Community 1.04: Social Psychology

Hey kids, remember the GREs? Of course you don’t. You don’t even exist. If you read this, you’re almost certainly a) about my age, or b) my mom (hi mom!), and grad school is either a distant memory or something you never really thought of. (Or maybe you’re taking them soon, in which case it might not be correct, strictly speaking, to say you “remember” them. Pedant.) Language has always been my strong suit, and I’d worried somewhat about the mathiness. I was pleasantly surprised, upon seeing my results, to see that not only had I done better than expected on the math, but that I had beaten my English score by 50 points.

Lifehack: Take the GREs on very little sleep, with one night of practice, while completely fucked up on cold medicine.

While gloating at work the next day, our genial psychology professor happened to be passing by. Upon hearing the news, he suggested I consider psychology, as it was a good field for humanities-oriented minds with an uncharacteristically analytical bent. I took this advice as seriously as I could, considering I was slightly more than one semester away from graduation, and that it would have taken somewhere between two and four semesters to accommodate changing my concentration into the social sciences. (In retrospect, this wouldn’t have been a terrible idea. With empirical knowledge of the intervening decade, it’s obvious I should have jumped from major to major until they kicked me out in 2026 for attempting to establish a concentration in phrenology.)

“But Peter,” you say, because we’ve gotten to know each other by this point, and some informality is appropriate, “what does this have to do with Community? Also, that story was boring. Like, really fucking boring.” I’m not going to disagree with you--I got bored enough that I went and read some Guardians of the Galaxy easter eggs in another window, and I’m writing the goddamn thing--but it’s a way of sneaking up on an increasingly obvious anomaly in my biography: why did I, an introspective, pretentious, somewhat primitivist kid with a weird sense of holiness and a fierce teenage crush on Joseph Campbell, never give the discipline of psychology so much as a passing thought when I had a chance to make it a meaningful part of my life?

I didn’t have a great sense of the interdisciplinary nature of gnosis, for one. Also, I entered college in a very Graham Greene sort of place, emotionally, and it’s probably not an accident that most of the women I’d spend the next four years trying to sleep with were firmly in the humanities camp. But I think the largest factor was that my older brother had already done the psychology track. Hence, a vast and thriving play space of human knowledge just seemed kind of quaint and redundant. This is stupid reasoning, of course. It’s also not a surprise; have you met 19-year-olds? It’s not uncommon among siblings, or any closed group: life is more a JRPG than an adventure game, and identity means specialization. Who we are is ineluctably affected--and is to some extent determined--by who surrounds us. Which is as good a way as any to get started on “Social Psychology,” written by Liz Cackowski and directed by Anthony Russo.

As we approach, Spanish class is coming to a close, with what might be an alien language scrawled on the chalkboard. Jeff leaves, but doubles back to find Britta. Not for the usual reasons; he’s just trying to avoid Shirley, with whom he is having difficulty managing small talk due to her aggressive lack of cynicism. Jeff points out that they've been growing closer as friends; "I'm really glad you're not hitting on me anymore," she replies. More importantly than the still-not-self-conscious will-they/won't-they in the foreground, Vaughn waves at Britta as she passes. Some interesting stuff about Vaughn. We'll follow up with Vaughn later.*

In the cafeteria, Annie catches up to the returning Professor Duncan in line and asks if she can participate in the psyche lab he's running later that day. Ignoring her concerns about her status as a freshman, Duncan does take the time to clarify that he's not allowed to date students. Annie is nonetheless interested, and the B-plot is established.

Meanwhile, Pierce receives a package containing Earnoculars, a head-mounted directional mic. Solid Snake could probably make it look pretty great, but on Clark Griswold it just looks kind of sad. Pierce's tech fetish will appear intermittently in the show. It's not exactly a character trait; the show will elsewhere get mileage out of the standard joke that old people are hopeless with tech. Perhaps it's meant to gesture toward overcompensation, which is essentially Pierce's defining quality. It's sort of an addendum to the Jeff/Britta plot, I suppose. Appropriately for an episode themed on navigating the competing demands of multiple relationships, "Social Psychology" helpfully reminds us that this show really hasn't figured out what to do with its cast yet.

Back in the actual show, Annie dragoons Troy and Abed into Duncan's experiment, providing me with a vital opportunity to use "dragoon" as a verb. "Do they do stuff to your butt?" asks Troy. When Annie assures him that they do not, he presses the issue: "Do you get paid more if they do stuff to your butt?" Again Annie says no, now clearly confused, but Troy says he'll do it anyway. Abed has plans, but agrees when Annie asks him to participate because of their friendship. Elsewhere, Vaughn is chatting up Britta, and Jeff goes over for what is almost certainly an operational cockblock, but we're going to ignore their story for the time being and head into...

