harmon clearly has a vision of something more than just a Two and a Half Men/Everybody Loves Raymond cheap laugh track-filled crapfest. Before Abed can destroy the pillow fort, John Goodman appears again to say he’s “someone who understands dedication to craftsmanship in the face of mediocrity. This world is run by the unremarkables…what if I stopped worrying about their acceptance of me?” It’s the tension of all art—are you a misunderstood genius, or just a pretentious dick with a greenlighted show? No one in television straddles that line quite like Dan Harmon. In a world of good television, last night’s episode would be ridiculed for flamboyant navel-gazing. In the real world, last night’s episode is among Community’s best.

Jeff, whom I’ve always thought of as a Harmon stand-in because Harmon derived the premise of the show from enrolling in a community college Spanish class to save a relationship, spends the whole episode coming to terms with the fact that he’s an inconsiderate jerk. A woman named Kim left a hate letter in his heretofore-unknown locker, and now she’s dead. At the end of the episode, we find out Kim is a dude who Jeff never remembers and has introduced himself to no less than ten times. So Jeff repents, things are cool with and Kim, and then…he forgets Kim’s name again.

I’ve said before that I’m fine with Community being about little more than making a TV show. It’s smart and funny and fun and obviously respects its audience, which is refreshing. The best quote on craft from the episode is when Subway talks about “Love’s ability to surface within the cracks and cogs of inhuman systems.” — Community obviously loves the work. No other show so clearly telegraphs how much fun all of the actors are having. But Hollywood producers are completely money-driven and they’ve already been at the brink of cancellation. So yeah, throw in a few extra jabs at producers, just remember to keep things fresh, interesting, and funny. It’s a fine line they walk.

Quick Notes:

Annie needs something real to do and soon. She was practically invisible last week and spent this week trying to make Jeff apologize to what she thought was a dead girl’s locker. She did, however, have an awesome speech about the girls Jeff “dominates and then forgets about,” which is pretty much what Jeff’s been doing to her since they made out in the first season. Is Alison Brie winking and nodding about that other show she stars in that premiered this week?

The show proved once again that it is the master of getting past the censors. When Britta and Subway are recorded having sex, we don’t hear anything except Britta’s mood-killing “only the physical remains” line. But the Subway corporate rep, well, can’t get up from the table at the end. Very similar to the D & D sex scene from season two.

Can we all start talking about how awesome the way Shirley says Britta’s name is? Bri-ttah. It’s almost British, but still sweet, motherly-type. As pure of poetry as Bubbles calling McNulty “McNutty” on The Wire.

Abed actually says To Be Continued to cap the episode off! Yeah, this show rules.

I Did All This For You So You Could Do a Patch Adams?

The second episode of The Great Community Return aired last night with a jarring cold open of the group coming back from winter break. It’s hard to say if this was simply part of the storyline or another Dan Harmon jab at NBC for screwing him. That’s part of what makes this show so awesome: are they just following a script bible, are they drunk/lazy, or is Dan Harmon just continuously trolling us all? I hope it’s a little bit of everything.

This episode was considerably better than last week’s drunken marriage rehearsal episode/basic feminism straw argument/anticlimax-fest. Every character—except poor Annie, who was reduced to a scared, worrying mess and Pierce, who’s increasingly useless—was given something interesting to do: Troy and Abed got in a fight, Jeff got sexier and sexier until he Hulked out, Shirley did an amazing Oprah impression, Chang shot tranquilizers and gave kids guns, and Britta looks WAY TOO MUCH like white Michael Jackson.

