'Community': I Find You Guilty of Being Abed

This week’s Community made me unbearably sad. It reminded me of a truth I’d ignored until now: after this year, we can’t make fun of Grey’s Anatomy anymore. The Mayans were right.

The decline of the hospital drama set in a “a sexy, emotional school[/hospital] where doctors save lives and make love, sometimes simultaneously” with “stories ripped from the headlines [and] passions unbridled” means we’re losing a medium that was more fun to make fun of than Nickelback. Moment of silence, y’all. Shoutout to George Clooney.

This week, the group is cramming for their biology final, and they can’t even remember Kingdom-Phylum-Class-Order-Genus-Species. Honestly, is a degree from Greendale even worth anything? Then they’re informed that Omar from The Wire has the flu and the exam is cancelled (saving the day for the group while doing a major disservice to the audience). They decide to take a three-hour lunch. Pierce is going to watch the first half of three movies (could’ve fit in all of Hoop Dreams), Shirley is going to the fast food restaurant across town, Jeff is doing Winger things, and Annie orchestrates a Troy/Britta lunch under the guise of getting Abed to teach her how the Dreamatorium works. 

What’s interesting about this episode is that we don’t get a whole lot of the other characters’ actual thoughts/feelings. It’s all simulations run by Abed. Does Jeff actually want to be with Annie, or is that just how Abed interprets what’s going on? How does Annie really feel about Jeff? We know she thinks he’s hot, and we get some stuff about “if we can make Jeff love us, we’ll never be alone” (a great thing to say to yourself when there’s two of you in the room), but that’s after a few hours of being goaded by Abed. How does she really feel? The scene also goes from Abed as Annie talking to Annie to Abed as Annie talking to Annie as Abed. We get two people in a room being each other and have no idea if we can trust either of them. Furthermore, we get a simulation of Britta and Troy’s lunch, which Abed assumes is going badly. In the real world, it’s going great. We get no indication if it will lead to Troy and Britta being together, but Abed is willing to take that logical leap as well—in the hospital simulation, Britta and Troy “make out” (Abed running back and forth and sticking his tongue out while moaning). This contradiction either discredits Abed’s simulations or is merely multiple consequences. Either way, they’re only tangentially rooted in reality. 

In some respects, Abed is the ultimate unreliable narrator—all-knowing yet completely anti-social, cares too much about his friends while disregarding them as “unremarkables,” unable to understand social cues while able to predict how people will behave. We can’t trust a thing he says, but we can’t disagree, either. Annie, on the other hand, is the prefect foil: she empathizes almost too much with how her friends are feeling, and she’s naive enough to believe that she can cure Britta’s bad boy addiction (last week), fix Jeff’s trust/romantic issues, hook Troy and Britta up, and save Abed from his self-doubt, all while being a solid Dreamatorium companion.

Ultimately, this episode is about fear of abandonment and loneliness. No one in this group is able to function in society, but Abed has less of a chance than everyone else: Jeff will eventually get his law license back, Britta will open a thrift store or something, Annie has recovered from her pill addiction and is smart, Shirley is remarried and has a business plan, Troy has plumbing as a fallback, and Pierce will soon be dead. Abed can make films, yes, but his wild Asperger’s makes it impossible for people to understand him. He and Troy weren’t friends until a few episodes in (hard to remember, right?). He and Jeff have a special bond, but only because Jeff’s lawyer friends probably don’t understand TV as well as Jeff does. And when exactly will Jeff see Abed after graduation? These are the best years of Abed’s life because he’s never going to have another excuse for this many friends to live with him. Abed in this episode is feeling the same way you feel when you come home from summer camp, or when you graduate high school, or when you leave your study abroad semester, or when you graduate college. Life is about to change, and the exact relationship you had with the people you spent this time with will never be the same. It’s a strange kind of existential sadness: everyone and everything that’s made your life worth living is changing in a way that means you’re going to have to find a different way of living. Granted, Abed still has another year at Greendale, and his friendship with Troy is too strong to change simply because Troy gets married, but you can understand his fear.