...Duncan's lab, where he's instructing Annie and several other students--among them the delightful and thankfully recurrent Garrett--on the specifics of the experiment. The subjects are in the next room, waiting for the experiment to begin, but the waiting is the experiment. Duncan has hypothesized that they will prove the aptly named Duncan Principle: "the more control lost by the ego, the more gained by the id, resulting in the surprisingly predictable emotional eruption or breaking point, known to ma and pa," Duncan illustrates with a mime shotgun, "as a good ol' fashioned tantrum." Annie, smiling at this secret knowledge shared within the subgroup, goes out to tell the assembled crowd that they'll be starting in five minutes. Garrett also smiles, but it's not as charming, because Garrett is not played by Alison Brie. Instead, it's sort of unnerving. We don't get to dwell on it, because, upon being informed of the five-minute delay, Chang has a complete breakdown and leaves the room in tears, fury, and a smattering of Spanish.

Shirley meets up with Jeff, and wants to walk and talk. Jeff agrees to give it a shot; awkward silence ensues, followed by crosstalk. A connection is finally made upon the discovery of a topic for which they share a passion: making fun of Pierce. Soon, the conversation evolves to making fun of Vaughn. "He's the worst," says Jeff.

No, Jeff. Vaughn is not the worst. But we'll get there.

In the experiment, the crowd is beginning to thin. Troy breaks, in a shower of tears, and leaves. Only Abed now remains.

Back on the quad, Jeff explains the Complicated Situation with Britta, which is of great interest to Shirley. Not so much because she's a gossip, although she is, like most people are; Shirley's interest is specifically because she's a Jeff/Britta shipper. (Jritta? Beff?) "We're not pandas in a zoo," Jeff admonishes her, but is still a bit put off when they pass Britta and Vaughn making out on a blanket.

Depressed!Jeff leans against a vending machine. Britta apologizes for the awkwardness, and explains that she didn't tell the group about Vaughn because she didn't want them making fun of him. Jeff tries to be supportive, and Britta says he won't see anything like that again, and this conversation is many orders of magnitude less awkward than it is IRL. Maybe it's because they're fictional; maybe it's just because they're so attractive. The next time Jeff and Shirley walk together, he tries to refrain from Vaughn-bashing, resolving instead to friend the hell out of the green tea drinking drum circler.

Annie, drenched in sweat, is looking inappropriately attractive with her dissheveled hair. She apologizes to Abed for having kept him waiting for the last 26 hours, and asks that he wait another five minutes. With no visible irritation, he agrees. Upon her return to Duncan's room, Garrett freaks out and leaves. The Duncan tantrum has at this point gone viral, as Duncan has his own meltdown, and blames Annie for bringing Abed in the first place. He calls the experiment off; Annie unceremoniously opens the door and bellows at Abed to go home.

Jeff, far from this more interesting plot, has been trying to make nice with Vaughn. Over Spanish review, Britta confides in Jeff that Vaughn is getting a little relationshippy for her tastes, and has gone so far as to have written her a poem. Jeff sneaks a picture, and later shares the poem with Shirley.

Annie is still mad at Abed, and Abed is mad right back at her. He says he was "livid," but stayed--and stayed completely motionless--because she said they were friends. This is probably the emotional payoff of the episode, reminding us that Abed's inscrutability can be pretty unnerving when it's aimed at you. We have good reason to believe, from this episode and others, that Abed doesn't really know how to display anger in a way that's comprehensible to others, but his insistence on the importance of the label Annie awarded their relationship takes primacy in the scene. Abed gets labels, even if he's often extremely confused about what they represent. He understands the world in terms of nested categories, and he clearly places great importance on the category Annie placed him in. She was attempting to guilt trip him into giving up his evening on her behalf, but he didn't feel guilty. He felt honored.

But back to Sam and Diane.

Pierce arrives with the aforementioned Earnoculars and reveals to the group that Jeff and Shirley have been making fun of them. Upon being told that those jokes were about Vaughn and not him, he happily joins in, and the group momentum inspires Shirley to share the poem over Jeff's half-hearted objections. Britta enters with Vaughn, who is predictably upset: "This is the least tight thing that's ever happened to me." Britta stares daggers at Jeff, and Shirley is quick to throw him under the bus.

Later, Shirley and Jeff try to bond without ragging on anyone, but she has one more piece of gossip for him: "Britta told me she had a sex dream about you. You still have a chance."

