Community 4x13: Advanced Introduction to Finality

Jeff passed history, and now he's graduating. His old partner offers him a job at his new firm, and the study group makes him a banner. He has everything he could ever want. Nevertheless, he's not as excited as he should be. He tells Britta that he's worried that the group won't be able to handle him leaving, but she says that everyone will be fine, even Abed, whose sanity is evidenced by the fact that he hasn't spoken about the darkest timeline in months. In order to stir up trouble, Jeff rolls a die to see who will bring the soda to his graduation party. It lands on its edge.

That probably means nothing.

Later, a one-armed Jeff phases through a dimensional portal in the Dean's office. The darkest timeline is invading the prime timeline to force Jeff to graduate and leave Greendale forever. Dark Jeff toys with Annie's emotions and makes her cry, then blasts Abed in the chest with a fancy paintball gun and sends him to the other universe. While Abed's away, Dark Jeff and Dark Annie wreak havoc and destroy Jeff's relationships with the rest of the group.

The Dean is particularly upset.

With everyone acting weird and no one coming to his graduation ceremony, Jeff wonders just what the hell is going on. Dark Annie arrives to try to use her boobs to convince him to take the job with his old partner, but when he resists, she has to call in Dark Jeff. They do that thing where they say the same thing at the same time, which was done much better on Fringe, and then Dark Jeff tries to convince regular Jeff to take the job using Dark Logic. Jeff still won't do it, so his doppelganger has no choice but to shoot him. Fortunately, the dark ones haven't mouthed off to Chang, so he dives in front of the paintball and takes the hit for his new friend. In the confusion, Jeff escapes, and Dark Jeff is forced to call in some backup.

Evil Shirley is almost as drunk as regular Shirley.

Abed returns from the other side with a sackful of paintball guns, and a shootout with really bas special effects ensues in the cafeteria. The evil study group really sucks and goes down quickly, leaving Dark Jeff as the last one standing. Jeff doesn't think he can take him alone, but Abed explains that this is all crazy and clearly just a manifestation of Jeff's subconscious battle between the Jeff he is and the Jeff he was. New Jeff decides he doesn't want to go back to being a sleazy lawyer, then pulls some Matrix stuff and shoots Dark Jeff. The show phases back to 'reality' and the next day, everyone shows up for Jeff's graduation. Including the recurring guest stars and some girl who I can't remember.

The credits tell me it's Marcy McCusker, who played Quendra. I guess she was in town.

Jeff tries to give an emotional speech, but has a little trouble getting it out. He loves everyone, even Pierce, who interrupts the ceremony when he decides he wants to graduate, too. Everyone has drinks and cake at the after party, and Jeff resolves to look into some smaller firms around town so he can pop in from time to time to see how the group's doing. Evil Troy and Evil Abed do the tag, and the season ends.

What I Liked
-Pierce recognizes that the timeline on the show doesn't make any damn sense. Who would have thought that he would turn out to be the voice of reason on this show?
-Evil Pierce.

Mainly the hair and the wheely leg.

-After Abed explains that the whole thing is in his head, Jeff realizes that he doesn't actually need to fight Dark Jeff. At least he was still somewhat sane.
-This week's best line: "If you call a sandwich a 'Troyjan Horse' people are gonna think there's horse in it." -Dark Jeff

What I Hated
-They tried to do paintball again. They caught lightning in a bottle back in season one, then they became a sad parody of themselves, trying to do it again.
-It was all a dream. Only two shows have ever managed to get away with that, and neither Patrick Duffy nor Bob Newhart are on this show.
-Dream Abed says they finally figured out a way to make paintball cool again. No you didn't, Megan Ganz. No you didn't.
-Really bad green screen work. Why even try to do it when it's clear that the show just doesn't have the budget for that kind of stuff?
-"Six Seasons And A Movie" on the chalkboard.

Even four was too many.

Final Thoughts
I'm going to start with my thoughts on this episode before I get into the series as a whole.

Since this was a finale, a little self-reference was to be expected. But the problem is that they've already done paintball twice, and the darkest timeline was never all that compelling. So, the things they wound up referencing the most were overdone and boring. Also relatively obscure, since they brought back Quendra for some reason.