Troy and Abed’s storyline is the central plot, and for reasons I’ll get in to later, I like these episodes the best. Abed has taken to hiring celebrity impersonators to re-enact movie scenes with him, and it’s introduced with such out-of-nowhere awesomeness (anytime you can get a half-Polish, half-Pakistani who looks like an innocent Rajon Rondo to impersonate Harrison Ford in a library, you have to do it) that you actually feel a little tension. Abed’s had a pregnancy scare before, who’s to say he doesn’t have a wife stashed somewhere and he’s been framed for her murder? Then Troy explains the situation, and the conflict is set up: Annie, Shirley, and Britta want to have an intervention to make Abed normal, Troy thinks Abed is perfect, and Jeff doesn’t give a shit. Then Chang shoots a tranquilizer dart through a window and it’s awesome.

Troy absolutely makes this episode: his first speech in the study group talks about how Abed is better than normal; that Abed’s quirky weirdness and not-exactly-mild Aspergers’ (haha, AssBurgers) is good for the group; that Abed, for all of his self-absorption, knows how to make them feel appreciated as friends better than anyone. Then, Act Two has Troy desperately trying to make the party go well so that Abed doesn’t get his legs broken over a debt he refuses to acknowledge. Act Three has Troy angry at Abed for failing to recognize the fact that he owes his legs to Troy, and we see an argument that is as intense and real as Community gets (and trust me, that shit is real).

The nature of friendship is rarely addressed as seriously on television or in film. In romantic comedies, people expect the protagonists to clash: that’s how relationships become dramatic, and you always run back to your lover. No one ever talks about friendships—those conversations are couched in ridiculed euphemisms like “bro-mance” and “guy love.” Close male friendship is demeaned by being called homoerotic, and, you know, gay is bad. Women don’t necessarily have this issue, because their only goal in film is to get hitched and make babies. So when Troy and Abed are talking after Troy kicks the Patch Adams/Popeye the Sailor Man impersonators out, it felt painfully real. Troy doesn’t tell Abed he’s mad at him and refuses to go into the Dreamatorium. Abed is genuinely shocked to find out Troy lied to him. Then they reconcile, but Abed doesn’t do the handshake and goes to play Inspector Spacetime by himself.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t address this for a few more episodes and let that conflict simmer in the back of everyone’s minds. That’s how friendships end. There’s almost never one big thing that kills it. It’s more like something to “Jenga”; it gets pulled at and subtracted from until there's almost nothing left. And it sucks watching it on Community. Troy and Abed are easily the most likable characters, and they’re supposed to be pure comic relief. They’re not supposed to have tension. They’re Jim and Pam, Lutz/Twofer/Frank, Hawkeye and Trapper/B.J. Dan Harmon knows this, and kids, Dan Harmon does not care about your feelings. Unless the writers employ a Troy-like “Better than reality” card and let it drop, this Troy and Abed thing isn’t over, and it’s going to be excellently unpleasant.

A few quick notes:

Community has spent most of its time imitating other TV shows, genres, and tropes. Seriously, you can’t read a TV Tropes page on this show in under twenty minutes. It was nice to see the characters impersonating people while dealing with real issues, rather than the show impersonating other shows and the characters dealing with trope issues.

Immediately after Troy and Abed’s intensely emotional moment, Jeff and Britta have a quazi-one. It was difficult to understand why I cared so much less about them than Troy and Abed, but then I realized: the show has never decided whether it’s about Jeff and Britta or Jeff and Annie. Sure, Jeff started this messy study group because he wanted in Britta’s pants (“why can’t you see that for the compliment it is?”), but he made out with Annie at the end of season one, the most favorable timeline in “Remedial Chaos Theory” has him and Annie nearly making out, and they have a very clear and established chemistry. I think that “at the end of it all,” Jeff and Britta will “end up together,” but by gesturing to Jeff/Annie (again, is it lazy gesturing towards a shocker, deliberate trolling, or part of something bigger?), the writers make it much harder to care about Jeff/Britta.

The graphics have got to go. Jeff’s ego as an exploding apple, Chang’s power-hungry thought bubbles—just awful. Inexcusable. That is lazy—lazy writing, acting, and directing. Either show the characters’ thoughts and emotions or have them say something witty or wittily cliché, but cut the graphics out. It’s unbearable.

