Community was created by a man called Dan Harmon. Now Dan Harmon is very intelligent, and in Community at least, he is always pushing the boundaries of what he can do with it. He is very very smart and he seems like a generally good hearted, if a little distant and a little introverted person. But because he's so smart, and because Community was his project, he was a little bit difficult to work with. I think Dan Harmon was a perfectionist, and the way he arranged things were a little bit.... unorthodox. That is to say, he was constantly changing things and adding things - like it could be happening a minute before they shot the scene. He also had an arrogant streak if someone crossed him, and sometimes did things that were not... totally.... appropriate. And I think for these reasons, and also because the show he was making wasn't getting very high ratings at all, he was fired as the showrunner.
This is a disastrous move. Dan Harmon was the primary creative force behind the show, he's what made the show what it was. He's what made it so self-reflective and spoofy and awesome, and almost everything unique about the show that the fanbase had grown to love was conducted by him. And now he's fired, and NBC wanted a show with higher ratings. So here was the question hanging in the air for us Human Beings that didn't want anything about the show's tone to change - are they going to try to make this mainstream? Are they going to add a laugh track and make it based around sex, make the characters stereotypical and flat and start to talk down to its audience about the pop culture references and just try to ungeekify it? Every Human Being knew that would be disastrous and idiotic - why cater to an audience that hasn't shown interest after three years, instead of catering to an extremely dedicated fanbase that loves everything about the show just the way it is?
So we waited with bated breath, hoping that the show would live up to everything we've built it up to be without Dan Harmon. The amazing makers of Community, who already had such an open dialogue with the fans (did you notice they added #sixseasonsandamovie as the final few seconds of Introduction to Finality? That's amazing) even gave us a bit of a teaser, something to keep the fans occupied for a while, about the plan for postponing the premiere of the show to October 19th, and then moving it again to February 7th - it also added in a little tidbit about the famous Community flashmob orchestrated by the fans, and another about the incomprehensible minds behind NBC.
The point I'm trying to get across is after this long long wait for the show to come back on, the fans were anticipating it like crazy, with a bit of doubt but hoping a lot. Everyone who follows Community knows the name Dan Harmon, and they know the impact he had on the show, and we could only guess at the what the new people were going to do - I think we were all sort of pulling an Abed, running scenarios in our own little Dreamatoriums to see all the different ways this could turn out.
And then along came October 19th.
Here comes the review part of my post.
Overall the show was actually not too bad - again with the dialogue to its fanbase, and it was certainly wacky and zany as ever. It stayed true to what had been set up at the end of last season, for the most part. Overall, I actually expected worse.
That being said.....
The rhythm of it seemed off somehow. Don't ask me to explain that, because I don't know. It just seemed like they fell back a little too hard on old habits from older seasons. Like Pierce's "I know this has a joke", for instance, was a gag that lasted the duration of the episode and with little pay off, and was basically the same gag as Troy's "Don't eat the crab dip!" from season 1 - except that one lasted the duration of a scene, and was pulled off brilliantly by the way Donald Glover played it out. No disrespect to Chevy Chase, he's great at what he does, I just don't think the writers really gave him a lot to work with for the one thing he had.
But what really bugged me were a few tiny things about the characters that really just weren't consistent with what had already been set up.
This was a little moment in the episode that lasted probably two seconds, but it stuck with me because it was... weird. Annie's talking about being a senior now, and pullin' pranks, skippin' classes, not pronouncin' her Gs, etcetera. That's Annie enough - it's normal for Annie to try to be a little bit outside her own comfort zone. Then Shirley says "Ooh! I'll pull pranks with you!" Which again, is Shirley enough - mischeivous when she can be, responsible when she should be. And Annie says uncomfortably, "Yeah, or, you know, Jeff, whoever's around, whatever."
That bugged me. Sure, Annie may have had a crushy type thing on Jeff for a while there, and they certainly had chemistry. But Annie's fascination with Jeff ended around season 2 - she didn't always feel the need to be around him all the time after that, or to try to earn his approval all the time. She likes Jeff, and yeah, would probably go out with him if he asked, but it's weird for her to start doing things while looking over her shoulder for any approving smile or something from Jeff when she stopped doing that quite a while back.
Which brings me to Jeff.
Jeff's character was possibly the least consistent with what had already been established. It was startling, "jarring" is a word I read in a review already. Maybe he would get to the point where he would save seats for his friends in class - MAYBE. He already gave up his career for Shirley's business, so anything's possible. But calling himself "The New Jeff" didn't sit well with me. Yes, he obviously had an evolution through the seasons. That almost goes without saying. But that wasn't by Jeff's CHOICE. He was changed by becoming part of a family, which is an experience Jeff had been deprived of for most of his life. He didn't make a decision one day to stop being so superficial and selfish and to think for more people than himself. That never happened. It was a gradual, natural change that happened to Jeff unconsciously, until he finally looked at himself from a different angle and went "whoa". (See Pillows and Blankets, Introduction to Finality).