I’ll sum it up the most Abed way possible: he wants to be like seasons 1-5 of Scrubs. And nobody wants to be seasons 7-9 of Scrubs.

Shoutouts: Troy cried to About a Boy—the soundtrack. Hell yes. That was a great soundtrack. Also, apparently Troy and Abed play Dinosaurs vs. Riverboat Gamblers. I need to know what this is.

Pierce Watch: While he still hasn’t done anything of note to forward his character, the group, or the show since the Great Community Return, he did have some funny lines. When everyone is listing their day’s accomplishments, Pierce says he almost sat on his balls, but at the last second, he “made an adjustment.” Pierce has to be the best argument for taking the Hemingway out when you’re 61. Then it’s hilariously revealed that he didn’t actually make that adjustment, saying he “sat right on them,” which leads to the most perfect Shirley “aw Pierce, I’m sorry.” It indicates that Pierce probably won’t make any significant changes soon, and that Yvette Nicole Brown is the greatest.

Dean of Thrones: The "Duali-DEAN of Man" might be the Dean’s most fitting costume yet. To one side, the bald, bad suit wearing, middle-aged dean of a community college that was almost completely undone by a paintball game. On the other side, the fancy, hair-flipping lady who enjoys “putting on the ritz.” Why this two-faced split? He has good news and bad news. At the end of the scene, the Dean finally shows some self-realization. Amazing. “I have to go to the bank today. What am I supposed to tell people in line? ‘I had good news and bad news?’ Come on, Craig. Get your life together.” The Dean going too far (“get your life together, Craig”) shows that while he’s homo-repressed, occasionally a cross-dresser, and has a weird thing with Dalmatians (just furries, or dogs, too?), he works really hard to keep up professionalism. It’s been pointed out before that the inhabitants of Greendale don’t have anything in common except their inability to function in polite society. The Dean (and the fact that you rarely remember his name is Craig Pelton) is probably the best example of that.

We're All Friends Here, Except For Chevy Chase

The initial weeks of the Great Community Return have been dominated by grandiose art metaphors, Ken Burns sendups, campus-wide pillow fights, and Britta looking way too much like Michael Jackson, so it was nice that Community scaled way back for this episode. Community is certainly at its most creative when doing wild genre parodies, but some of their best episodes happen when the characters are just allowed to act together. This was even true for "Remedial Chaos Theory," where Jeff creates six different timelines in parody of Lost and The Butterfly Effect. Despite the high concept, it was basically a bottle episode featuring just the group.

This week opened with Troy and Abed (who had been quarreling in recent weeks) playing Best Friends Patty Cake. It was probably the most adorable thing in sitcom history. We then find out that Britta’s ex-boyfriend—a carny named Blade who killed her belief in love—is in town. She runs to Annie and begs her to put her on lockdown by taking her phone and keeping her under a watchful eye all weekend. The two quickly develop a bond over their respective struggles with addiction. Britta has shown in the past how desperate for sisterhood she is—she's so closed off to the company of other women that she's never even been invited to go to the bathroom before. Annie is desperate for Britta's approval because Britta's cool and Annie's a goody-goody. While we’re mostly led to believe Britta was feeding Annie this sisterhood crap to get her phone back and text Blade, there are some genuine feelings underneath on both sides.

Meanwhile, Shirley accompanies Jeff to the carnival because Jeff wants to see what’s so special about Blade. The weird Jeff/Shirley connection is one of the more interesting relationships on the show. It’s basically Our Hero getting Magic Negro Advice from Our Token Colored Lady, but the fact that Jeff never listens to her and Shirley is so sympathetic and likable on her own (“I wanna go on a ride…I spent my carnival years pregnant.”) makes the relationship work. Winger ends up doing whatever he wants anyway, and Shirley seems to be able to navigate the group in the healthiest way of anyone. Recall when she recited Psalm 23 while clocking motherfuckers in the first paintball game, only to happily go home to her sons when she got eliminated. Shirley is probably the happiest character and Yvette Nicole Brown’s comedic timing is phenomenal, but she totally flies under the radar.

