So I’ll admit it I was wrong. They didn’t have an intervention for Pierce. Instead the study group visits him in the hospital after an overdose. Community continued to experiment with different genre and formats, and as the title suggests Abed films the episode as a documentary. Though not as ridiculous as other genre benders this was a decent episode but not a great one.
The plot revolves around Pierce faking an impending demise, and bequeathing members of the group gifts. He’s perfectly fine and is only messing with his friends because he feels they regard him as a joke. His gifts are designed to torment the group, and make them doubt themselves and each other. The funniest part came when Jeff and Britta pretend to be each other’s fathers with fast paced jabs at each other, and their mothers. I did think it was a bit out of character for Britta to call Jeff and his dad gay as a pejorative, seeing as how hard she tries to be PC, and how she spent the last episode trying to show she was okay with gay people. It may be out of character but, that makes it funnier. Britta on more than on level is show to not be as good of a person as she thinks she is. Another highlight of this episode was Troy’s gift: the guest star appearance of LeVar Burton. Geordi Laforge was my favorite character in the Next Generation, and I loved Reading Rainbow growing up. Troy did too. So much so, that he spends the episode staring at Burton wide eyed, too terrified to speak to his hero. This episode was funny in a sad kind of way. Its the kind of humor where we are laughing at the characters more than we are laughing with them. Because some of the characters are shown to be so disfunctional and pathetic it detracts from the humor. It’s not a total detriment but it leaves the viewer feeling bad for having a chuckle.
My brother have an ongoing debate revolving about this episode. He thinks it was a parody of the Office. I think its just supposed to be a documentary. Although the Office is done in documentary format. I guess it’s a “square is a rectangle argument”. I’d like to think that if they did an Office parody it would revolve around one of the characters getting an internship somewhere.
On a scale of 1 to Epic, (Epic= 10) I’d give it a 7