They also managed to reference the facts that Annie's majoring in forensics and Troy's still in AC repair school, the latter of which was a fairly major story point last season and then all but ignored in this one.

As for the way they wrapped up Jeff's storyline, I'm not really sure I bought it. He's not quite as sleazy as he once was, but he's still been engaged in some sleazy things over the past four years. Plus, didn't he go back to consult for his old firm at some point in season two? I know they brought back Rob Corddry last season to tell him that Drew Carey died, but that didn't exactly make a whole lot of sense. What has Jeff been doing for money for the past few years if not working as a consultant? How could he be concerned about going back to his old life if he's been basically living his old life for two years?

So where are we after everything that happened this year? Jeff graduated, but he somehow earned a degree in education, so he'll be back at Greendale next year as an instructor. Troy and Britta became a couple, but then the show barely mentioned it and they broke up. Shirley has a new baby who she apparently never sees, and is somehow on track to be valedictorian. Annie and Abed are both still in school, and I'm not sure if either of them has shown any character growth at all this season. And Chang is also on the show. Basically, either nothing happened to the characters this season, or something stupid and nonsensical did. The only one who showed any real growth was Pierce, and that was only because Chevy was tired of playing a horrible racist.

Beyond that, "It's all a dream" episodes rarely make any sense, and this one was no exception. We saw a bunch of stuff that Dream Jeff couldn't possibly have seen, unless he was omniscient, in which case he should've realized it was a dream a lot sooner. Not that I expect a lot of realism from this show, but things like that are why shows just plain shouldn't do dream episodes.

Inexplicably, NBC decided to renew Community for another season. As with HIMYM, I won't be watching it. The show's decreased in quality so much over the past two seasons that I really don't enjoy it anymore. I stuck it out until the end of this season out of some misguided sense of loyalty and a desire to see it through to the end after investing so much of my time in it over the first three years. Since the production staff were well aware that this could have been the final episode, it had enough of a sense of closure that the only reason I would want to watch any more of the show is if I thought I would enjoy it. And I don't think I will.

It's difficult to quantify why I feel that way... or it would be if I hadn't been reviewing the show for the past three seasons. Season two earned and average of 3.3 stars and 24.3 laughs. Season three faltered starting with the Christmas episode, but still managed a very respectable 2.6/16.9. This season earned a 2.0/10.8, making it 60% as good and less than half as funny as it was two years ago.

The whole thing is a shame, really. This season actually started off relatively well; I actually liked the first three episodes. But then it all went to hell when the Germans showed up. Episodes 5, 7, 9, 11, and 12 were bad, while episode 6 was both bad and blatantly offensive. When the best a show can aspire to is mediocrity, it's time to stop watching.

Community 4x12: Heroic Origins

While a somewhat haggard-looking Jeff tries to get the study group to actually study for their history final. Unfortunately, Abed would rather talk about the group's origins, which he has traced back to 2008. Annie and Troy went to high school together, which everyone knows, but what they don't know is that Annie flipped out at their graduation party and called him a mindless robot, causing him to have doubts about his future as a football player and fake a knee injury.

She was an angry, angry girl.

Jeff and Britta met in a courthouse after Jeff defended a stripper's right to use her body however she wanted.

She was a different kind of angry, angry girl.

And Shirley and Abed were at the mall on the same day. It's that particular coincidence that leads to the near breakdown of the group. You see, Abed was at the mall to stop people from seeing the re-release of The Phantom Menace, people who included Shirley's kids who were there to see it as a distraction while Shirley and Andre had their anniversary dinner. Because they couldn't see the movie, Shirley had to leave that dinner, and Andre wound up hanging out with Misty, who was the stripper Jeff got off and who ruined Shirley's marriage. Abed also wound up having to go to a psychiatrist for a mental evaluation after Shirley flipped out at the theatre managers and they got a restraining order against him, where he saw Annie stealing the doctor's prescription pad and got her busted for being a drug addict. He thinks that makes him the villain of the group.

