Seasick on the USS Emotion

I’ve been really busy with calf-birthing here on the outskirts of Kalamazoo, so I haven’t gotten around to posting my last few dispatches on the hydrology and soil composition of the upper Midwest.  So I’m dumping them all here, including a few scattered thoughts on Community and one particularly gifted re-capper of it.

Yup, Todd’s back, and what better place to start than the final episode of the series (or, actually, just the final episode of the season, since Community’s coming back, for better or worse).

What does Todd have to say about the conclusion to this utterly disappointing season, which Todd unaccountably if tepidly continues to defend?

“It was all a dream” is one of the cheapest conceits in all of fiction. Basically, it spends time creating an alternate world where a bunch of interesting stuff happens, then yanks out the basic idea of storytelling from beneath you. You can make this work by having the dream world say something satirically interesting (as in Lewis Carroll’s Alice books) or by having it offer psychological insight into the characters (as in many a TV dream episode)  . . . or by being upfront that this is all just a dream. But it’s still a risky trick because it takes one of the central tenets of storytelling—everything in this story matters to the characters and the audience—and throws it out the window. You might be freaked out by a dream or you might be put in a bad mood by one, but it’s unusual to have a dream significantly change your life. Dreams are for insight, not incident.

I once had a dream that a giant, five-horned goat spoke to me from out of a cloud of Cheetos and told me to devote my life to farming.  So I quit my job as a high-powered Wall Street attorney and moved out here to Des Moines.  How’s that for changing your life!

But I digress.  Let’s analyze the logic of the Werff.  First, make overly-sweeping statement.  Second, qualify that statement with enough counter-examples to refute your overly-sweeping statement.  Conclude by insisting on the accuracy of your first statement.  And you’re done!

So: dreams are the cheapest conceit in fiction.  Well, not in Alice in Wonderland, or many TV episodes (or The Wizard of Oz), but sure, what the hell, dreams suck.  The cheapest!  They are the Chevy Aveos of literature and film.

Let’s give this a try: Using voiceovers is the cheapest, laziest way of telling a story in film.  Sure, not when they’re used to create a doomed, fatalistic atmosphere, as in Sunset Boulevard and other noir; sure, not when they’re used in lieu of dialogue, as in Malick films; and not when they’re used to speed along the plot, as in Jules et Jim.  But when used ineffectively, voiceovers are cheap and lazy. 
Just like any other technique!

By the way, let me try to think of another episode of a TV show that tries to “offer psychological insight into” a character by getting into his/her dreams and fantasies.  Hmm—how about the Dreamatorium episode of Community?  Admittedly, not quite the same, as the action of the episode is signaled as fantasy from the beginning, but, come on, the word “Dream” is right there!  Boy, Werff must have hated that one!

Oh, right.  He gave it an A.  Well, it did have one thing in common with this year’s season finale.  It wasn’t funny at all. 

According to Werff, though, this episode was

easily the worst episode the show has ever produced and a really sour way to end a season that’s actually had its moments. Part of me wonders if this episode doesn’t prove that Community should be canceled, and possibly killed with fire,

Whoa there!  Where’s the vitriol coming from?  Next thing you’ll want to dismember the writers. 

Sure, this episode was bad.  But the whole season has been terrible.  This wasn’t even close to the worst episode of the season.  It’s like you’ve been storing up all this bile and venom over the course of a season that you bizarrely defended, and now it’s bursting out inappropriately.  Repression is a dangerous thing, Todd.

But let’s play a game.  Let’s try to turn Todd’s recap into something appropriate to a sitcom.  It’s like Mad Libs!  Let’s just sub in the phrase “being really funny” at key moments in the rest of this recap.  It’ll be so much better.

We’ll start with this choice sentence:

It’s an episode that all but exemplifies the season’s strained approach to fan service, filled with lots and lots and lots of moments that are just there because people liked them in the past, at all turns weirdly terrified of engaging with its central emotional territory: the graduation of Jeff Winger.

For “its central emotional territory: the graduation of Jeff Winger,” substitute “being really funny.”  Isn’t that better?

Let’s try it now:

See, this is apparently how Jeff has chosen to deal with his concern about graduation, with his wishes to not leave Greendale. Which would be fine if it told us anything about how the place had changed him were really funny.  Evil Jeff is a construct who’s nowhere near the snarky asshole that Jeff started the show as. He’s an artificial way to up the conflict, both here and in the third season finale.  The problem is that he’s a one-off joke character the series is trying to imbue with depth because the fans liked that once not really funny.  Indeed, the entire central portion of this episode—the bulk of its running time—is taken up with a constant barrage of things that worked once or twice but now feel like the show is just trying too hard. Paintball? A movie reference for the sake of a movie reference? Chang taking over the school? Fake Dean? It’s all way, way too much, and it does nothing to elucidate Jeff’s emotional conflict be really funny.

That’s so much better.  It’s not like everything Werff says is worthless.  Just most of it.