The relationship angle is the idea of men being destructively seductive. Britta will go to Blade even though he’s terrible for her and Shirley will let husband Andre get away with anything. Jeff somehow has gone through life never realizing this possibility, and is now intrigued by it. Annie has also made it twenty years without this sort of relationship, even though Jeff is slowly becoming that for her (did Alison Brie swoon more when Joel McHale changed his shirt in Community or when Jon Hamm stripped and fixed her sink in Mad Men? Sub-question: week-to-week, how jealous is everyone of Alison Brie?). Annie buries her feelings while Jeff goes to discover. Here is also the episode loses a bit of consistency. Blade, a ladyslayer so egregious he actually got Pierce to be funny (“Her pain unifies us. She’s the King Arthur of bad taste in men”), actually seems like a pretty chill bro. He’s so down to earth that Jeff spills his guts out to him while dropping $300 on his duck-shooting table. His only downside seems to be that he works at a carnival and has a gross awesome trashstashe. This is what Britta’s cowering from? Come on, Community. Give us some real mayhem.

It’s also revealed that Troy has a huge crush on Britta. She can’t realize it because of all the Blade talk, but she eventually figures it out when she learns that she’d been texting Annie and the boys all night. The episode ends with some self-satisfied looking around at each other, which is typically a sign of lazy writing. For some reason, it works here, mostly because nothing is settled: the Winger Speech at the end was probably the emptiest Winger speech of all time. How could everyone possibly have been content for the evening? With a show as smart as Community, you can count on heavy stuff next week.

Interestingly, all the sidelong glances and sexual tension, Community seems set on upending other sitcom tropes, but for earnest reasons instead of sarcasm. The entire reason these people know each other is because Jeff wanted to do Britta “like a crossword” (mission accomplished!), and it makes sense that they’d end up together: Jeff is the hero, and Britta is the blonde. Furthermore, since Annie Adderall and Football Captain Troy went to the same high school but never knew each other, it makes sense that Troy and Annie would end up together. Instead, Troy is completely all about Britta, and Annie is completely all about Jeff. Whether or not Our Hero or Our Blonde will realize it remains to be seen, but the typical sitcom arrangements do not seem to be in the stars.

Pierce Watch: Pierce’s stories aren’t even subplots anymore, nor is he attached to anything going on with the group. This week, after whining about not having a best friend, he takes up with Chang. The two go on a date to the carnival, it’s not very funny, everyone knows it’ll last about two minutes because it’s racist Pierce and psychotic Chang, and well, guess what happens. The way it ends, though, is interesting. Chang asks how to keep a best friendship going, and Pierce responds with “I say we just let it happen.” Psycho Chang then bursts out with “Don’t tell me what to do!” and storms off. It’s a cursory sketch of something that easily kills relationships: the fear of hurting or getting hurt. To predict is human, and predictions are based on past experience. New friendships/romances can be frightening because you imagine repeating the horrible things you’ve done or the horrible things that have been done to you. The easy answer is to run away quickly, before things escalate and someone gets really hurt. The Pierce/Chang end is exactly this. Unfortunately, it’s Pierce and Chang, so exactly no one cares.

Dean of Thrones: Not to repeat a gimmick in the same column, but Dean Pelton deserves his own paragraph. How hilariously childish and homo-repressed is it that he’s into trains now? And how many awesome puns can the Community writers come up with for his ridiculous entrances? “She’ll be comin’ around the mount-dean when she comes?” Not only is it excellently suggestive, Jim Rash’s delivery is so sneaky you almost miss it. Then you miss his next few lines because the pun is so hilarious. The fact that he needs a book on how to do things, then a Scotch and soda (which he doesn’t know how to make) is great enough. But then his only plan for getting Troy to sign up for the Air Conditioning Repair School (which is developing into a City College-like rivalry) is showing up at Troy and Abed’s with a six-pack of Dr. Pepper and a bag of chips for “boys night.” Dean Pelton rivals 30 Rock’s Kevin as the best adorable-puppy-you-still-want-to-kick character on NBC.

