 |
| Abed's done some unassigned history homework. |
*Against all odd "Community" has a roughly 50% chance at renewal, which is honestly more than anyone could've hoped for. Of course some would argue it's better off being cancelled & doing so would allow budding stars Donald Glover & Alison Brie to star in their own sitcoms or make more online videos with their douchebag boyfriend (I kid, I actually quite like Dave Franco), but is that worth Danny Pudi & Yvette Nicole Brown being cast off into stereotypical minority roles? I think not.
What immediately hit me about "Heroic Origins" is how controversial I think it's going to be. Abed looking for an origin story for the group, & invading some of the others' personal privacy to do so, seemed totally within character but the idea that this group was actually destined, because of a series of past interactions, to come together seems potentially against the spirit of the show. This was a group of vastly different individuals who came together merely because Jeff wanted to bang Britta, & Abed, misinterpreting Jeff's fake study plan, let slip a Spanish study group was forming. It is this idea that people so different in age, race, background, & interests could become the best of friends by mere happenstance that is, arguably, one of the pillars of the show. That's something I expect* others to feel was a major problem with the episode but I quite liked it.
*I usually reads three different recaps of every episode of "Community" but if I'm writing my own I wait until I've finished to read the others less I be tainted by group think, though I do allow myself to alter my episode grade one up or one down if I find the other takes particularly persuasive.
I've always found comfort in the the idea of destiny. It means there's a reason for all that bad things that happen to you*, it allows you to slow down life sometimes & embrace that you're not always in control, & it fits with there being a God which would be really great because death kinda scares me. That may be why I love the movie Signs & why I like Jeff, Who Lives at Home**, which is about a guy who becomes obsessed with Signs & begins to search for signs to follow in his own life, even more. Because of all this you could say I was destined to like this episode.*** Even if it does conceivably spit in the face of part of this show's past I like the idea that these people were always meant to find each other. That fate had decided to bring them together because it's what they needed. Jeff needed to realize caring about other people is a good thing, Shirley to find herself outside of being a mother and a wife, Troy to do the same outside of high school/football, Annie to let go and have some fun in her life, Abed to figure out he doesn't have to be alone in the world, Britta to find somewhere where it's okay that she's the worst, & Pierce to find the acceptance he'd been searching for his whole life. This group of people, in that study room, at the most ridiculous community college in the world was the place they could all find what they needed & so fate intervened.
*Unless you die.
**The best movie of 2012. It's on Netflix. Go watch it, you can read the rest of this when you're done. Also "Lost," another piece of entertainment that asked questions about destiny, was fantastic. Don't listen to the haters, it's the best drama in network television history.
***Yes, I'm aware of how absolutely terrible that sentence is.
Or maybe it didn't. Maybe it was all random, all coincidence, nothing but pure chance & only when it all worked out did it appear to be destiny. Personally I don't think it matters. Like I said before I find the idea they were meant to find Greendale & each other to be kind of beautiful, but whether we have some path we're all meant to follow or we don't I still buy into the idea that we all have free will & I think that those who outright reject this episode are forgetting about that. Even if fate designed for them all to meet, be it that first time in the study room or the yogurt shop at the end of this episode, they still had choices to make. They could have all gone their separate ways when they found out Jeff was a fraud of a Spanish tutor or they could have held on to their anger & resentment in this episode but they didn't. They made a choice, both times, to forgive & to stick it out. They decided that wherever life was leading them, be it by fate or chance, they were going to travel that journey together. And that's ultimately what friendship is about.
Grade: B+
Other Notes:
- I never covered the Chang portion of the episode but I liked how it played out. We all assumed that he was taking orders from Dean Spreck (whose name I had to look up), but I'm glad they returned to what Jeff said at the end of the Changnesia episode about how even if he didn't buy into the idea Chang had lost his memory everyone deserved a second chance at Greendale. It also furthered the theme they've often struck with Pierce in that both he & Chang are so often angry because they're excluded, sure there's a reason they so often are but, they're much better people when others are willing to accept them. I also liked that Abed was the one who brought Chang into the fold, & feigned not understanding when Chang realized Abed knew he was faking. Much of this season, & honestly the last as well, had Abed being too robotic but these last two episodes have really reinforced that he is capable of perceiving others' emotional needs & when he does so there's not a better friend to have.