To be honest, the first five minutes and the last two or so are pretty okay. They’re not terrific, and they’re obviously strained by trying to cram an entire emotional journey into 13 episodes,

Oh, right.  Journeys.  Shiver me timbers, we’re sailing away!  On the good ship Emotions.

but there’s some good stuff in there, particularly when Annie reveals her graduation party surprise and as Troy keeps trying to downplay how he forgot to bring soda.

And the latter was the only funny part in the episode.  Thank God for Donald Glover’s line readings. 

Jeff tosses a die, and it gets stuck on its side. Evil Jeff crosses over, Terminator-style, in the Dean’s office. Abed gets sent to the darkest timeline by a warping paintball gun. I honestly can’t believe I’m typing some of this shit.

The episode was bad, no doubt.  But it this any more outlandish than earlier outlandish episodes?  The problem was that it wasn’t funny.

But seeing all of the Greendale irregulars hanging out at his ceremony and hearing him talk about how the group had made him a better person just made me realize how much of the episode’s initial conflict had been shunted off to the side in favor of the giant morass of dumbassery that took up the middle section.

So, in other words—fuck anything but journeys and growth and emotional conflicts and Jeff spouting banalities about how much he loves his classmates. 

Jeff has been changed by Greendale. He isn’t the dick lawyer he was before he met the study group, and there’s an interesting story to be told about that growth, a story the episode actually starts to tell before abandoning it in favor of the crazed dream sequence.

There are also, you know, jokes.  Those might be good to have too.  But I forgot, “growth” is what Community is about. It’s one great fungus!

Because let’s be honest: Jeff’s graduation is something that the show has been building toward all along. Did you feel satisfied with how it played out? Did you feel like bringing back all of the stuff that was in the episode for the umpteenth time serviced that story in any way, shape, or form?

I did not.  Why?  Because I didn’t laugh at all.

Jaime Weinman, a critic who teaches me new ways of looking at the medium every day, tweeted shortly after the episode that the real relationship of Community is to its own subtext and how that subtext gradually became the text of the show, thereby creating a more and more insular product.

Hold it right there.  As is typical of Twitter, it’s kind of unclear what your guru Jaime Weinman means by that.  But, by my reckoning, the subtext on a show like Community is all the stuff about growth and journeys and togetherness—when that stuff stays subtext, the show is better.  It can focus on what it’s especially good at: being funny.  But this season has pushed that hugging and learning into the foreground, and as a result the show sucks.

But man, does Todd not understand that.  Subtext becoming text makes the show “insular”?  Why would that be the case?  Is the show more insular now?  It just seems really bad. 

This episode is just the ultimate example of that. Here is a bunch of shit you loved before, and maybe you’ll love it again, because you’re a fan of this show, right? The existence of the show is more important than anything else!

Again, does that follow?  I think not.  Text/subtext—weren’t you talking about that?  How does that remotely relate? 

Well, I’ll say this: I was never somebody who watched this show for the crazy bullshit.

I hope by crazy bullshit you mean the emotional Winger-brings-it-all together moments.  But no.  You mean the funny stuff.

I was somebody who watched it for the emotional undercurrents, and this season, outside of a few isolated episodes, has all but killed those undercurrents dead.

Mixed metaphor alert!  Dead metaphor alert!

Emotional undercurrents.  What I watch a comedy for.

Maybe if you—like some of my critical colleagues—watched this for its endless parade of inventive ideas and for that only, you liked this a fair bit more than I did.

I know, I know.  Those unsophisticated critical colleagues of yours, so crass in their appreciation of an “endless parade of inventive ideas.” Cause that’s so common to see anywhere on television.  For you the finer caviar of “emotional undercurrents.”  Your palette is so refined, Todd.

this is no longer a show that’s capable of much beyond repeating elements it thinks the audience will like over and over again. It’s become a jukebox musical version of itself, endlessly spinning its greatest hits to a crowd that grows smaller and smaller until it finally disappears.

Dude, the venom!  Look—it’s true, the show is re-hashing itself.  But it’s not, as Todd has said in the past few weeks, because it’s giving the audience what it wants.  It decidedly is not giving the audience what it wants—which is a smart, funny show.

Let’s close on a good note, okay, Todd.

Even yesterday, I would have been sad at a cancellation, thanks to all of the good times I’ve had with this show over the years and even in this season. But not anymore. It might be time to be done. The earth, it has been salted.

The critic, he has been embarrassed.  By himself. 

But wait, Todd’s not done.  It actually gets worse. He still has to encapsulate his entire critical perspective in the comments to his recap.  He’s asked what his favorite episodes of Community are. 

The response:

Favorite episode: Either Advanced Dungeons & Dragons or Mixology.
Why?: They were about real fucking human beings.

I’m sorry, I just picked my bruised forehead off my desk. Let me wait for the stars to clear so I can see those real fucking human beings living inside my flatscreen.

Look, those episodes are funny.  Not the best, but funny.  But holy shit: when I started writing this wildly popular blog, it was precisely to oppose and mock statements like this.  Do I need to remind you again?

These are not real fucking human beings.  Maybe they behave like human beings.  Maybe they seem like human beings.  They are not real.  They are characters played by professional actors. 
Another season of Community is over.  Todd van Der Werff has learned nothing.  So much for his emotional journey.