In reality, it was just a bunch of crazy coincidences. The real villain was Jeff, who outright told Misty she should go and try to get together with Andre, even though they both knew he was married.

He was one evil dude.

Upset at the revelations, everyone abandons the study room and they all, coincidentally, decide to go for frozen yogurt. As it turns out, the frogurt place in the mall is where all of them were when they first decided to go to Greendale. By sheer, magical, in no way stupid coincidence, they were all there as Senor Chang was handing out flyers for the college. So, they weren't brought together by Abed's insanity or Jeff's evil, but by Chang and their mutual love of frozen yogurt.

Even Pierce was there.

Meanwhile, in a twist that I thought couldn't possibly be true because it was so damned obvious, Chang is working for the evil Dean of City College in an attempt to take down Greendale. He cons Dean Pelton into letting him deliver the school's lease renewal papers and then pockets them instead of mailing them. But, when Abed realizes that Chang was the reason the group got together, he goes back to the school to thank him and invite him to have frogurt with them. That's all he ever wanted, so he mails the lease papers and tells the City College Dean he's out. So, it's on to Plan B.

Which apparently involves a giant robot spider.

What I Liked
-This week's best line: "I am gonna go get crap-on-other-people's-lawns drunk."-Jeff

What I Hated
-Cornwallis has been vacillating between extreme hard ass and complete pushover. Most of the other professors have been relatively consistent characters (Chang was nuts, Duncan was drunk, etc.), but Cornwallis basically seems to be a tool the show uses to dole out random assignments based solely on the plot requirements of the episode.
-Chang says he's about to have his vengeance on this, the anniversary of his empire's destruction. It's not May on the show. It's January at the latest. The entire premise of this season was that Jeff is graduating a semester early. Did the writers forget that? They did a Christmas episode two weeks ago.
-Fake Chevy. Why even bother?

Final Thoughts
They used a comic book graphic thing as a transition throughout the episode. It was unnecessary, and I thought that it detracted from the show.

There wasn't really a lot to like or hate about this episode. It was very much just there. Although, the entire concept of the group having or needing a pre-determined reason for them all to have met is a bit silly. They met because they all took a Spanish class together and Jeff wanted to bang Britta. That's all they needed. Anything else is just 'Oh my, aren't we clever' masturbatory writing.

It's only actually clever if you set it up in advance, though. If they'd shown flashbacks over the years and Abed merely connected the dots, that would've been something. As it is, they basically did a prequel episode and it failed. They had Abed reference that fact within the episode, though, so at least they're self-aware.

Tomorrow night is the last episode. And by last, I mean last since the ratings are so bad that there's absolutely no reason to renew the show. I shall not miss it when it is gone.

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.

Community 4x10: Intro to Knots

It's been eight weeks since Halloween, so that means it's time for a Christmas party. Despite being Jewish, Annie's really excited for the party and she arrives a bit early to help Jeff make his apartment a little bit more habitable. He's a bit concerned that she might want to start playing house on a permanent basis, but she quickly dismisses the idea.

The gang (minus Chevy, but plus Chang as Kevin) arrives shortly thereafter, and all of them have gifts even though they said 'no gifts'. When they're all settled in, Annie sits them down and explains that she heard through backroom channels that they failed their big history paper. Since Jeff needs to pass the class to graduate, he's really ticked off. Fortunately, Annie has invited Prof. Cornwallis to the party so they can schmooze him a bit and try to get him to change their grade.

And it's going to be tough because he's not a happy dude.

The professor doesn't respond much to Winger's charms, but he's very interested in both scotch and boobs, so Jeff tries to get Britta to go over to him and jiggle her bits at him. She's not interested, though, because she thinks Cornwallis hates her. However, Jeff needs all the help he can get, since he blew off his section of the paper so he could go to a secret Tom Waits concert, and that's why they failed. Britta agrees to try, but she shows her disapproval with her judgy face.

It looks more constipated than judgy to me.