'Community' Burns Ken Burns to Save Troy and Abed

Last week, Community made compelling arguments for both sides of the art vs commercialism debate while ripping its two most likable characters and most functional relationship apart. It seemed like the feud, while childish and dumb, would never end—a terrifying prospect. But they wrapped it up quickly, and thank God. I guess sometimes, you realize that your battles carry as much weight as, say, a community college paintball match. Or the battle for artistic integrity on the consistently lowest-ranked network on television. Or maybe as much as a feud between an extremely dickish show runner and an extremely dickish past-his-prime comedian.

This week’s episode was decidedly less explosive than a paintball episode. More…soft and downy, if you will. While there are references to pretty every war ever—it’s a giant metaphor for the Civil War; no territory changes hands, like WWI; it’s completely pointless, like almost every war ever—it feels less like a war and more like twenty minutes of taking the piss out of Ken Burns. All due respect to Burnsy, but it’s high comedy.

The documentary takes itself way too seriously, Burns-style, by reading aloud text messages (emoticons included), facebook status updates with subsequent likes, bad college poetry, and describing a reality show that’s no fun to watch on time delay because then you’d be the last to know what happens. There are few action shots—the episode relies on plodding voiceover, camera stills, and talking heads.

The documentary’s humor comes from taking all of the characters at face value: Troy and Abed are viewed as great tacticians. Jeff finds a “leading role” and delivers a rousing speech (to both sides), but is humanized by being completely unable to mediate Troy and Abed’s conflict until the end. Annie opens a care center. Shirley is the kind of ass-kicker into which you can only develop if you’re the mother of two, but again, you feel sorry that she’s kept at school and away from her husband and children for another meaningless, barely-remembered community college conflict. Only two characters are really viewed with contempt: Britta, a much-maligned war photographer (“unfortunately for Britta and millions of photographers like her, just because something is black and white does not make it good) and…

Pierce Watch: Pierce is initially described as “the dried-up heir to a moist towelette empire who would prove to be the dried-up heir to a moist towelete empire.” He initially joins Troy’s forces because Abed is weirder and more foreign, but switches sides because Shirley is given a higher rank by Troy. He suffers from erectile dysfunction. Then he designs a super-destructive secret weapon, which just him as a giant white pillowy blob of inhuman mess destroying everything in his path. It’s a physical manifestation of Pierce himself since The Great Community Return.

The episode’s biggest strength, as with all of Community’s classics, is how well it treats its characters. Will the show rely on cliché stereotypes and become little more than a Mad TV sketch, or will it explore who these people are as human beings and make the viewer give a shit? Well, Fat Neil reinvents himself as Real Neil With Pipes of Steel, a nighttime radio DJ. Leonard’s nickname “Bucket of Guts” is awesome. Chang (“rumored to be literally psychotic”) finally gets to unleash his Kiddie Corps, or “Changlourious Basterds.” Dean Pelton is typically dean-y, saying that the fact that the Guinness World Records rep isn’t coming is a “colossal waste of two and a half days,” never once mentioning the actual pillow fight leading to mass truancy. I wonder what it’s like being a professor at Greendale (when you’re not banging Jeff Winger, that is)? So the answer is yes, the show loved its characters here. Except for Pierce and Britta.

The climax is even better. Troy and Abed can’t stop pillow fighting…because they’ve declared their friendship dead and hitting each other with pillows will be the last thing they ever do together. It’s adorable. Jeff tries to bring up the magical friendship hats he made in the dean’s office earlier in the episode. Troy and Abed refuse, but only because Jeff doesn’t have the hats with him. Their friendship means so much that they actually remember where Jeff left the magical friendship hats two and a half days ago. Jeff leaves, and Annie relates to the camera that he stayed outside long enough to make them believe that he went to the dean’s office. But Jeff really walks back to the office. He imagines Troy’s hat to be a bit crumpled and Abed’s to be a little dusty. He fixes both before bringing them back, even though he’s alone. This most un-Winger of gestures shows how important Troy and Abed’s friendship is to everyone.

