It's time for the big, annual Inspector Spacetime convention, and Troy has convinced Abed to let Britta tag along. However, when Abed hears them watching an episode in bed together, Britta has to bail out the window because he's a fragile creature and Troy hasn't told him they're sleeping together yet.
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| It's refreshing to see this. Usually it's the guy who has to go out the window. |
Abed's sly to their tricks, though. He's been pretending he didn't know about the secret sexings because part of the cover-up involves Britta swinging around the outside of the building and "dropping by" with doughnuts. And Abed loves free doughnuts.
Before they leave, Abed and Jeff stop by the study room, where they find Pierce sitting alone in the dark. He's upset that they didn't invite him to the convention, but they didn't invite Shirley, either, and Jeff and Annie are going skiing instead of to the con, so he's satisfied that they're not purposely excluding him.
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| They're just leaving him alone in a dark room. |
When they get to the InspectiCon, things immediately start going wrong. An avalanche shuts down the ski slopes; Britta expresses affection for Minerva, the crappy female inspector; Jeff bears a striking resemblance to an Inspector Spacetime super-villain; and Abed's internet friend, Toby, soaks up all his time and attention, and leaves Troy feeling left out. To top it all off, Pierce grabs Shirley, and the two of them crash the convention.
The episode then devolves into three separate stories:
Mr. and Mrs. Winger
Now that the slopes are closed, Jeff wants to bail and go home, but Annie wants to stick around and enjoy the convention, so she goes up to her room to pout, while he goes down to the bar. Since he booked their rooms under his name, when Annie picks up the phone to call for room service, the guy on the other end of the line calls her "Mrs. Winger." She's always dreamed of being happily married to a handsome lawyer, so she keeps up the charade and orders food, drink and other accoutrements for herself and her 'husband'.
Meanwhile, down in the lobby, Jeff is mistaken for Inspector Spacetime actor Nigel Cuthbertson by a tall brunette played by everyone's favourite toaster:
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| I liked her better as a blonde. |
Jeff's happy to hang out with an attractive, relatively normal person, so he pretends to be Nigel for a while, then starts 'practicing his American accent' so he can speak normally. The two start to really hit it off, which becomes a concern for the hotel staff because Annie is upstairs and she really wants to work on their marriage. So, Jeff's ruse is exposed, and he gets two drinks thrown in his face by angry women.
When he goes upstairs to find Annie, he sees all the trouble she's gone to to make it look like they're a married couple, and he gets a little concerned. Later, he tracks her down in the lobby, and they talk about what happened. She was just bummed that he didn't want to hang out together; sure, they're not married, but they are friends, so it wouldn't be too terrible to spend some time alone. Even though he still thinks the convention's lame, he agrees and offers to hang out with her and buy her a drink.
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| She makes him order her an appletini. |
The Focus Group
Immediately after they enter the convention, Shirley and Pierce are snatched up by a couple of suits who are running a focus group. They're trying to bring a version of Inspector Spacetime to the US, and as an old, rich, white man and a middle-aged black woman, the two elder members of the study group can speak for a lot of demographics.
After they watch the pilot, Pierce is a bit confused, and he has a lot of notes for the producers. They listen intently to what he has to say, which greatly concerns Shirley. She tries her best to suggest that they keep the focus on smart, complicated stories, but they're more interested in adding in Pierce's suggestion: a leggy blonde with a tennis racket.
The Couples
With Troy and Britta spending so much time together, Abed needed a new friend, and that friend is Inspector Spacetime uber-fan, Toby. They get along so well that they finish each other's sentences, and barely need to speak at all. When they take off in the middle of lunch, Troy starts to rationalize things by saying it's good for Abed to branch out. But, Britta cuts him off: He's not crazy. That dude really is trying to steal his boyfriend.
He tries to make nice, but Toby pretends to forget his name, and Troy is forced to have a crazy freak out. That nearly confirms the split as Britta tries to become Troy's new buddy, and Toby plans to spirit Abed away to London with him. However, yet another ruse is exposed when Abed figures out that Toby's friend who couldn't make it to the con doesn't really exist. Toby's mad, though, and he seals Abed in a phone box until Stockholm Syndrome starts to set in.
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| Which shouldn't take very long. |
Abed's initially pretty freaked out, but he quickly realizes that he has nothing to worry about: Troy will find him. And he's right. A few minutes later, Troy leaves his girlfriend to find his true love, and frees him from his limey imprisonment. Toby is defeated, Troy and Abed get their commemorative gluon photo taken, and everyone is happy.
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| They're bonded for life. |
With everything resolved, the gang reconvenes on the convention floor. Abed apologizes for excluding Shirley and Pierce, Britta gets into the spirit of the convention a little, and Jeff even decides to give the nerds a little thrill.
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| "Bow before Thoraxis!" |
What I Liked
-Pierce's response when he and Shirley get grabbed by the focus group guys is pretty good. Chevy Chase seems to be able to play the befuddled old man role really well. I wonder why that is.
-Abed Wingers Toby. That's a weird sentence, but it's what happened.
-The US version of Inspector Spacetime starring Luke Perry and Jennie Garth.
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| A little less lens flare and I'd watch it. |
What I Hated
-Abed and Jeff go to the study room, ostensibly to pick up Jeff's sunglasses. But, they don't actually get them. They just turn the light on, talk to Pierce, then leave. I know it was an expository scene, but they could've at least had Joel grab some sunglasses off a shelf or something.
-A bunch of nerds chase Britta around the convention with cameras and binoculars. See, it's funny because they've never seen a real woman before. Even though there are dozens of them walking around in skimpy costumes.
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| Like that one on the right there with the pyramid hat and no pants. |
Final Thoughts
Matt Lucas was wasted a bit as Toby. I haven't seen a lot of him outside of Little Britain, but he seems to be better when he can ham it up a bit, and Toby was played just a little too straight.
I'm really not sure what they're doing with Jeff and Annie. They're not a couple, but they were going to go on a ski trip together, and Annie's room seemed entirely too large for one person. They were all smiles and giggles when they were, however, she wasn't terribly impressed or happy when he tore his shirt off. It's a very strange dynamic.
This was the funniest episode so far this season, but again it was a little disjointed. Everyone had something to do, but they weren't doing most of it together, so there wasn't a lot of room for character development.
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