'A World Without Dioramas': Community Recapped
Community has gotten to the point where every critic on the Internet will bend over backward to give the show glowing praise. As Emily Nussbaum just wrote on Twitter, "I laughed at literally every line of that episode of Community. Exhaustingly excellent." Well, that's one way to put it. Another way would be to say that while funny, "Conspiracy Theories and Soft Defenses" was a pale imitation of an Arrested Development episode, with a B-story that might as well have been left to an online deleted scene. Annie might have had a gun, but Community fired some blanks last night.
Let's start with that Arrested Development comparison. As anyone who watched that iconic sitcom knew immediately, the increasingly twisted gunshot reveals during the finale of "Conspiracy Theories" was a direct lift of the J. Walter Weatherman runner from AD. Yes, Community shares Anthony and Joe Russo with The Bluth Family, so this wasn't just some South Park-level rip-off; it was more likely either an homage, or just plan laziness in the writers' room. Maybe a bit of both.
The difference between the two is that Arrested Development earned the Weatherman runner by establishing it early and pulling it out whenever a lesson was needed to be learned; Community just did it without any soul or relevant reference. We can all marvel and laugh at Annie, Jeff and the Dean shooting each other to increasing levels of ridiculousness, but it doesn't mean anything. "Conspiracy Theories" was nothing but empty calories.
Which is disappointing since it comes on the heels of one of the best Community episodes thus far. The "bottle episode" (I cringe at using that most douche-y of terms) was like a finely-aged Arrested Development episode -- in-jokes and callbacks were littered throughout and it pushed the narrative forward. While "Conspiracy Theories" brought some more closure to the Annie/Jeff union*, it didn't really do anything important. Like "Epidemiology" and "Basic Rocket Science," most of what happened here won't be mentioned again, unless it's as some throwaway joke during season three.
(*Dear Dan Harmon: Joel McHale and Alison Brie have insane chemistry. Just put them together and take advantage of that. Thanks, everyone.)
I don't exactly know what I want from Community. I love the show, but I'm not in the bag for it completely -- I can readily acknowledge when it fails and/or when 30 Rock is funnier (something which has happened on every occasion possible this season). But there has certainly been some wheel-spinning this season. Community has been funny -- and it has featured some impressive set pieces -- but it hasn't told a consistently appealing story. Questions: Who's the lead of the show? Who are we rooting for? What is the end game? That the answers aren't readily available is one of Community's biggest problems.
Oh! How could I end a recap without mentioning the aforementioned B-story? Abed and Troy built a fort out of blankets. It became a city. The end. Like I said: Maybe that should have been left online. Maybe this episode should have been, too. Anyway, let's end this with a classic J. Walter Weatherman clip from Arrested Development.
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The episode worked for one reason alone: The conspiracy theory professor's ring-tone was the music from Dramatic Groundhog. Cut, print, wrap it up, and help me carry it out to my car. Britta's room in the fort-city was icing.
"Community" works because it does not have a defined lead, or a cogent over-arching storyline, and dismisses most sit-com conventions. The show is like that crowd of kids you encounterred in school who were not in the "cool-group", but they were having a blast with things of which you were initially oblivious. They did not care about the social pecking order, and you were drawn in to their clique by their arcane language and interests.
Hear, hear.
To I, Twitterer — I can't believe I had a tweet quoted that quickly! — that sequence was totally earned.
Sure, the gunshot element was a clear homage to the Weatherman plot. But mainly, it was a parody of Rubicon and the whole notion of nonsensical espionage paranoia stories, which keep opening out into increasingly nonsensical revelations about people's motives. The nut of that scene was Jeff complaining that no one seemed to understood what a conspiracy WAS — that it wasn't just constantly shifting alliances for no reason at all, which was the buried critique of Rubicon and shows of that genre. And yet, within that meta-commentary, they incorporated in all sorts of information about the conflict and attraction between Jeff and Annie, with Britta noticing that dynamic in the final sequence.
And this is why the Blanket Fort City plot wasn't random, because it built up into that (to me at least) hilarious parody of the classic chaotic through-the-exotic-streets espionage chase scene, along with throwing in twists on other espionage-cliches like someone throwing themselves onto another person in order to foil a bomb going off.