The resulting Troy and Abed Secret Handshake (TASH) is so awesome you want to stand up and cheer. Britta is given her redemption by immortalizing the moment on film (“accidentally, while trying to capture the light on a stack of nearby waffles”). Everyone is happy again. It was a satisfying episode displaying everything Community does right: subverting genre not because Dan Harmon went to film school, but because it’s funny, while keeping the characters at the forefront and the navel-gazing artistic arguments under the surface.

Punk'd: The Smartest, Dumbest Show on Television

The year was 2003 and Ashton Kutcher was riding on high on the success of That 70's Show. He brought us a hidden camera prank show that pranked a bunch of his celebrity friends. It also introduced us to the likes of Dax Shepard and the guy from the League on FX. It was a hit! Who didn't want to watch celebrities lose their shit and beat up little kids, even if it came at the cost of watching Ashton Kutcher delight in how much better he presumed he was than everyone else.

Punk'd is now back and although the sheen is now off the nuances of punking celebrities, the show still manages to bring in decent ratings two weeks into its revival. Punk'd is still beyond the pale of an intelligent TV program and this was obviously an attempt to boost some life into "original" MTV programming after the failures of THIS and THIS and MUSIC IN GENERAL. However, they were at least smart enough to get a new guest host every week to punk their friends. After the first viewing of episode 1, I was about to rage on how Justin Bieber could have that many friends to punk. Luckily,  MTV brings in  Bam Margera and Hayden Panittiere (you might be asking if she is still a celebrity. The answer is a resounding no) out of the bullpen to punk their friends in future episodes. Although this raises new questions: Is Bam Margera friends with Tyler the Creator or Ronnie from Jersey Shore? Why does Justin Bieber have every starlet's phone number? Will Tyler the Creator stab someone?

The inherent problem with the new Punk'd is that I hate every celebrity ever. Perhaps I'm no longer in the demographic that worships everything a twinkly eyed teen does, but let's analyze episode 1.

Bieber is called in and the first 3 minutes is Bieber in a control room (shot TMZ style, for extra douchebaggery) thinking of which of his friends he can punk. He calls up Taylor Swift who just happens to be available and in the same exact area as him and they plan to meet up under the pretense that she is going to work on his new album with (for) him. She even brings a guitar!!!! However, I am inclined to believe this is fake. She provides the "I'm shocked, people like me" look the entire segment. She marvels at how big the house is, how blue the water is outside and finally when she gets punked the eyes are as big as saucers. Either she is the most emotionally destroyed celebrity since Britney Spears, or she's putting on a show. Since she has all her hair left, I'm gonna guess this was fake. Also, as usual, she doesn't question why 3 cameramen are around? Perhaps Bieber and Swift are at the level of celebrity where they just expect to constantly be on camera. Justin.TV time to switch up your content.

The second person Bieber "chooses" is Rob Dyrdek who is 20 years older than Bieber and just happens to be an MTV celebrity who does a Tosh.0 ripp off show as well as a Jackass type show: MTV - Your Home For Original Programming! So if we just forget that there is no way these two are friends AND that MTV is obviously trying to get it's own celebrities we can concentrate on the punk. About 30 seconds in Dyrdek says "it's too well lit in here, am I on punk'd?" There have been failed punkings before, but I feel like MTV should not put this segment in the first episode back. Here's a new show where we punk celebs with a 50% success rate! Bieber than magically calls in Sean Kingston who is presumably waiting off camera behind the bushes. Kingston is not as smart as Dyrdek and falls for the punking.

I then turn off the TV. Apparently Miley Cyrus gets punked in the last segment but it would only be worth watching if Bieber tattooed Selena Gomez's face on Miley's. Ya Punk'd Miley!

Short Stories With Tragic Endings

I was stopped at a red light about to get on the highway. I looked in my rear view mirror and saw a woman - approximately 55 and what I assumed to be her son of 20. I hope this was their relationship, there should be no other reason for a woman of this age to hang out with a boy so young. She was smoking a cigarette and he was smoking a bowl. He rolled down his window, dumped his bowl out onto the street and then repacked it and began to smoke. His mother had no noticeable reaction as he blew smoke back into the car. The light turned green and they followed me onto the highway. I proceeded to slow down to a crisp 25 MPH to allow them to pass. I can only imagine how reckless a driver the mother might be when she allows her son to smoke weed in front of her and in a car.

