Yeah. Not a fan of the last episode. Thankfully, this week’s has renewed my faith in the series like last year’s Falcons team in that organization (Woooo, Matt Ryan!). Marginally humorous aside aside, time to break down this week’s episode.
The A plot has Jeff coerce Troy into football so that his face isn’t smeared onto all the Greendale flyers and his credibility as a lawyer destroyed. The B plot concerns Britta’s misunderstanding of women group bathroom breaks. Weaving in between the two plots is Annie. Her feelings for Troy come out at random bursts as she tries to help Troy with Astronomy homework until Troy shuts her out when he reverts to being a jock, and Annie goes to Shirley and Britta for emotional support. Allison Brie has the neurotic nerd girl down pat, like Elliot from Scrubs but without the stories of people killing themselves. Not sure if that’s a plus or a minus.
Did you notice something? The episode didn’t concern Jeff and Britta’s not-relationship.
Dr. Cox, what have you got to say about this (at 0:14)?
Noted.
Needless to say, I’m glad it got away from this. It was really bogging the show down with trite fodder. It made room for Jeff and Troy’s back and forth about what’s racist, Pierce and the Dean making up a panracial mascot for the Human Beings (the students “have been called animals most of their lives,” the dean comments), and Troy devolving into the high school ass former self with politically conservative raps. I can’t make this stuff up.
Another absence of note: Abed. He only appears before the opening credits and during the closing credits. Abed again breaks the fourth wall by insinuating they’re a part of television show and comments on the Jeff-Britta -all right, in case I’ll be saying this a lot in the subsequent blogs, I’m calling it Jetta- on Jetta saying “will-they-won’t-they.” That gives me solace as it seems the writers are as bored with them as I am.
Other comments:
- I liked the callback to the second episode at the end with Jeff calling Annie “my lady” and her replying with “my lord.”
- The B plotline was pretty weak, but it served its purpose with Annie.
- I like that they’re letting Donald Glover play up the ass in his oblivious ass role. Fans of Derrick Comedy know he can do that well. Just check out “Girls Are Not To Be Trusted”.
- The credit tags. This show should be watched if only for the credit tags.
Glad to see there are some fellow Falcons fans in the class! I’ve been meaning to check out Community for a while, but I haven’t gotten the chance since I’m bent on watching my own show every week. It sounds like a great show, good job with the blog.
I’ve also noticed certain things being exhausted in Community. One that you mentioned, “Jetta.” I realize sexual tension helps a lot in a character driven show (Jeff and the professor in the next episode) but Jetta doesn’t seem to be going anywhere…at this point.
The next thing is the fruit basket turnover each week they do with character interactions. I guess it helps with character development, but soon they’re going to run out of cute little sub-plots for two random characters each week. I’m really glad they’ve solidified the friendship of Abed and Troy though, a static relationship does more for the audience-character connection than anything else at this point.