Annie presents Abed with a gift bag containing the three good Indiana Jones movies, and Abed says they're cool. It's a really short scene; I'm not sure why I even brought it up.

Jeff apologizes to Britta, whom Vaughn has since broken up with. Jeff, defending his actions, says that he couldn't handle being "one of the girls," and asks if there's "a spot on the friendship spectrum between total stranger and having to hear about the guys you date?" They settle on cat-sitting, and there lies the Jeff/Britta ship, for now. Jeff takes care to rat out Shirley in retaliation, and Vaughn returns to his tribe, somewhat dirtied by the worrisome world the study group.

Later, Shirley and Britta are walking together, and Jeff asks to borrow Pierce's Earnoculars to eavesdrop; Pierce has since rejected the device, and opines on the nature of hearing and friendship: "You see, Jeff, there are certain things Man was not meant to hear. We were designed, by whatever entity you choose, to hear what’s in this range, And really, this range alone. Because you know who’s talking to us in this range? The people we love."

And so it stands, until the next one. I've been poking about, so far unsuccessfully, to find ways to cut the fat from these things, as I don't intend to have quite this much free time on my hands for the next five to ten years. The end tag has Troy and Abed making fun of people as they pass by the study room, unaware that they're easily within earshot. Upon being caught, Troy offers advice we can all use from time to time: "Just pretend like you're asleep. Just pretend you were sleeping."

First Appearances

• Vaughn: casual.
• Garrett: intense.
• The tears of Troy.

Highlights

• "The Soul Train awards were tonight! You promised butt stuff!"
• "Go kill John Lennon again, ya loser!"
• "I can't believe I showed you that poem. Oh God, my life is Degrassi High."

What Have We Learned?

"Some worries, man. Some worries."

Parade of Tears

*And by "later," I mean in a later recap. I thought I'd get to it here, but I didn't. No worries.

Community 1.03: Introduction to Film

Jeff is running! Class is beginning! Professor Whitman ambles in, and he's not in the show much--his last appearance is in the end of season one--but suddenly that "last" is a lot less finite, because apparently Yahoo went and uncancelled Community today. You probably heard of it, this being The Internet and all. It's refreshing, and confusing, and has hopefully given me the inspiration I need to finish interpreting my notes to "Introduction to Film." There's not a lot to say, because it's not a lot of episode; it's just a series of jokes and weird sight gags with a solid emotive payoff at the end. The C-plot is a single joke spread over three scenes. It's as close to an "origin story" as we ever get for Abed--with the possible exception of the actual origin story episode during the gas leak--but mostly this is a procedural episode for a series about the will-they-won't-they with Jeff and Britta. I love Jeff and Britta, but there's nothing interesting about their pairing beyond their sheer demographic gravity. The show will realize this by the latter half of the season, but for this episode...they can't make a show about Sam and Diane, because they're too busy making shows about making shows about Sam and Diane.

We now rejoin the recap "Introduction to Film," already in progress: written by Tim Hobert and John Pollack, directed by Anthony Russo.

Eustice Whitman, played by the always delightful John Michael Higgins, whom you might recognize as that guy from the thing, walks in, gaily reciting poetry. "Open your textbooks to page 37," he exhorts the class. "Now. Close them, and throw them away." The students happily do so, and he continues: "Those of you who are new, the motto of this class: Carpe diem! Seize. The. Day. No tests! No papers! You want an A? Live...in...the moment."

I'm in a DBT group right now. Dialectical behavioral therapy. I've been meaning to write something about it, but it's got a hint of Whitman about it, and this is about the least now-thing I could be doing right now, isn't it? The episode wrapped years ago, I've logged many viewings in the past, and the main reason to continue with this project is to lay a groundwork for more writing in the future. Sadness to the left, anxiety to the right. But here, now, it's dark, outside and in, a bedroom lit by cathode rays and liquid crystals. What there is of me, the linguistic construct, is mostly asleep, out on the veldt with Gau. There'll be moments to live in tomorrow. Right now, we die in our dreams. Right now, we prepare.

Pierce, always hopeless with tech, fights with his phone. Troy sneezes like a girl. This will make up the aforementioned B plot. Back in the main plot, Jeff invites the gang to join him in coasting to an easy A with Whitman. Annie rejects the idea on ethical and pedagogical grounds, then quickly changes her mind when Troy says he's in. Shirley joins in out of a love of Robin Williams; Abed rejects the idea on that basis. When pressed on the issue--and subtly reminded, again, that life and media representations of life aren't the same thing--he clarifies that his dad will only pay for classes that will help him run the family restaurant. (Spanish? In a falafel restaurent? In Ohio?) Britta, appalled that Abed's dad seems to have planned out his life for him, gets out her checkbook and offers to pay for a film class.

