Jmunney's Blog

If you’ve regularly been reading my Community reviews for this season thus far, you might think – based on my grades at least (B+, B+, A-, B) – that I’ve been happy with the way things have been going.  But I’ve actually been a little worried.  The show has been all right, but it has yet to produce any masterpieces that in past seasons were always only a few weeks away.  “Cooperative Escapism in Familial Relations” wasn’t quite a masterpiece, but it had enough masterpiece-level elements  to be itself strongly satisfying and leave me optimistic for the future.

Let’s save the best for last, and let’s start with discussing the B-plot.  Abed, Annie, Pierce, and Troy end up at Shirley’s with her in-laws for Thanksgiving.  Andre’s family is apparently so unbearable that the study group-ers have to resort to spending nearly the entirety of the episode in Shirley’s garage.  Some other reviews have already mentioned the one thing I really didn’t like about this storyline – it hardly ever showed how awful the Bennetts supposedly were.  It felt like one or two scenes must have been missing.  Maybe they were – perhaps there were cuts for time?  Abed’s attempts to narrate the situation into a Shawshank Redemption (and then Prison Break) scenario did not feel forced, because that is something that Abed would do.  But it did feel kind of half-hearted; in fact, the whole situation felt half-hearted: they never really had it in them to abandon Shirley. So, considering that, it was actually a good thing that it was half-hearted.  Interestingly enough, while this episode provided further evidence that Chevy Chase had checked out during filming of this season, he actually provided some of the funniest moments, particularly his “reference” and “meta” humor that he insists “Ay-bed” will get.

Now for the moment we’ve all been waiting for: Jeff meets Daddy William Winger … and Britta insists on being there to see her psychology project through.  Also, Jeff has a “soft” half-brother, Willy, Jr., who was played decently by Adam Devine.  He had some memorable moments with Britta particularly the dinner roll session.  But the real meat of this plot was, obviously, Jeff and his dad.  Things start out well, but then William has the gall to imply that his abandonment was responsible for building Jeff’s character.  This ultimately leads Jeff to put his father in his place with a speech that is even weirder and more revealing than his confessions to Abed in “Critical Film Studies.”  Giving himself a fake appendix scar just so that he could be sympathized: wow, we really did not how broken Jeff was, or is.  But one thing that has been known – Jeff’s constant texting – was confirmed as a manifestation of his insecurity, even among those closest to him.  Jeff’s question to Britta about if she felt a desire to sleep with him has apparently been interpreted by some as flirting, but let’s be clear: he was teasing her by using her misplaced psychology against her after she had suggested that Jeff and his dad must be feeling an urge to sleep with each other.  Jeff is not trying to break up Britta and Troy.

Speaking of Jeff, a recurring line for this season popped up a couple times this episode, when Shirley and the Dean both ended a thought with “Jeff, or whoever” (meaning “I’m fine with anyone, but actually I really want Jeff to be there more than anyone else”) just as Annie had done in the season premiere when talking about who might join her in senior pranking.  In Season 1, even though Jeff initially wasn’t all that committed to friendship with his study groupmates, he was still the cool guy that everyone was drawn towards.  By Season 3, things got dark, Jeff at times seemed a little crazy, and there were some moments when his friends were left to wonder if they would be just fine without him.  But by the end of the season, though, he declared his commitment to his fellow Greendale human beings, and now his friends’ desire to hang out with him appears to be stronger than ever.  Accordingly, Joel McHale is the best lead actor in any sitcom on television right now, and (with the exception of Louis C.K.), it’s not even close. A-

For the first time in Season 4, Community finally included the normal, full-length version of the theme song.  And with the banter as the study group walked to class – especially Pierce’s note of approval to Jeff’s impression of everyone whining – there was  a similar sense of rightness with Greendale … until that sense was stopped dead in its tracks by the returning German invasion.  The foosball-playing German students were just as ridiculously stereotypical when they first appeared in last season’s “Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism,” but that first time Nick Kroll imbued lead German Juergen with just the right weird vibe, whereas this time Kroll is no longer here, replaced with Chris Diamantopoulos as Juergen’s brother, who goes beyond exaggerated German into full-on cartoon, sounding more like a Muppet than anything else.  Still, I was intrigued by the fight for the study room leading the Greendale Seven to realize that maybe they have been selfish and overly possessive about their sacred space all along.  The flashbacks to previous episodes felt enlightening, though they did play a little loose with continuity.  Everyone else at Greendale was supposedly at the puppy parade during the events of “Cooperative Calligraphy,” though I can believe that not quite everyone was there.  What was more bothersome was Jeff shooing Leonard away during the game in “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons,” which was not in keeping with the positive spirit of that episode.  However, I can appreciate how differently things can look from a different vantage point.  This was all brought to a head with the protest in the study room  (even the Human Being was there!), which cued Britta’s pro-anti disposition (“Oh, cool, what are we protesting?”).  Danielle Kaplowitz gave her meatiest performance ever as Vicki.  The whole affair was reminiscent of last year’s Todd-episode, “Competitive Ecology,” and like that one, I liked the idea of this episode more than the execution.  As for Malcolm McDowell’s debut as Professor Cornwallis, it was inauspicious; hopefully, it develops into something.

As for the Dean-Chang subplot, I feel like this barrage of punnery deserves particularly harsh criticism, but it kind of worked.  It didn’t do much more than act as what seems to be a prelude for something more happening with this “Changnesia” storyline.  While it makes sense that Chang and the Dean would continue to use their names as puns, the gag had gotten a little stale.  But this plot – particularly the Dean getting all “turned around” with “Changnesia” and then “Amdeansia” – managed to breathe new life into the punnery.

I have been watching each episode twice this season before writing my reviews to get a full idea of what I think, and this was the first time I wasn’t looking forward to the second viewing.  But I must say that I enjoyed it.  It was the typical sort of Community-rewatch enjoyment that I have experienced many times.  So, this episode was good enough to do that. B