Jeff goes back in to continue schmoozing, but Cornwallis sees right through him, and says nothing he does will get their grade raised from the C- he gave them. Elated, Jeff grabs Annie to tell her that they didn't actually fail. She already knows. The grade wouldn't keep them from passing the course, but a C- would cause her to fail to become valedictorian. Jeff doesn't care, though, and he says that the only reason he agreed to kiss Cornwallis' pasty British ass is because he thought they failed. Unfortunately, he's forgotten that human beings have ears, so Cornwallis hears the whole thing and decides to change their grade to an F after all.

These new revelations require a confab, so the group gathers in Jeff's bedroom to discuss what they're going to do. While they're in there, the hear sounds of a struggle, and when they come out, Cornwallis is tied to a chair and Chang wants to know if they want him to kill him.

I think the answer is probably 'no'. Probably.

Annie wants to immediately untie the professor, but Jeff thinks that they now have leverage, and they can talk about their grade. Cornwallis threatens to report them to the police, but Jeff and Annie lawyer him into submission. So a sociological experiment begins: The professor offers to give an A to whoever unties him and flunk everyone else. The group manages to hold together, but Annie is sorely tempted when Cornwallis points out that Shirley is also on track to be valedictorian. But, when that still doesn't work, he reveals that the reason the group originally got a C- is because Jeff tanked his section. Annie punches him, and they all start arguing, which attracts the attention of Jeff's neighbour, The Dean. Craig knocks on the door, then barges in when he sees what's happening.

They're having a party, and they didn't invite him.

The professor has inexplicably been untied, and is roaming around the apartment, drinking more scotch. He's not going to leave, though, because things are finally getting interesting. Winger gives one of his standard speeches about how they're all flawed and he forgives whoever screwed him over, which is, of course, exactly what the betrayer would say. So, to prove his loyalty, Jeff grabs Cornwallis and they tie him up again. Then it's on to the gift-giving. The bows on Kevin's gifts show that he doesn't know how to tie a knot, which means he couldn't have tied up the professor, and he must have done it to himself. He admits to doing it because he was bored, and as compensation for the mental anguish he's caused, he agrees to change their grade to a C+. Chang excuses himself to the bathroom to make a call to his boss, then The Dean comes over with a basket of kittens to say he forgives them for not inviting him to the party.

Kittens make any party more awesome. It's science!

What I Liked
-After Annie smashes a ceramic thing, Abed takes off his shoes.

I really wish they'd done Die Hard, too.

-This week's best line: "I'm pretty sure it's anus."-Troy

What I Hated
-Shirley was on track to be valedictorian. Come on, no one believes that. She took a class that she thought was Phys Ed. Someone who could've been top of her class wouldn't take a class she thought she'd do poorly in.
-Cornwallis managed to slip out of the chair without anyone noticing. Malcolm McDowell is wily, but he's not a magician.

Final Thoughts
After two viewings, I still don't know what Abed's gifts to the group were. They looked like plastic bags full of chickpeas or something.

The final tag with the evil universe was silly.

I've changed my mind about who I think Chang's employer is. There's no reason for the City College Dean to try to get the study group expelled, so I figure it must be someone else, like Garrett or Fat Neil or Rob Corddry.

This was a better episode than last week's, although it would've been pretty hard for it to be worse. That doesn't mean it was any damn good, though. It was basically on par with last year's stupid musical Christmas, and not quite as good as the claymation Christmas in season two. They've had bad luck with Christmas episodes on this show.

You know what would've been really good? If they did Die Hard in a restaurant like Abed wanted. That could've been awesome. Yes, it would've been really gimmicky, but Community does a lot of gimmicky episodes, and Joel McHale did a really good John McClane in Modern Warfare. Oh well, if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a merry Christmas.

Community 4x09: Intro to Felt Surrogacy

Thing don't seem to be going well for the Greendale Seven... well, Greendale Six, since Chevy's not there (and I mean Chevy, not Pierce). They're all sitting around the study room table in awkward silence. Apparently they've been doing it for days and Dean Pelton will not condean that behaviour. So, in an effort to get them to talk about what's wrong, he busts out a box of puppets for therapy purposes.

It's worked wonders with Chang.

Abed gets the ball rolling and tells the story of how they got to where they are, which we get to see in puppet flashback form.