Back in class, Whitman berates Shirley into self-actualization in classic reclusive kung-fu master fashion. He moves to Ms. Edison, whom he criticizes for preferring "to write about what happens to other people than live what is happening to her." This is what usually passes for a humanistic sentiment in our culture, and it's possible the writers meant for it to sound wacky and authentically endearing, but Community will thankfully go above and beyond by ripping this idea to shreds.

We'll come back to it.

On the way out, Whitman singles out Jeff, having identified him as a tourist. "If you don't genuinely seize the day before the end of the week," he instructs, "then you'll be seizing an F for the semester."

Outside, Abed is about with a handheld camera. "Our first assignment is a documentary," he explains to Britta. "They're like real movies but with ugly people." He say's doing a film about his dad, and on cue, Abed's dad--Abedad?--approaches. Britta, being Britta, takes the opportunity to make the personal political. "Oh, I get it. Because I'm Arab I must hate women. Let me tell you something. I love women, but I'm getting a major b-word vibe from you." (Personalization achieved!) Abed's dad makes a Seacrest joke. Britta tries to fight for Abed, but he won't join in, and continues filming everything dispassionately. Jeff tries to intervene, and Abedad storms off, at which point Abed declares that Jeff is now playing his dad.

In the cafeteria, Jeff desperately tries to display authentic whimsy for Whitman, who's having none of it. Abed, flush with Britta's cash, spends ostentatiously and shows off his new, more expensive camera. Pierce sits down with Troy and offers to help him develop a manlier sneeze. C-plot 67% complete, and we move on.

While Whitman crosses campus, Jeff runs through with a kite, stopping only to jump rope with a group of girls; Whitman remains unimpressed. Britta approaches, and complains to Jeff that Abed wont' talk to her: "He just keeps filming me, and, and--telling me that I'm playing the role of his mother!"

An interior shot brings us back to the study room, where pizza is being served. Britta signals to Jeff that it's time to be leaderful. "So, Abed," he asks, trying and failing to sound nonchalant, "how's film class?" Abed replies that the movie's more important than class, insensate to Britta's offense; when a coffee guy walks in bearing a tray full of lattes he's purchased with her money, she freaks out and leaves. Jeff soon follows suit.

A short commercial break later, we're back in the study room. Jeff has lured Britta and Abed's dad there for a discussion: Britta with Ravi Shankar tickets, Abedad with the promise of meeting Weezer. Jeff argues to both of them that the lesson here is that people should stay out of each other's business; Abed's dad makes a convoluted Iraq joke that turns out to be about Britta's boobs. Just as the yelling gets started in earnest, Abed, who has been sitting at a smaller table wearing headphones, takes them off and announces, "I'm finished!"

The film, like most Real Actual Things, fights summary and deserves viewing on its own. For those who really, truly insist on reading these without having seen the show, I'll refrain from asking what the fuck is wrong with you and summarize nonetheless: Abed ruins his parents' marriage, his mom leaves, his dad resents him for it. Abed's father is in tears, and speaks to his son in Arabic: "I never said I blamed you for her leaving." Abed replies, "You never had to say it."

"My son is hard to hard to understand," says Abed's father to the anglophones. "If making movies will help him be understood, then I'll pay for the class." I'm still feeling my way through the format, and I'm finding that direct quotes are usually redundant. You might not realize it from this entry, but I'm trying to cut back on them. Nonetheless, it felt wrong not to include this exchange, because...well, there's some real pain in this episode, and this scene is its redemption. It's just a glimmer in Britta's eyes as she fights her own fears and inadequacies on Abed's behalf, and in Abedad's insistence on arguing with everyone except Abed about Abed's life. Abed may or may not be on the autism spectrum. It doesn't matter very much. Abed is weird, and like all authentically weird people, it's not always funny. Sometimes it's heartbreaking and unsettling and scary.

But that's not the show yet. We're almost there.

Britta asks whether Abed manipulated her on purpose, and he's unapologetic: "Well, Britta, it isn't called friend business. It's called show business."

Outside, Troy tries out his new sneeze, scaring Shirley. C-plot complete! But back to Britta and Jeff. Britta thanks Jeff for getting involved, and tells him to kiss her; Whitman sees it, and squeals congratulation. "We're even," says Britta, and walks off. Jeff, thoroughly Peeta'd by this episode's plotline, is somewhat at a loss for words as he watches her go.