But he never made some sort of new year's resolution saying "I'm gonna not be a douchebag now. I'm going to be pleasant and friendly and sincere." Because that would just be ridiculously out of character. Jeff hates change, he likes knowing he can predict what will happen, and manipulate the situation to his will. So deciding one day to change himself? I'm sorry. I don't see it.
Also, he's going to graduate early because he took online courses over the summer? That's completely out of character. It wouldn't bother Jeff to spend the few months more at Greendale, because he'd already devoted so much to the group and the school. And he's mentioned a few times, in a few different ways, that "doing more work than what he has to is his definition of failing".
And sure, if we wanted to be lazy about it, we could credit this change of heart to his evolution through the seasons. But I'm not going to back down for that, because that is a weak argument. Consistently throughout the series, Jeff spends his time passing with the bare minimum and looking for "blow-off" classes - classes in which he doesn't have to do any work, he can just sit and goof off. Jeff starts a riot in one relatively recent episode upon finding out that he'd have to take summer classes - the riot that makes him and the study group known as "The Greendale Seven" and gets them expelled.
And suddenly Jeff decides that that's okay and takes a bunch of online courses in summer? I'm sorry, that doesn't fit in this puzzle. It really just doesn't make sense.
It was lazy writing, in all honesty, and that is one of the first times that I've seen Community be lazy at all. It was weird. And I didn't like it.
Abed was too..... normal. Now Abed is an extremely difficult character to get right, but that doesn't change the fact that they didn't. They got close, and if I weren't analyzing this episode the way I do everything else, I probably wouldn't notice. But I am, and I do. In spite of the fact that they had his "happy place" going for the duration of the episode, (which was good, and totally fit with Abed) he wasn't being himself. Abed is a fly on the wall, an observer. To have him zoned out for just about the entire episode really just didn't fit.
I know what your arguments are going to be. "But it was like the Dreamatorium. He was running scenarios in his head." And sure, that's true. But rarely does Abed EVER bury himself so deep that he can't come back. You'll notice that even in the Dreamatorium he was learning. He listened carefully to everything Annie said, and filed the "new data", if you will, in his head. The only time Abed ever went close to going that deep in was Introduction to Finality, when he became Evil Abed and tried to make the current timeline the darkest timeline.
So here's what's wrong with what they did. While Abed's "happy place" was very well done, and stayed true to character, Abed even HAVING a happy place isn't true to character at all. Abed doesn't use fiction as others do, to take himself away from reality - he uses fiction to help him UNDERSTAND reality. When he's unhappy, he doesn't ignore it and push it away, as others might - he deals with it in his incredible mind and THINKS about it, running scenarios, maybe, and figuring out what to do. So, even though Britta told him to go to a happy place, he would NEVER be able to bury himself like that, because if there's one thing about this fly on the wall, it's that this fly is too awesome for the wall. Abed almost ALWAYS takes action for his emotions. There's never been an episode where Abed simply doesn't DO anything, because that's not how he's learned to deal with things. It's not that Abed wouldn't listen to Britta - I'm almost certain he would. It's just that beneath his happy place his mind would be whirling about what to do, and it wouldn't take twenty two minutes for him to figure it out.
Those were my main problems with the show - since the show is character-driven by nature, of course all the problems were with how the characters were written. But Annie, in general, was well in character and funny, as was Shirley and Britta and Troy - I think Pierce as well, though he didn't actually do much - like I said, his whole thing during the episode was "I know this has a joke", until finally at the end he came up with "Gay balls!" Which, while in character, was a little disappointing.
On the bright side, there were some good things about the episode.
Britta and Troy's fountain scene was very..... Troy and Britta. Which was good. Except for the fact that Troy wouldn't let Britta do that at all, for fear that she'd Britta it, and that Abed didn't join them even though it was his and Troy's thing in the first place. Set-up didn't make sense, but the scene itself was good enough.
I very much enjoyed Jeff's scene with the dean, while they were dancing. The dynamic there was perfect, so good on them for that.
Abed's happy place was quite well done, and worked well with Abed's character (except for the issues that I've mentioned, but never mind).
At the end, when Abed tells Annie to maybe go into Forensics? THAT was a good moment. Reminded me of the moment in the ever-famous Remedial Chaos Theory, when Abed tells Annie she should move in with them. One of those incredible moments that prove that Abed sometimes knows them better than they know themselves.
At the end when it turns out the dean now lives next to Jeff? Good moment, that one, and in character for both of them. "Please tell me you're breaking into that condo." Well done.
So, there were a FEW good moments in the episode, but overall it was just... off. It wasn't as obvious as I've made it sound, I've just broken it down. But it was clear, to me at least, that there was something wrong about it. Some inconsistensies and things, that really shouldn't have happened.
I realize I'm reading way too much into it. Totally. But that's what I do, and usually Community has been able to fulfill that with satisfaction.
That's what I have to say about it.
3/5 stars.