All in all, great episode.

The Case for Skrillex

Dial up modems were the coolest fucking thing to happen in 1996. That sound meant you got to surf glorious amounts of internet pornography unless someone called your house and rudely dropped Jenna Jameson from your screen. So why is everyone hating on this sound - and  Grammy award winner Skrillex. The most popular complaint about Skrillex's music is that it just sounds like dial up noise with a beat. Just because it's 16 years later does this make it any less cool? Probably. 

Some background on Skrillex. He is a young boy with half of his head shaved, the other half dyed black and hanging to his nips. He used to be in a hardcore band called "From First to Last." He dances around on stage like a nymph - smoking cigarettes and pressing seemingly random buttons that make seemingly random noises. 

I generally don't like electronic music and when someone introduced my to dubstep I literally laughed out loud. You could hear my eyes rolling into the back of my sockets. There is something about this one Skrillex song though. I have an insatiable thirst to hear this song on repeat at least 3-4 times  a day. I've tried the rest of the Skrillex catalog out and I assume I'm not high enough or young enough to enjoy it. Note: If you are into emo teenagers (AND YOU ARE ALSO A TEENAGER) go to a Skrillex concert and thank me later. 

Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites starts off with a super catchy dance beat - your run of the mill 808 drum and keyboard riff. Female vocals (ish, I can't really be sure) kick in and then a hardcore breakdown comes in so hard I literally want to dig holes in the closest dance floor with my fist. The problem that people seem to have is that this incredibly visceral breakdown is just a remix of noise thrown together in a perfect constructed way. At the end of the day they still hear that dial up noise. 

Of course by "they" I'm essentially referring to anyone over 22 that is not in love with electronica. The consensus among people who love Adele and Lil Wayne was WTF? Dial up is over for them. For teenage girls perhaps it's a mix of faux nostalgia, fun danceable beats and breakdowns that melt faces that cause them to jump straight up and down  for hours upon hours. Perhaps this is the safest way to experience everything Skrillex brings to the table - music you can dance to without being groped in a European club, a hardcore breakdown that doesn't involve getting punched in the face by someone with a liberty spike and the beautiful sound of a dial up connection without having to wait 6 minutes for the next page to load. 

Thank you Skrillex. 

The Woman on The Other Side of the Street

I was gently accosted on the street today. There is that moment in city life where you are walking down the street with headphones and global warming has truly and officially taken it's toll. It's 75 degrees in March in Chicago and you just did some day drinking with a friend. On your walk home, which is just a clever attempt to burn off calories and listen to Spotify and "be outside", you meet a woman. 

This woman is horribly disfigured. I want to say she was burned alive in some awful fire, but here was before me. She had been walking ahead of me with some bags and a granny cart and my gait swiftly closed in on her. She must've heard my footsteps. She stopped and turned around and waited for me .

"Can you walk with me?" she said. For some reason I simply answered yes and slowed down as she regaled with the tale of the woman across the street. The woman across the street was also walking and apparently these two had a very heated rivalry for the last 4 minutes. Women across the street had accidentally hit the disfigured woman with her bag while on the bus. When both got off the bus woman across the street punched disfigured woman in the arm. Disfigured women then crossed the street, only to be followed by woman across the street. She then crossed the street again and I suppose that this all happened mere seconds before she met me. Though I did not witness any of it. 

Disfigured woman was probably late 50's and had skin that looked like it had been wrapped too tightly around cotton. Her lip jutted out inches from her face, or more likely where her face used to be. She was nice, but hard to look at. I informed her I was only walking to the grocery store and she said she was too. This seemed weird, why did she need someone to walk her another 100 feet in a public parking lot no less. 

I am not proud of this, but I this point I suspected my companion of being the crazy one. You judge a book by it's cover and this was had been shredded to pieces and reassembled as perfect as possible, but it was a long way from being a normal book. Over the next minute she went through the story 2 or 3 times - motioning at the woman across the street, who never so much as looked in our direction. As we got to the store we were probably both thankful that there were other people around to witness any malfeasance. I told her to have a nice day and she thanked me and left with "safety in numbers." 

