“Repilot”
“Francis Ford Repo Man” – so this is the first joke of Dan Harmon Community 2.0. It’s irrelevant to everything else going on in that scene, and it’s not even a very good pun (unless I’m missing something). But it works – because it is not lingered upon. I constantly argued that the major problem with Season 4 wasn’t the What, but the How. There were plenty of good ideas, but too many of them were not executed well. This falls to the editing, an area that Dan Harmon-run Community was strong in, and Harmon-less Community so clearly was not. Last season, shots were cut away from too fast, there were awkward lingering stretches, and overall episodes (and the whole season) just weren’t that well-constructed. It is immediately clear that that has been rectified, and that makes jokes that aren’t very good actually kind of work.
I have a bone to pick with a few TV critics (but maybe it’s not their fault, because there appears to be some confusion): in some of the pre-show reviews, they said this season was taking place three years later. I assumed that that meant there was a time jump between the end of Season 4 and the beginning of 5, but that is clearly not the case. Jeff mentions that the rest of the study group “just” got sprung from Greendale, and last year is referred to as the “gas leak” year. I guess the “three years after” actually refers to three years after the beginning of the show – but that doesn’t work either, because then it would be four years. This three-year figure just doesn’t seem to work at all, and I don’t know where it came from. It does seem like a lot has happened to everybody, more than would be expected over the course of just a few months, but all references to events of Season 4 make it seem fairly recent. Umm… I guess it’s not that important.
To continue this review on a technical standpoint, this episode was dark – one of the most dimly lit of the series. It was hard to get comfortable with, but it was on purpose. The past four seasons have seen these people bettering themselves, but apparently it has not been enough. Jeff is able to be manipulated by his skeevy former partner, and the study group is still able to be manipulated by Jeff at his most manipulative. But, there is a sense of righteousness to the destructive decisions everyone is making. In the pilot, we saw a Jeff Winger making the right choices for the wrong reasons, and in “Repilot,” we see him making the wrong choices for the right reasons – but he ultimately comes around to the right choices for the right reasons thanks to the support group he has cultivated. When he confronts Dean Pelton about his indecency, what he is so angry about is that the people he cares most about could be so easily taken advantage of. He does not really want to destroy Greendale; he is just screaming about how unfair it is that he and his friends aren’t succeeding.
It was wise for this season to be a revamping year, not just because last year was a relative disappointment, but also because it is a general rule of thumb that sitcoms need a major shakeup here and there to remain worthwhile as they get older. With its multiple callbacks to the pilot, “Repilot” made it clear that it was a new beginning but also not as much of a clean break as I thought it was going to be. Is Greendale like the Lost island in that the study groupers cannot leave it (until they are truly ready)? Or maybe it is a Möbius strip, in that every exit is also an entrance. This is all to say, Abed repeating “I see your value now” and Jeff repeating “It’s the coolest” underscored how much this episode did not have the shiny newness of the very first episode. The repeated lines were said by changed people, though. So there was a changed tint to it all. I need help reacting to it because it is a just bit uncanny – so familiar, yet so not the same.
Ultimately, “Repilot” portends greatness to come but struggles with dusting off stray plot points that were left dangling unresolved last season. It was the right decision to make Season 4 canon, but that led to some awkward moments here. When Annie asked, straight-faced, “Chang was faking Changnesia?”, was that supposed to be a joke? And if so, what was the joke? Anyway, a big Season 4 issue was that, even though it had plenty of great individual moments, it was never clear that the writers knew where they were heading towards. Right now, I only have a vague sense of where this season is headed, but that is fine because I feel like the creative team has figured out where it is headed.
I also feel compelled to mention the surprise cameos: first off, a recycled J.D. voice-over from Scrubs takes the place of a wrap-up Winger speech, and it was looped in so perfectly that I almost thought Joel McHale was doing a Zach Braff impression. Also, it added to Troy’s slam on Zach and made that crack funnier retroactively. Also … Pierce appeared? While watching, I was thinking, “Okay, sure, Pierce left Greendale, but he can still appear as a hologram.” It didn’t hit me until later that Chevy Chase – you know, the actor who plays Pierce – had left the show, and thus no appearances should have been expected, and certainly not in the first episode.