Like I said, taking pictures of taking pictures.

Finally, the end tag: krumping. It's a thing.

First Appearances

• Abed's first shown as an aspiring filmmaker, as opposed to a non-specific nerd.
• Prof. Whitman, who will be taken from us far too soon. Are you listening, Yahoo?
• Troy's effeminate mannerisms make a brief appearance, but are quickly clubbed into submission.
• Abed's dad will be back once or twice.

Highlights

• "This is no way to teach accounting!"
• "9/11 was pretty much the 9/11 of the falafel industry."
• "Troy sneezes like a girl!" "How about I pound you like a boy--that didn't come out right."

What Have We Learned?

"Only when we stop stopping our lives can we start starting them!"

Blood Pact

Community 1.02: Spanish 101

I am, like most of you, a creature of language, more fundamentally made of words than water. It was the main component of my skillset as a kid, perhaps to my detriment, but it only seemed to extend as far as English. Two years of Latin in elementary school, a brief Spanish sting in middle school, some French during my off-year, an abysmal French follow-up in undergrad, and finally two successful semesters of Japanese to fill out FAU's language requirement have left me with a pleasant awareness of a few other languages, but nothing like actual competence. Bilingualism is thus, with apologies to Ta-Nehisi Coates, something of a superpower, something consistently just a little beyond my ken.

So I've done a lot of terrible, intro-level conversations. They have a kind of thudding rhythm, loudly declaring themselves to be the products of language instruction, as opposed to language. When you're asked to write your own--when writing is what you do with the time you're not spending being popular or well-adjusted--it's easy to overthink them. There's probably a lesson there: do the work and get the fuck out. Or maybe it's the opposite of a lesson. Maybe it's my personal Ezekiel 25:17.

Whatever. Find your own meaning. The series has landed, which brings us to "Spanish 101," written by Dan Harmon and directed by Joe Russo.

Once again the dean establishes the scene, this time on the PA. A tiny hint of the future Dean Dangerous, but he's still baking. Jeff snags an illicit parking space, while the study group awaits his entry, having already established him as their Charismatic Leader. Abed hints at his Abeditity by engaging in some meta-badinage with himself, and Britta foreshadows herself by complaining to the others. "You are obsessing over someone who doesn't give you a second thought," she says. "Meanwhile, in Guatemala, journalists are being killed by their own government." "Spoilers!" admonishes Abed. Britta does her best to mollify him, diplomatically: "Real stories? They don't have spoilers." She asks with not a small amount of condescension,  "You understand that TV and real life are different, right?" Jeff returns, rolling a Fonz vibe, and deftly brushes Britta's concerns aside. He's brought an empty binder, which Annie happily fills with copies of her notes, showing a somewhat unseemly level of satisfaction.

Jeff hands Britta another card, this time celebrating the 2-week anniversary of his horrible first impression. Britta tells Jeff that she's immune to his bullshit, but he shouldn't be exploiting the innocents in the others in the study group. She leaves in a cloud of indignant condescension; Pierce approaches Jeff and aggressively advises him, "You can't pursue people so desperately, it kind of creeps them out." Meanwhile, Annie and Shirley want to know more about Guatemala, as they're eager to get into the spirit and protest. Britta barely knows what she's talking about, but she does her best. 90% of everything is confidence, and Britta doesn't have it.

The episode and the recap take a queer turn here. The narrative is bifurcating into a standard A-B plot. The Britta-Shirley-Annie plot is introduced first, but the Jeff-Pierce plot gets the payoff. Of course, the real resolution of the episode is progress on the mytharc plot of Jeff trying to nail Britta. At any rate, I'm tempted to take these two separately. Perhaps I will.

Britta, as established earlier, doesn't know much about Guatemala, but cares enough to feel that she ought to know more, and it's this guilt that overflows into condemnation of the group. Annie and Shirley are eager to learn more, less out of concern for the freedom of the Guatemalan press than out of a desire to act out a college-like experience. Annie wants to perform being a college student to feel older, more worldly, and tougher; Shirley wants to perform being a college student to feel younger, less domestic, and more rebellious. They have different ideas--Annie suggests a candlelight vigil "like lesbians do on the news," while Shirley opts for baking brownies. It's a party. We'll get back to them.

