In this newest episode of Community the writers took their experimentation with meta to the next level. Community likes to toy with different genres and formats. Largely this experimentation is unique and successful. This episode was no exception as it brought us Communitys first clip show. The twist, we’ve never seen any of these clips before!
This episode episode starts off with a delicious metaphor the group is making a diorama of them making a diorama. When reaching for a paint brush they discover the monkey from “cooperative calligraphy” stealing it. Within minutes Chang is greased up and crawling through the air ducts. It reminded me of theme Simpsons episode where Grounds Keeper Willie greases himself up to retrieve Santa’s Little Helper from the ventilation system. Once they get.all their stuff back from the monkey the group starts to reminisce about their last year together. We see glimpses of them in strait jackets in a mental institution, held hostage by drug lords, chased by a prospector in a ghost town, and in a haunted mansion. Oh and apparently Abed was obsessed with the Cape. No big surprise there. Eventually their memories cause them to fight, which causes them, to remember memories of fighting while reminiscing about fighting. The story within the story within the story was a great sequence.
What made this episode great is they played on Community’s gags. We get a montage of the dean’s ridiculous outfits. Troy consistently acts like an over grown child. Abed tries to use his own cape like Vince Faraday. In fact many of the flash back clips could have filled the post episode stinger. Oh and on top of it all Britta and Jeff have been fooling around behind everyone backs. This was a great subversion of what I thought was a developing attraction between Annie and Jeff. They even parodied that with a sappy musical montage between Annie and Jeff.
My only complain is that this episode turns the group into dysfunctional losers who are destructively co dependant on each other. Sure we always knew that, but we always thought these people were better off together than apart. They seemed to learn lessons from each other. I guess there are only so many lesson you can learn.
On a scale of 1 to epic (epic equals 10) I rank this episode a 7.5