Community 4x11: Basic Human Anatomy

The Greendale gang has to figure out an idea for their final history project. Jeff's in favour of doing whatever's fastest and easiest because he'll graduate if they pass, and even Cornwallis no longer gives much of a crap about the quality of their work.

Meanwhile, it's the one year anniversary of Troy and Britta's first date, although they weren't aware of it. Annie convinces them to go back to the same restaurant (Senor Kevin's) to celebrate. Troy, however, is more enthusiastic about it being the third anniversary of the first time he and Abed watched Freaky Friday. To celebrate, he bought his buddy a six-pack of body-switching movies, and they have their own "I wish I had your life" moment, using the Freaky Friday DVD as a totem.

It was even dumber than you'd think.

It doesn't work, but the next morning, Troy decides that it did and goes to tell Abed. Since he's a good buddy, and there's nothing he loves more than committing to a bit, Abed plays along. Britta's a bit bummed that she won't get to go on her date with Troy, but Troy as Abed tells her that Troy's going through some stuff and he needs to do this bit, so Abed as Troy will go with her. The nomenclature is confusing, I agree.

Jeff is pissed off that Troy and Abed's BS is delaying their start on a passable, doable project. So, he goes in search of a DVD of Freaky Friday so the boys can switch their bodies back, and he sends Shirley and Annie off to find out how Leonard has managed to get ahead of them in the class rankings. To speed things along, he buys his own copy of the DVD and takes it to the Dean so he can tell the guys he found it.

Then the Dean does the body-switching thing, but Jeff won't play along.

At lunch, Abed as Troy is accosted by a waiter who hates Die Hard, but he's so committed to the bit that he won't break. He tells Britta that Troy talks to Abed about their relationship, and that he wonders if the fact that they didn't remember their anniversary says anything about how things are going.

Back at Greendale, Jeff is still mighty angry, and he takes Troy as Abed in search of the DVD. They start by checking with the janitors, who are inexplicably doing a murder mystery theatre show. They direct them to the lost and found, which is a huge room filled with all the crap that's been collected over the years.

Both Abed as Troy and Troy as Abed talk about how Troy feels like he and Britta are trying too hard at their relationship, and that if it were meant to be, things would be easier. Abed as Troy breaks up with Britta, and Jeff gives Troy as Abed a speech about how commitment is hard and trying to have a relationship was bold, but to truly be a man, he needs to break up with Britta in person. They go to the restaurant, where Jeff facilitates the end of the bit with some half-hearted light switch flickering, and Troy dumps Britta to her face.

Like a man.

At the same time, Annie and Shirley head to the Dean's office, where Annie creepily fawns over the Jeff-like personality he's adopted. They want Leonard's transcripts, which Craig as Jeff is more than willing to give, and which he conveniently has in a file cabinet in his office. It turns out that he got an A in a class in 1968 and has been taking every class as Pass-Fail in order to maintain his perfect GPA. They confront him, and then he gives up or quits school or something... it's not really clear. Shirley's number one again, and Annie's number two.

When the whole gang returns to the study room, they find that Pierce has gotten bored waiting for them and done the entire project by himself.

It took him about 25 minutes.

The Dean apologizes for acting like Jeff, Troy and Britta hug, and everyone goes home early.

What I Liked
-Jeff shits all over everything Troy and Abed are doing. Good, I'm glad at least one person agrees that it was bullshit. Although, writing a character who hates everything that's going on and points out how stupid it is probably wasn't the best idea.

Jeff has no patience for these shenanigans.

-This week's best line "Having Jeffrey inside of me was wrong... To have Jeffrey inside of me."-Craig. It was the best of a bad crop, though.

What I Hated
-More crap about Shirley somehow being in the running for valedictorian. It's completely ludicrous to have a character go three and a half years without showing any particular academic aptitude, only to suddenly make her a genius in the last three episodes of the series. Hell, considering the fact that both of them were temporarily expelled last season, and that they flunked a history test earlier this year, I'm surprised that either Shirley or Annie could possibly be anywhere near the top of their class. Also, they somehow know the up-to-the-minute class rankings, which doesn't even make any sense.
-Routine light switch checks. Ugh. Just ugh.
-The janitors' murder mystery show. I can forgive some of the other writers, but Jim Rash was on this show for years: he should know that doing wacky things just for wackiness' sake was never Community's thing.

Final Thoughts
Now that Chang's pretending to be Kevin, that would make him Senor Kevin, just like the restaurant. We're through the looking glass here, people.

Jim Rash wrote this episode, and it was so bad that I think they should consider taking away his Oscar.

There might have been more emotional weight to Britta and Troy's breakup if anyone had actually cared about their relationship in the first place. Aside from a few brief moments and a subplot in the Inspector Spacetime episode, there's been barely any mention of it at all. Their entire relationship has a huge mess from beginning to end. They were thrust together for no particular reason, barely spent any time doing relationship stuff (even though they were somehow together for like a year), and then broke up in one of the worst episodes in the show's history.

Come to think of it, how were Britta and Troy dating for a year? Their first date was indeed in April of 2012, but in the show's timeline, they're still in the first semester of the school year (even though Christmas was last week). The handling of their relationship was even more of a clusterfuck than I first thought.

Beyond that, I have to say that my opinion of Community these days pretty much corresponds with the way Jeff was feeling in this episode: I just want to get out as fast as possible, and doing Freaky Friday was a stupid waste of time. Seriously, they talk about Die Hard all the time, but instead they did Freaky Friday. Aside from Jim Rash, apparently, who was clamouring for that?

I'll give Rash credit for that, though. He wrote a character who was just as pissed off about what was happening as I was, so I had someone to empathize with. It was nice to have someone there to confirm my opinion. But my opinion was "This is stupid and unfunny" so that probably wasn't a good plan on his part.

This tied with Advanced Documentary Filmmaking as the least funny episode so far this season, but it didn't have anything blatantly racist, so it gets a marginally better score. Marginally.