They've been friends for four years now and spent so much time together that he and Troy were able to create study group bingo cards with lists of all the phrases the gang says. After a minute of watching them play, Jeff suggests that they're in a rut and they should get away from Greendale. Annie agrees and says that they need to go on an adventure. The group then sings a horrible, shit-awful song about adventure, which leads to them taking a balloon ride.

Because hot air balloons are adventurous.

Unfortunately, due to Pierce and Troy's fiddling, they take off without the balloon guide. Pierce's further meddling takes them high in the air and far off course. If you can really have a course in a hot air balloon. Eventually, they land in the woods where they meet a kindly mountain man played by Jason Alexander.

His hair looks at least as real as it did in Pretty Woman.

Jason used to be a student at Greendale, but after he graduate, he moved out to the woods to be his own man. He sings a terrible, shit-awful song about how awesome and stress-free it is to live in the woods, then gives them psychotropic berries, and they all trip balls.

Then Shirley takes over the story, and she tells the Dean how they sat around a camp fire and she revealed that she once forgot her kids at the grocery store because she was spying on a man she thought was Andre. Back in the present day, the rest of the group stares at her in disbelief. But, not because they think she's a horrible person, but rather because they were so tripped out on berries that they couldn't remember that she told them that before. As it turns out, they've all been avoiding speaking to each other because they thought they'd revealed some terrible secret about themselves, but, even though they all did, no one remembers. Since they've all forgotten everything, they're in the clear... except that Shirley has just told them her terrible secret.

Which kinda bums her out.

To make things even, Jeff gets the group to re-reveal everything, which we see through a shit-awful puppet song. He met the perfect girl, but couldn't handle the fact that she had a son, so he abandoned them just like his dad did. Annie was struggling in history, so she let Prof. Cornwallis rub her feet in exchange for the answers to a test. Britta is an activist, but she's never voted. Troy accidentally started the great Greendale fire of '03. Pierce never slept with Eartha Kitt; they just dry-humped in her tour bus. Abed didn't have a secret. He just saw that everyone was being awkward around each other and mimicked their behaviour.

It's kinda his thing.

With the situation resolved, they all go for yard margs at Skeepers. Because that running joke doesn't suck at all.

What I Liked
-Even though the lyrics suck, a few of the cast are actually pretty good singers. Yvette Nicole Brown was by far the best.
-They mention that Duncan hasn't been around for a while. Strange how the absence of John Oliver correlates with the decline in quality of the show.
-This moose.

Awesome.

-This week's best line: "Dean, what happened is between us and Jesus. And Jesus don't snitch." -Shirley

What I Hated
-The Dean is dressed up as Pinocchio for some unknown reason. It literally has nothing to do with the episode at all, and is essentially a pointless 'Hey look at the Dean's funny costume! Isn't he wacky?!' thing.
-When they weren't singing, the puppet audio was often really bad. I'm not sure of the technical terms for it, but it sounded compressed, and I was certainly very aware that it was pre-recorded audio. Even the low-quality pre-release version of the Digital Estate Planning audio was better.
-Bad green screen work. I know they don't have a huge effects budget, but come on!
-The puppet voices don't match up with their mouth movements. That's Puppetry 101, and they screwed it up.
-The Dean's creepy obsession with Jeff. It started off relatively harmless, but now it's progressed to ridiculous levels.

This creepy Jeff puppet is a figment of the Dean's imagination.

Final Thoughts
The songs were atrocious. There's literally no other way to describe them, except with other words that are synonymous with atrocious. They didn't follow any kind of established meter, and half of the lyrics were basically regular spoken lines that they decided to sing for some reason. Plus, they were a huge time suck; they spent more time singing about going on an adventure than they actually did on the adventure itself.

The puppetry also wasn't particularly good. They weren't doing very many complex movements or anything like that, so all they really had to do was get the lip sync right, and they failed miserably at that.

If you're going to do a gimmick episode, and this episode is the very definition of one, it needs to be good, otherwise it's just pointless filler. The only time Community has had a really good gimmick episode was three years ago with Modern Warfare(some argument could perhaps be made for Digital Estate Planning, but I won't be the one to make it). That one had a purpose, advanced the show's plot, and even fit in with the style to some extent. This was basically the producers sitting around saying "You know what we haven't done yet? A puppet episode." Maybe that's why it turned out so poorly. It didn't have any passion or reason behind it; it was just another check box they needed to tick off.