The Night We All Didn't Win the Lottery

The only thing that was more annoying than people posting about their plethora of lottery tickets (or cash they figuratively lit on fire) was people posting about people posting about those lottery tickets. My favorite was "I'd spend 500 million dollars not to hear about what you'd do with 500 million dollars. The lottery inevitably brings out the worst in people - as any E! True Hollywood Story on lottery winners will tell you: There is a curse thats comes with winning the lottery. 

Perhaps this is because the people that win the lottery are so unprepared for a life of riches that they buy 1000 mobile homes too many. They are predisposed to want to burn money as fast as they humanly can - whether they have $500 to their name or $500 million - it will always be spent at the same rate. The winners of the lottery are almost always ill suited for wealth because the type of person that generally buys a lottery ticket on a daily basis thinks that winning the lottery is the only way to really make money. The lottery is just a tax on the poor. The meer hope of winning a 4, 5, or 6 digit figure drives poor people to buy buy buy. Yet "normal" people don't need to play the lottery on a daily basis because 5 and 6 digit figures come in a bi-monthly paycheck. 

The fascinating element is what happens when a lottery figure becomes so astronomical that even "normal" people begin to get giddy with what they could do with that money. No longer satisfied with just 1 house and 2 cars - people with well paying jobs go out and buy hundreds of dollars worth of tickets. Offices pool money and tickets in hopes of winning. This is an illness. It's in all of us, the poorer of us show symptoms more frequently, but it only apparates  in all of us when we could all potentially own an entire nation.  

I too contracted Mega Millions fever last Friday. After nearly half of my Facebook feed was filled with friends going on and on about what they would do with the money or posting pictures of their tickets ( a terrible idea if they actually won, I would instantly know who had the winning number and start planning to thieve the ticket from them), I gave in and bought 3 tickets. This actual thought came into my head "You can't win unless you play." I am ashamed to admit this now - this sounds like a rationale a gambling addict would have. How am I supposed to make money unless I spend money? 

I purchased the tickets at the gas station across from my apartment. I was a former convenience store clerk and luckily I knew how this game was played. I went in, casually asked for $3 in Mega Millions - random, of course. (Is there anything worse than people who think they have 6 magical numbers picked out? Or worse, play the numbers from Lost which a) caused a lot of terrible things to happen on the show and b) EVERYONE ELSE PLAYS. Have fun splitting the jackpot with 2393 other people.)

I began to walk home clutching the tickets in my hand in my pocket. I told myself I didn't need all of the money. I'd be happy with maybe 4 numbers and a 1000 bucks. I nearly convinced myself that 4 numbers was definitely a possibility, I wasn't a loon who thought I could get all 6. I have the sickness. I researched the odds online. I just needed 3 and the powerball! Easier than I thought. I was going to a party that night and decided bringing the physical tickets with me was a bad idea. If I won, I would surely be murdered by my friends. So I typed the numbers into my phone and proceeded on. 

Much to my chagrin, the party did not have the news on waiting for the announcement. I even forgot about the drawing until 11:30 central time and then I casually pulled my phone out - checked the Mega Millions website and flipped back and forth between apps checking each number against the real numbers. I got 1. 1/18. 

All at once, the sickness subsided. I didn't have to worry about getting out of the party alive or ponder how I would eventually end on E! (barring a Bieber like rise to stardom or a red carpet flouring of a Kardashian this is the only way I'm getting on that channel). The party resumed. 

The next morning 3 winners were announced and at least their lives would be very different. The news reports went on and on about when they would come forward, what they should do and the stores where they were sold. The sickness was still in the air for some. The only thing I could think at this point was what if? Not what if I won, but what if the Mega Millions just said "Hey, just this one time, we are gonna funnel this money into the national debt. Whaddya say?" Imagine all of us - insane about paying higher taxes, but more than willing to waste our money if it gives us a 1 in 176 million shot of winning money. Thanks 'Merica. 

I just blacked out. Did that get weird?