- This episode was more fulfilling emotionally than comedically but there were still some hilarious moments between Alison Brie's portrayal of high school Annie (especially her locker monologue & being president of the Campus Crusader for Christ), the various Phantom Menace Jokes (Of course Abed would go around warning people about it), Abed alluding to his trying to cut Jeff's arm off, the awakening of the Dean to his cross dressing wants, & Dean Spreck's "plan B" being a giant solar powered spider. My personal favorite though was the two balloons popping giving Magnitude the idea for his catch phrase.
- “I had a hamburger the other day, and suddenly I'm not cold all the time anymore!” The Britta flashback stuff was the weakest of the group but that was a great line from her fellow anarchist.
- I enjoyed how lame Troy's faking his keg stand injury was, that felt like exactly how he'd do it.
- Annie running through a glass door was a little much (but now I've been reminded Troy once said that she did that back in high school, so good memory Community writers). Also how could she think Troy really didn't remember her after that? In a semi-related note I totally should've won most intellectual my senior year. O wait... It's going to take me six years to graduate from a party school. Good call class of 08!
- On the upside for Annie she was voted most likely to succeed in her rehab group.
- I mentioned Signs earlier & I think it's M. Night Shyamalan's best film but in this episode Abed refers to Shyamalan's preceding film, Unbreakable, which is also quite good & maybe the only superhero movie that's devoted entirely to the origin story.
- The Joe's anal TV memory moment that bothered me a little but really doesn't matter: In season 2's "Accounting for Lawyers" Annie realizes she knows Jeff's old colleague Alan (Rob Corddry) from Narcotics Anonymous but she says he must not recognize her because her skin cleared up, she lost weight, & she'd grown out her hair, yet in all the flashbacks tonight, including the last one where she's with some other NA members at the yogurt shop, she's skinny & her hair is longer that we've ever seen it. Should this continuity error be chalked up to Dan Harmon's absence? Or am I simply overly obsessed with Community/Alison Brie? I'll let you be the judge.
- Alan Sepinwall over at Hitfix had the exact criticism I predicted about destiny taking away from the magic of the group, while Todd VanDerWerff at the A.V. Club had less of a problem with this individual episode than an issue with the show being less challenging this season as it attempts more to please fans (both as a reaction to Harmon being gone & its natural aging as a sitcom) which I can't really argue with even if it's less of a problem for me.
- While I only recapped the first 3 episodes I certainly didn't stop because I haven't been enjoying this season. To be sure it's definitely the worst season of Community, but that might have happened even if Harmon had staid on (season 3 has some of my favorite episodes but it's easily the most inconsistent of the Harmon years). The first four episodes, though still good, sometimes felt a little off but I really feel, outside of the disappointing Christmas episode "Intro to Knots," that the show found a groove from episode 5 (“Cooperative Escapism In Familial Relations”) on. It's definitely not as funny as it was during the Harmon era but it still has an amazing cast & more than enough heart to make it one of the better shows on television.
- It looks like we're headed for a showdown with the darkest timeline. It felt like they were probably going there with the darkest timeline Jeff & Annie tag from a few episodes back & it feels like something that's either going to be incredible or a huge mistake. I'm not sure which one it'll be or how exactly how they plan to do it but I have to give them credit for the shear audaciousness of it. If you're facing a potential series finale you may as well go big.
- Also have to say I loved the Parks finale. It raised the stakes for next year in a variety of ways & thanks to the brilliance of Chris Pratt as Andy Dwyer as Bert Macklin it was an episode heavy in laughs.
No comments:
Post a Comment