Community 4x08: Herstory of Dance

To distract the student body from the fact that the CDC is confiscating Greendale's drinking fountains, the Dean decides to hold a dance. For no particular reason, he makes it a Sadie Hawkins dance, which rankles stereotypical ultra-feminist Britta to no end. As a response, she decides to throw a Sophie B. Hawkins dance in protest. Correctly deducing that she really meant Susan B. Anthony, Jeff busts Britta's lady balls and congratulates her for Brittaing things up once again.

Then he puts on his troll face.

Unwilling to admit she was wrong, Britta fully commits to the bit and so there will be duelling dances in the Greendale cafeteria on Friday.

Meanwhile, Abed's trying to grow as a character. In order to help, Annie and Shirley set him up with competing dates for the dance. Unfortunately, he sees it as a chance for some Three's Company style shenanigans, and decides to go with both girls rather than picking one. Annie's choice is Cat, a quirky girl who rides around on a kick scooter, while Shirley's is Jessica, a nice Christian girl. In typical Jack Tripper fashion, things go well at first, and Abed even gets some help from the coat check girl.

She sees what he's doing there.

With Rachel's help, he manages to make it work for a while, but eventually Annie and Shirley figure out his scheme and remind him that it's not a TV show, and he's dealing with real people with real emotions. It's then that he realizes that the girl he really wants was right in front of him the whole time. But, when he goes back to the coat check room to profess his affection, she's gone.

At the same time, it starts to become clear that Sophie B. Hawkins will not be attending the Sophie B. Hawkins dance, and that Britta is a failure. But, just as she's about to admit defeat, a saviour arrives:

I assume it's Sophie B. Hawkins... I honestly have no idea what she looks like.

Before Sophie can get on with singing her two songs that anyone's ever heard of, Abed grabs the mic and makes a public declaration of his feelings for Rachel. She accepts his apology, and they agree to go out on a date.

Elsewhere in the cafeteria, Jeff is flabbergasted. He has no idea how Britta managed to pull things off... until Pierce tells him that Hawthorne Wipes were the official moist towelettes of Lilith Fair back in the 1990s. He dresses Jeff down over the way he treats Britta, making fun of her and using her name as a synonym for screwing up, even after she helped him reconcile with his dad. Jeff apologizes via text, and everyone rocks out to 'As I Lay Me Down'.

It's a good thing they only had time for two songs in the episode, 'cause that's all she has.

What I Liked
-Troll face Jeff. If it's not a meme yet, it should be.
-Pierce calls Jeff out for being a prick. Despite all the flack he takes for being an old, out-of-touch racist, Pierce is the only one who has the strength to put him in his place.
-This week's best line: "According to Dean law, I must now give her my amulet." -Dean Pelton

What I Hated
-The Dean's Donna Reed costume. They've gone too far, now it's just insane.

Seriously, WTF?

-The title to Sophie B. Hawkins' song. When using the subjunctive tense, the proper word is always 'were', not 'was', so it should be Damn I Wish I Were Your Lover.
-Chang DJ's the dances. As an excuse to get him into the episode, it worked. As comedy, it failed.
-The end tag. Seeing the gang as crappy puppets did not encourage me to watch the next episode.

Final Thoughts
I need to start this section off by saying the title of this episode makes me want to punch the writers. That may have been the point, however. If so, kudos, Community writers.

Geez, where did they dig up Sophie B. Hawkins? She hasn't put out a hit album in more than 15 years now, and it's not like her records were mammoth hits to begin with.

They've actually made Pierce more of a well-rounded character over the last couple episodes, and it's kind of a bummer that Chevy flipped out and left the show. Not that he's going to be absent for very long.

This was better than the past few weeks, and actually managed to break double digits in laughs for the first time in a while. That still didn't make it good, though. Parodying long-standing TV tropes while repeating others at the same time is a bit weird.