Community’s second season comes to a strong finish. I recently played paintball for the first time. I can see why the writers of Community are so inspired by it. For the record Though I am a great sci-fi fan, I was a little worried when Community decided to parody Star Wars. Every kid with a curtain rod decides they’re a jedi or a sith, so it can be a little over done. Thankfully Community decided not to draw it out more than necessary, (Which they pointed out in their open crawl).
Still reeling from last weeks western episode, the school is overrun by paint ball professionals dressed in white. Lead by Patty Pestle from a mascot of a fake ice cream company. It turns out that City College, Greendale’s arch rivals have engineered the paint ball competition from the beginning. Darth Spreak… er I mean Dean Spreak of city college plan to wave enough money in front of the Greendale students to get them to destroy the school. His plan succeeds and the study group decides that in order to save their school they have to win the prize money. It will take an alliance of students to rebel… a rebel alliance if you will. Nearly every supporting character is pulled out of the wood work. We see Leonard, Magnitude, Star-burns, Quendra with a QU, Vickie, Garret, and every other one line joke character joins the alliance.
What made this episode particularly funny was that Abed seemed to be the only one who recognized the Star Wars similarities and adopts Han Solo’s personalities. Not only did this allow Abed to transmorgify his personality into Harrison Ford’s it kept the Star Wars parody to a minimum. I’m not the biggest Star Wars fan in the world. Don’t get me wrong it’s fun, but it’s everywhere. How often does a show lift a line like “Strike me down and I will become more powerful than you could imagine” or “give in to the dark side and your destiny will be complete”? Community took the less is more approach, so other than a few visual references, Abed is the only direct Star Wars character. They never showed a light saber fight, or had anyone growl like chewy. I particularly appreciated his seduction of Annie, as Han. Though she’s irritated at Abed Solo’s immaturity at first, she comes to find in attractive. She realizes what I’ve been trying to convince girls since I was 13, nerds are awesome!
Ever since Mixology Certification I’ve expected Troy to become a rival for Jeff as a leader. Though Jeff is dynamic speaker and usually rallies the group, he’s a jaded loner. Troy is a optimistic and full of energy. Jeff’s an ass with a good heart. Troy is a good guy with a good heart. His plan was even smarter and more strategic than Jeff’s. Next season it would be interested in how a rivalry between them would play out. It defiantly has some comedic potential. They’ve already started hitting on the girls each other were interested in.
Finally Pierce is out of the group. It may not be as epic as Peter Bishop erases himself from history, but its still cliffhanger I want to know how it plays out. All of the different personalities in Community play together well. They are a 7 part whole. Is Senor Chang going to become the new jerk and surrogate weird uncle of the group? Will the season premier pick up at the exact same point and show Pierce walking back in two seconds later. Community could pull a sit-comm cliche and have the group decide they need Pierce to make their flaws less glaring. I’d like to see Pierce find a new group and the old group get jealous like a group of exes.
On a scale of 1 to Epic (Epic = 10) this episode gets a 8.4. See you next semester Greendale!