The other plot takes us into Spanish 101, and Senor Chang, the chaotic evil dark prince of Greendale. This is the first I ever saw of the show, a free preview of that show some LJ folk were talking about. The clip is available here (sadly, no embed). The Man With the Star-Burns makes his first appearance before Chang dismisses the class: "Hands! 90% of Spanish." Crucially, homework is assigned: students are to pair off and perform conversations using short phrases from unit 1. Pairs are determined randomly via cards under the students' desks; Jeff bribes Abed to pair with Britta, but she foils his effort by swapping with Pierce.

Back in the study room, Pierce's backstory as the heir of a moist towelette empire is introduced. Apparently it's not far off from Chevy Chase's real life backstory. Similarly, both Chevy and Pierce are widely agreed to be insufferable assholes. Jeff and Pierce begin work on the homework. Pierce brings out scotch, demonstrating an desperate intent to make it a long evening of male bonding; Jeff, creeped out, wants to do the damn assignment and leave.

Outside, Annie and Shirley have put on quite a jaunty protest. Starburns appears again, once more aggrieved. As dance begins to spontaneously break out, Britta objects to the frivolity. Losing her temper, she describes the protest as "tacky and lame." Over her stammered apologies, Shirley accuses her of using fringe politics to make herself sound interesting but not wanting to be involved. "I do things," she says in her defense. "I went to...I don't do anything. What can I do?" Annie and Shirley offer to let her help.

Back in the study room, Jeff and Pierce have "something incredibly long and very confusing and a little homophobic and really, really, specifically, surprisingly, and gratuitously critical of Israel." He adds,"The only thing not included in this epic are the five phrases required to get me a passing grade." Troy and Abed pop in to remind them of the other plot, and remind us what doing the damn assignment looks like. Frustrated, Jeff blows up at Pierce, and bails to go hang with Britta.

We follow him out as he grabs a candle, then bribes a kid to give him the sign he's holding. He stands near Britta, who opens her tape and apologizes for being too harsh. "I'm not perfect." A very drunk Pierce stumbles out and screams at Jeff, revealing his professed insincerity. He snags on a passing candle and bursts into flame, running off into the night.

In class the next morning, the group exchanges concerns about Pierce's behavior, but Britta defends him, saying that he's lonely and wants respect in the group: "I think he's spent his whole life looking out for himself, and he would trade it all for a shot at some kind of family."

Chang explains that Pierce has filled him on on their team's dissolution, and offers to give Jeff a C and let Pierce go alone. Jeff refuses: "Pierce, I understand if you don’t want to be my friend. But this thing we’ve created is bigger than the both of us and it deserves to be done right." What follows is something special, and the moment when I began to understand why my friends were so dead-set on getting me to watch this show. Set to the gently cathartic strings of Aimee Mann's "Wise Up," a slow-motion montage shows Jeff and Pierce engaging in an epic, highly offensive, and wildly incomprehensible exploration of the human condition across race, time, and Jewishness. And robots. As the end of the first "real" episode, it sets the tone for what the show is going to be best at: wholly inappropriate, but entirely legitimate emotional response. The presentation is, diegetically, every bit as awful as we'd imagine--it's unclear, from the blocking, who gets the F and who gets the F-minus--but Jeff is giving it everything he has, maybe for Pierce, maybe for Britta, maybe for the group that only Britta and Abed can see right now. Perhaps he doesn't know why he's doing it. Perhaps he doesn't need to.

The moment passes. In the hallway, Britta congratulates Jeff on an authentically selfless act. "How do you know I didn’t do it just to get a shot at you?" he asks. Because after that clusterfuck, "no woman in that class would ever be able to look at you as a viable sexual candidate ever again." Momentarily at a loss for words, Jeff hangs back and watches her leave; Pierce catches up to him, throws an arm over his shoulder, and shares his wisdom.

Finally, another piece in the gentle balance of delights that is Community falls into place with the end tag. The end tags are where Troy and Abed, the adorably co-dependent Bert and Ernie of Greendale, do their best work, and I'll not belabor it by describing it.

First Appearances

• CHANG, MOTHERFUCKER!
• Starburns, the patron saint of Greendale.
• The Spanish Rap in particular, and the end tag in general. As related to this show. They didn't invent it or anything.
• While they've only begun to plumb its depths, the Troy-and-Abed bromance can be seen in its infancy.
• Shirley's inappropriate tendency to respond to any situation with baking.
• Insecure!Britta, a welcome change from trophy goddess of the pilot.
• Pierce's quasi-paternal relationship with the fatherless Jeff, which will be a major focus of seasons two and three.
• Also, sperm.

Highlights

• "Dos Conquistadores," obvi.
• The Spanish Rap, equally obvi.
• "Why do you teach Spanish?