“Introduction to Teaching”
When friends become lovers, the dynamic of the relationship changes in some ways, but my gut instinct tells me that the way they interact stays a great deal the same and that it is a less awkward transition than some movies and TV would have us believe. Why am I bringing this up while discussing an episode in which no romantic relationship is begun, ended, or really addressed in any way? Because should Jeff Winger and Annie Edison ever make the transition from friends to lovers, then their interactions with each other should remain as they are in an episode like this one. This was not a romantic storyline (at least not directly), but I have seen positive reactions to it from everybody – shippers, non-shippers, and neutrals alike. This is the Annie Edison that so many Community fans fell in love with – the go-getter who admires Jeff Winger but won’t put up with any of his bullshit. And this is why Jeff is such good friends with Annie: she challenges him when just about everyone else lets him slide by, and he throws those challenges right back at her. The scene in which Jeff causes Annie to lose an argument with herself is a thing of beauty. It is a prime example of how they are such a dynamic duo: they constantly criticize each other, but not to put each other down – they are both so right, and they are both doing it because they know the other can be better. It can hurt a little bit, and they both hurt each other enough to lead to the other storming out of the classroom, but it hurts so good. So, let me get a little personal with this analysis, and mention that I am rooting for Jeff and Annie to end up together, and this episode affirmed my faith in their relationship, despite the lack of romance (but certainly not lack of chemistry). Let me be clear that if they do happen, I want formidable Annie to survive. (And really, friends or more, that’s what Jeff wants, too: that much was clear by his smile when he saw the newspaper in the trophy case for the debate championship, probably my favorite moment of these two episodes.)
As for the rest of the teaching plot, Jonathan Banks is a rare breed among the Greendale faculty as criminology professor Buzz Hickey. I mean, who’s mean to Leonard? Sure, everybody makes fun of him, but that’s always after he gets a dig in at them, and he’s never been embarrassed by it. But Hickey not only wants to humiliate Leonard, he wants there to be no confusion as to his intentions. I saw some reactions from people who were profoundly disturbed that Leonard was treated so harshly. And, true, it was a little rough to watch, but it made it clear that Professor Hickey is for real, like him or not. And then he settled down at the study room table as a member of the student-teacher Save Greendale Alliance, and he fit right in, despite not being like Pierce at all, except for the oldness part. I suppose he also plays a similar mentor-to-Jeff role, in which he gives good advice mixed with words that should definitely be avoided. But this is a personality this crew is not used to, and it looks exciting.
As for the B-story, there were plenty of wonderful words of wisdom, as there tends to be with discussions of Nicolas Cage. Highlights included Shirley hypothesizing that she might also “accidentally win an Oscar” if she were in 70 movies in 30 years and spoke at random volumes, Shirley, again, figuring out that it is Nic Cage’s role in life to work in mysterious ways, and Abed’s explanation of the different kinds of good and bad regarding Robert Downey, Jr., Jim Belushi (man, that guy is still taking a beating), JCVD, and Johnny Depp. Danny Pudi’s Nic Cage impression was also excellent (especially “I’m a sexy cat”), but I’m not sure this storyline said that much about Nic Cage that the Internet hasn’t already figured out. Call me crazy (please do), but I think this storyline could have been an entire episode. It would have had more room to truly be inspired by Cage at his Cagiest. Like a Nic Cage movie at his best, it could have made no sense and the most sense.
It is always nice to see Kevin Corrigan. His appearance here certainly was not as memorable as “Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design,” but it didn’t need to be to work. With his encouragement to just let the craziness play out – but also his warning to be careful – he may just be the best Greendale professor of them all. With Jeff’s status as a teacher apparently making the faculty a stronger emphasis, it would be nice if we saw Garrity (and others) just hanging out occasionally.
As this new era moves forward, let’s take stock of where these characters are. Jeff and Abed both look great, but they’ve never had more than minor problems. Annie looks more promising than she has since Season 2 (and I thought she was pretty damn good in Season 3). Britta hasn’t done much yet, but her defiance and her overeagerness (which sometimes resembles ditziness) have been harmonized quite nicely. Shirley hasn’t had a major plot of her own yet, though she did play an interesting key part in the Nic Cage storyline. Craig not quite fitting into the student world or the teacher world is being intriguingly emphasized. Most worrisome, though, is Troy, who probably did the least of anybody these two episodes, and will only be appearing in three more! I won’t get overly worried, though, because there is a strong sense of directionality, so I don’t think the short shrift will be dealt to anyone for too long.
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