One caveat: I watched the show two hours ago! And tweeted while watching it. So it isn't as if I've had any time to think about it much. But what the episode reminded me of most was that hilarious 30 Rock episode in Season 1, the one in which Tim Conway guest-starred as some elderly NBC star, creating sequences which were hysterical in their own right, but also worked as a direct satire of a particularly pompous Studio 60 episode.
Agree with the overpraise from critics. It's getting a bit embarrassing at this point. I agree it deserves more attention, viewers and buzz but the treatment of it like it's the greatest comedy since sliced bread is a bit much.
Hopefully it will get an Emmy and critics can get over it. I feel like it's being celebrated because people are revising their college tv history course with it. The lack of coherent story and/or more pointed jokes is hurting it this season. Really hope for more episodes like last week's, these parodies/homage really should not be a weekly thing. Also, a wider scope of jokes than just pure pop culture ones would be nice.
Emily! I'm sorry you bore the brunt of the "all critics on Twitter love Community!" rant there, but your tweet just encapsulated everything I was reading last night and this morning.
I just didn't get that out of the final scene. Superficially, it worked; but other than being a mock-up of conspiracy thrillers, it was ultimately pointless. The Jeff/Annie stuff has been cold for so long (since the premiere), that adding it there felt extraneous. Like, "Hey, we need to do something here so it isn't just goof-goof-goof!" I'll admit, I loved the scene in the fort at the end -- when Jeff and Annie looked like they were going to kiss -- but that hasn't been earned this season and it really wasn't all that earned during the episode.
The problem I have with this show -- and I have been a huge defender -- is that it has devolved into a copy of a copy of a copy. They've done more theme episodes this season than Glee and each has devolved further from the twofer of "Modern Warfare" and "American Poultry" in season one. Eventually there needs to be a linear arc, an actual hero and/or something to prevent the show from being Family Guy.
30 Rock does this exceedingly well, of course: They've established the Liz/Jack relationship as the anchor and can pivot off that to varying degrees of success. So that even when something gets dropped (Liz wants a baby!), it doesn't kill the show since it's all filtered through them. Community has none of that -- it ambles along and never understands that ensembles need focus.
That said, I'm not ready to burn the house down over one lacking episode in an increasingly plateauing season. But it's just unfortunate that the show didn't capitalize on the amazing finish it had to season one.
Why does it seem like magic when some VIP from the main post suddenly appears in the comment section? It's like one of the cool kids joining you at your lunch table.
Oh, I don't mind! The funny thing is that, critically speaking, I'm a late-comer to the series — I liked the first season, but it wasn't until I saw Modern Warfare in reruns that it really blew my tiny mind.
FWIW, I loved the Zombie episode, so I'm clearly at a different point in the undulating curve of shifting expectations. I don't mind that they're basing episodes in stylistic parodies. And personally, I loved both the trampoline episode and the Charlie Kaufman Jesus documentary episode, so I guess I'm just not bugged by there not being a clear love story or an arc other than the central one, which seems to be Jeff Learning To Live In A World of Other People. To me, it's all The Real World Season 1, only smart sitcom-style, and I'm okay with that.
I, too, loved the trampoline episode -- which only got funnier the more I thought about it (Matt Walsh is a genius); I was less interested in the Charlie Kaufman/Jesus one -- I either wanted that to have more references or less; I don't even know anymore.
I guess we are on different Community paths here. Perhaps we'll meet up again when the show is tragically canceled and we can all bemoan its all-too-brief existence.
That would kill me, truly. Especially since I'm currently directing all my secular TV prayers toward Terriers.
I vote "no" on Joel McHale and Alison Brie. He comes across as her uncle.
We agree about this episode, Christopher: it blew.
Not that I ever want "Community" (or any other show, for that matter) to be like "Two and a Half Men" or "Big Bang Theory," but it definitely could use some of those shows' consistency.
Oh god, THANK YOU. I'm a huge fan of AD and it was really disappointing watching this Community episode. Although i'm also i big fan of this last show, i couldn't agree more with you about making the episodes more connected, making the stories of each episode last longer. I hate to feel like i could miss one episode or two and it wouldn't make any difference later. In Community, things happens in a episode and in the next one it's completely forgotten. Still, this show is currently one of the best series followed by 30 Rock (Tina Fey is great) but i hope these two will not end like Scrubs. I mean, things were great in the first seasons until the day they got stuck at those non-sense boring jokes, it seems like a natural sad course in sitcoms. I've noticed that the second season of Community was not as good as the first one, i hope they can still right some good stuff and i mean it.