What Have We Learned?

"Things like this will ultimately bring us together as an unlikely family."

Native American History Exhibit

Community 1.01: Pilot

Pilots are strange things.

I'm sure analogous processes exist in other media, but none immediately spring to mind. It would be interesting if every novel came with a first chapter that lagged behind the rest of the book by several rewrites, but I doubt anyone would think it to be a sensible idea. However, the exigencies of television mean that often it's prohibitively expensive to do anything else. The pilot sets up the plot and characters, the all-important "why this day" that situates the narrative, but the show has often changed around that narrative by the time the series begins production: characters are added or lost, actors change, personalities soften or harden. The pilot often ends up feeling like an issue #0, an odd prequel of greatest value to completists.

30 Rock's pilot is famously uneven; Parks and Recreation's pilot is practically unrecognizable upon review. Cheers has an iconically strong pilot--Tina Fey cites it as an example of what the 30 Rock pilot wasn't--and it's a fine place to start when examining what a sitcom pilot is called upon to do. The cast is introduced one at a time, and paired with throwaway characters who set up the jokes, letting us in on what we'll need to know in a fairly organic fashion. Cheers gets a lot of mileage from adapting theater traditions to the multi-camera setup; the blocking is crisp and intuitive, the jokes well paced for audience response, and the comedy gets physical very quickly.

Community has its share of commonalities with Cheers: it's initially structured on a confident, likeable womanizer and the pretentious blonde he wants to hate-fuck. Both shows are about homes-away-from-home for various misfits, losers, and temporarily embarrassed geniuses. On Cheers, Diane is dropped into the plot via a specific disappointment; the rest of them are there by virtue of the sheer joy of drinking alcohol and the sublime shittiness of living and working (or not working) in Boston. Cheers is a finely tuned machine that starts off smooth and stays there well into its run. Community is messier. It's a show about messier, or at least it will become one when it begins in earnest with "Spanish 101." For now, Community #0, written by Dan Harmon and directed by Joe Russo.

It starts with the Dean, the muse who calls our players into being: Troy ("remedial athlete"), Britta ("twenty-something dropouts"), Shirley ("middle-aged divorcees"), and Pierce ("old people keeping their minds active as they circle the drain of eternity"). Jeff, Abed, and Annie fall outside even the domain of "loser-college" for now. Jeff's too awesome, perhaps, and Abed and Annie might be too weird even for Greendale. But we digress. (We'll digress in a minute. First, is that an uncredited Vicki in the crowd? This is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night.)

We see Jeff for the first time, being followed by a fast-talking Abed. Abed is upbeat and energetic, a storm of tics and gestures. Like the rest of them, he's a rough draft. The mostly unchanged Jeff, being too busy enacting the story to examine it, asks Abed about the blonde in their Spanish class, and Abed rattles off a surprisingly detailed biography, closing it with a verbatim performance of something Britta said to him earlier. (I have been known to employ variants of this. In my experience, Jeff's a lot less weirded out by it than most.) Having become acquainted with Britta via Jeff's interest and Abed's creepifying observational skills, along with a brief shot of her responding to the Dean's call, we'll have to wait a bit for more. Jeff has an appointment with one Prof. Ian Duncan, Psychology, to discuss the premise of the show. Jeff, accomplished badass lawyer, was caught with a fake degree and needs a real one, and apparently Greendale counts. That said, he doesn't intend to do any work, and asks Duncan to help him cheat. Mentions are made of when Jeff helped Duncan beat a DUI rap, but overall Duncan seems both competent and wise, a dignified man in an undignified milieu. (This, like so much else, will change.) Duncan, in his British sort of way, admonishes Jeff, and appeals to the value of learning. Jeff finishes what the Dean started, bringing the invocation to a close: "If I wanted to learn, I wouldn't have come to community college."

We're not quite where we need to be, for one location remains to be visited. In the cafeteria, after a brief shot of Pierce trying to scam some food, our third-person-limited consciousness floats over to Britta, cramming for the aforementioned Spanish test. Jeff ambles over and, seemingly off the top of his head, invents a backstory as a Spanish tutor, inviting Britta to join his "study group." Britta's Spanish is too weak to realize that he's full of shit--90% of everything is confidence, after all--so she agrees. The study group has been called into being!

Granted, it's bullshit. It's just something professional liar Jeff thought up to get laid. But an idea, once bidden, cannot be denied its reification, especially when it's taken into the study room. The study room is magical. I'm going to be writing a lot about the study room.