Why Community is Awesome and Needs to Die

NBC’s Community returned from a midseason hiatus last night, which, as the show itself points out, pretty much means cancellation. Twitter was more overjoyed than Stevie Wonder, and the world was prevented from ending.

I’m sorry. I can’t substantiate that sentence. I stayed off Twitter and just watched the damn show, because as much as I really love Community, I really hate the internet love for Community.

It’s a hilarious, self-aware, hyper-meta show that makes jokes about itself, its genealogy, pop culture, and current events. It succeeds in being topical while being universal and not too heavy. If it does get too heavy, some character quickly swoops in to diffuse the situation and make everyone laugh or at least smile again. You care about all the characters. That said, it is flawed. It’s too weird for some people, too self-referential, and some would argue that its heavy reliance on (affectionate) genre parody is laziness, not originality. I’m not going to try to make a case for one side of the other—people who dislike it have an honest point. Nor am I really going to defend it.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

Last night’s episode was about feminism, but not in too broad a sense. Shirley is remarrying her ex-husband Andre, but she and Pierce also want to go into business together (she has knowledge and goals, Pierce has money). The main subplot is Troy and Abed trying to “purge all the weirdness from our systems”—Community’s standard meta joke. The show is super weird, has really low ratings, and is on the verge of being cancelled. So Troy and Abed try to be “normal” in order to be more liked.

Last night’s episode illustrated exactly how finely Community straddles the line. Every scene started with me sighing, then at the last second, making me laugh or feel sympathy. Pierce is clunky and awkward, a Roger Sterling-esque princeling without the subtlety. But as soon as I was wishing the group really had banished him, we learn that his father’s company has fired him. His namesake company doesn’t want anything to do with him, and they only waited so long to axe him because they needed his father to die. Moments after wishing he didn’t exist, I was feeling sorry for him.

Britta and Jeff’s drunken, semi-sexual tension-y fight at the wedding rehearsal was another instance of this. They’re up at the altar, shouting marital clichés at each other. Shirley and Andre come in to talk them down, end up having a mini-fight, and then getting married. It’s a nice moment. Abed and Troy throw in some solid comedy, particularly Abed's tone-deaf complimenting of the shrimp cocktail that just pisses Andre off more. I don’t know if it’s because Danny Pudi looks like alien Don Draper, but it’s almost impossible not to laugh at everything he does.

After the weak resolution, the show morphs into a dance number and the monkey shows up. Then Troy and Abed start acting weird again. Community is back! Six seasons and a movie! I’m confident they can shake off the rust in the next episode, but the question remains: is Community aware that it has flaws? Is the post-modern hyper-meta nature of the show an easy way of editing these flaws, i.e., winking and nodding instead of addressing lazy writing? Probably both.

Which brings me to my larger point: Community can’t continue much longer. They lampooned BBC TV for ending all of its shows early, but American shows have a bad habit of staying too long. Sorry, internet, but it has to be cancelled soon. First of all, community college typically only lasts two years. They’re on year three. You can cheat your way through four seasons because what Community calls “real college” goes four years. The moment season five starts, Community jumps the shark.

A friend and I were talking once about how The Office was so hilarious because it was a comedy focused on some grim realities of the business world. After Michael Scott opened his own paper company in a basement, nothing about the show made sense anymore. That just couldn’t happen, anywhere, and therefore, it wasn’t funny. A few minutes later, I lamented the fate of Arrested Development. My friend agreed that while AD’s cancellation was unjust, but then he said, “If it was still on, we’d be saying the same things about it as we are about The Office.” So it seems to be either 1) overstay your welcome or 2) unjustly get cancelled early. Hopefully Community can use their limitless knowledge of television to realize the path they’re on and not do either.