Appropriately, Britta lays out her baseline. All we know about her, at this point, is that she's desirable, so it's going to be Important: honesty. Above all else, honesty. Jeff, continuing the lie, does his best to roll with it. Abed enters, realizing that the story needs him, but we have a couple more stops to make before the show can begin.

Jeff meets Duncan on the athletic field, and they jabber about ethics. Jeff lays out the closest thing to an authentic identity we're going to get: "If I talk long enough, I can make anything right or wrong." Duncan sort of misuses "moral relativism," but he's a psychology professor, and you can't expect too much from those people. He seems to give in, and Jeff returns to find the rest of the cast.

Abed has invited them. Of course he has. Beyond the five we've already met is another, a young, dark-haired woman who seems quite skeptical of Jeff and his study group. Troy makes the first ever Seacrest joke. Oh, and Britta's gone. Attempting to bail, Jeff runs into her outside, and quickly changes his mind a second time.

Returned to the study room, Pierce introduces everyone, getting the names wrong and sexually harassing Shirley in the process. (In a pleasant change of pace for sitcoms, everyone in the room identifies it as such, even the token jock.) Annie's backstory, the Legend of Annie Adderall, is invoked. Jeff, still focused on his goal of a study group consisting only of Britta and himself, attempts to harness the group's internal tensions to destroy them, and they seem to be off to a good start when he gets a call from Duncan.

Duncan has agreed to help Jeff in exchange for his car, and Jeff accepts, faced with the terrifying prospect of studying. It's a short scene, and really, we ought to be getting back to the study room. Jeff meets Britta at the door, alarmed at the chaos inside. Jeff admits that he engineered the chaos in order to get them alone--I'm not sure if he's hoping the honesty will win him points, or hoping she'll be flattered at the scope of the manipulation in her pursuit--but she's only disappointed in him for using them all. Still, she agrees to go out to dinner with him if he fixes it. Thus inspired, Jeff strolls in and delivers the Very First Winger Speech. There's not easily accessible video of the scene, as far as I know, which is a shame, as I'd probably watch it every morning for inspiration. Jeff is lying, of course, in every word. In this scene, in this act to be repeated with every episode, is the basis of Jeff's character, and the frame that balances the show between sappy and cynical: the truth is what people want to hear, but not what they'll believe when they hear it. Jeff can tell the difference between truth and falsity, he's just swapped out the values. He tells the truth with lies, and lies with the truth.

"I hereby pronounce you a community."

At the conclusion of the speech, Annie is smiling so much she looks like she might be holding back tears. Britta breaks the moment by revealing to Jeff that she was lying about dinner, and she'd like him to politely fuck off and leave. He responds by offering to share the envelope full of test answers with the group.

On the steps outside, Jeff opens the envelope to find only blank pages and "Booyah" written, somehow, in John Oliver's accent. A brief confrontation with Duncan later--the moral status quo restored--brings us back to the steps, where the study group seems to instinctively want to comfort Jeff; Jeff instinctively finds himself giving advice. He protests the narrative role he's being boxed into: "I don't have any of the answers." When it's pointed out that he's obviously smart, Jeff's reply is one of uncommon insight, as far as pop culture generally goes: "Funny thing about being smart is that you can get through most of life without ever having to do any work." After a non-verbal conversation incomprehensible to Abed, Britta formally invites him back into the group his lie called into being, and after a beat, he follows them back inside.

There isn't a credits tag on this one, but there's a memorial nod to John Hughes, which I guess is close enough for a pilot. It's not much of an ending, and appropriately, neither is this. None of these characters are where they need to be, yet. Pierce is an unreconstructed hippie, Troy's a token jock who refers to Abed as "slumdog," Britta is pretty and perfect and empty. They'll change, albeit mostly in the next episode. Community is as much about how people don't change as it is about how they do. I'll also be changing, as I write more of these things up, and find the balance I need between vague commentary and tedious recap. I could spend a week reading the respected recappers and cutting this one down to size, but it seemed more prudent, and apropos, to just feel my way through. The best eps are in the second half of season three, anyway. I have semesters and semesters to learn.

First Appearances
Everything. It's the pilot.

Highlights

• Abed bursting into a scene from The Breakfast Club in response to tension.
• The first and only explicit mention of Asperger's.
• Dean Pelton appears but briefly, and the rest of the B-cast is unsurprisingly absent. The one exception, Prof. Duncan, will actually be absent most of the season. What can ya do.
• Seriously, is that Vicki?

What Have We Learned?
"You are all better thank you think you are. You are just designed not to believe it when you hear it from yourself."

Tantrum