Concepts and Things

Ah, an old-fashioned pitch-perfect movie parody.  Just what I turn to Community to see.  Todd, what do you make of it?

The episode quickly won it over—again, it said “butts” a lot—but I found myself kind of wanting more “normal Greendale” adventures going in, and that may have affected my opinion a bit in the early going.

A lot of sics here, but aside from that: you watch the show for normalcy?  Really?  Are you Warren G. Harding?  Community is the furthest from a normal show that network television can provide.  Normal is the enemy, Todd.

Also, were last week’s episodes really normal?  The last one ended with the Dean having a voiceover sung as a French pop song.   Not normal.  

Yet at the same time, this show can do the concept episode stuff so well when it wants to, and I appreciated that “Intergluteal” was less a specific parody than a freewheeling mélange of David Fincher films, CBS procedurals, and any movie where any detective has ever gotten in way too deep trying to solve a case. (Also, butts.) 

That would be true except that it totally isn’t.  Yeah, there are some references to other Fincher movies, and to CBS procedurals.  But it’s basically just a pretty faithful parody of Zodiac.  I figured that out two minutes in.  And I haven’t even fucking seen Zodiac.  You didn’t get this?

The show’s elasticity allows it to have a whacked-out rave scene set in the lunchroom and scored by Nine Inch Nails and Dave Matthews Band (true fans would call him “Dave”) right up against a genuinely touching scene where Shirley tells Jeff and Annie that Pierce has died.

I did not find that scene touching.  Chevy Chase was annoying and not all that funny.  I’m glad he’s gone from the show.  Also, my heart has been replaced by a ball of sheep intestines. 

And if I ever thought I would find a moment like that “genuinely touching” last season, I would have been very surprised. But here we are. Pierce has passed on, and Jeff has lost whatever he had that passed for a mentor.

Really?  When was “Jeff having a mentor” a fucking plot point?  Like for five minutes of two episodes sometime? 

It’s a great closing beat for the episode, letting us see just how quickly real life can intrude on even Greendale.

Except it’s not the closing “beat” of the episode. More like the ante-penultimate “beat” of the episode.

My biggest problem with the episode is that it dusts off the Jeff and Annie thing yet again, simply to have it there. The concept episodes work best when the concept isn’t just there to be a thing the show is doing but, rather, as a thing that props up a story about the characters, and I’m not sure “Jeff and Annie are still flirting a lot” works as well in that regard as some of the other character stories previous concept episodes have come up with, particularly when “Introduction To Teaching” offered up a really solid story about the two characters that didn’t rely on the potential romantic connection between them but, rather, a place where the two of them would naturally come into conflict, given their differing goals and drives.

I’m sorry, Todd, about the business model of the AV Club.  I didn’t know it was in so much trouble.  I guess they had to lay off all the editors.  That sucks.  Because if there had been an editor, they would have told you that THAT’S THE WORST FUCKING SENTENCE I’VE EVER READ. 

Yes, my faithful readers out here on the prairie, all that blabbering was one single sentence. Good God!  I could have re-read Finnegans Wake in that time!  (Yeah—I’ve read the Wake—got a problem with that?)

The length, however, is only one problem.  Let’s start over. Hold on, let me get my Tums.

The concept episodes work best when the concept isn’t just there to be a thing the show is doing but, rather, as a thing that props up a story about the characters,

“Thing” is, how do I put this, kind of a vague word.  So using it twice in a row kind of isn’t a good idea.  The thing is, when you use “thing” to talk about a lot of things, the thing that you’re saying is “the thing” gets confused with other things.

Also, the metaphor of a concept as a “thing” propping up a story about characters is particularly resonant.  I imagine the Fincher concept as a plank of wood wedged diagonally behind the plywood cut-outs of clowns you stick your head through at state fairs.  Was that the image you were going for?

Actually, fuck this, I can’t wade through the rest of that sentence.  My doctor says I have to be careful about my ulcers. Let me just say, for the millionth time—we do not have to learn something about the characters.  We know who they are.  They’re funny.  Let them be funny.  Can I just enjoy a funny, sharp parody of Zodiac?  Isn’t that enough? 

Here’s the thing: I’m a longtime Jeff and Annie skeptic, mostly because I think it tanks the Annie character too often, but I’d be willing to go along with it if the show would just commit in one direction or another for enough episodes to tell a proper storyline about it.

Fuck storylines.  Is it funny?  If it’s funny, and it doesn’t totally depart from the character, than use it.  If not, drop it.  And for God’s sake don’t develop it.  Sitcoms, again, aren’t about change.  You know when the American Office got bad: when they made Steve Carrell grow and change and try to become a better person.  Don’t change what works.  Stick with it. Stick with it until you stop laughing.

Instead, it pops up, seemingly at random, then recedes into the background for even longer periods of time. On the one hand, it’s probably more realistic than a lot of more conventional TV romances,

Realism—not how I evaluate a program that just did an episode on the “Ass Crack Bandit.”

but on the other hand, a little conventionality might let the story evolve past the endless circling the characters have been carrying out since early in season two.

Don’t evolve!  Don’t be conventional!  It’s working—don’t fuck it up for Todd “Normal” van der Werff. 

In general, Community isn’t great at the romance side of things,

Hallelujah!

but it is pretty good about using that as one spice that sometimes pops up

Mixed metaphor alert!

in a humorous fashion (witness Duncan’s interest in Britta). What’s more problematic is when Jeff and Annie keep repeating the same first beat of the same story time and again, only to have it later be resolved, seemingly for good, then pop up again a few episodes later.

It’s a sitcom—it’s about repetition.  As long as it keeps being funny, keep doing it. 

So much of storytelling is momentum, and this one has been stuck in the same gear for so long.

If we’re using a bad metaphor, let me mangle it.  That’s fine, if the gears are comedy, since the gear it’s suck in is fifth.

At the same time, isn’t that true to life?

Oh, God. I think I just stabbed myself. 

If you’ve got a crush on someone you keep getting thrown into close proximity with, that crush often never completely goes away.

Tell it, Todd.  (By the way, I really should be calling an ambulance.  This is a deep cut—shouldn’t have been near my shearing tools when I was reading the Werff)

Instead, it warps and twists itself into something different, something weirder or more muted. Community expresses this via Jeff and Annie’s little cutesy games, as the Dean would have it, rather than just going out and having sex, like many people really would.

Perhaps.  But, then again, these are not real people. 

I like that aspect of the story, but I also don’t buy that the two wouldn’t have just had sex by this point.

Get it on, fictional characters!  Todd is eager for some nasty pixel-on-pixel action. 

I get that Jeff is much older, and I get that they would probably be a disaster as a couple (just about every potential pairing on this show would),

That’s why it’s a good show!

but it’s been five years. That resistance would erode in time, or at least twist itself into something much weirder, which is what I think the series is going for, but it’s not transmitting as well as it might, because it inevitably devolves into puppy dog eyes. (Okay, and butts.)

Not real people.  Not real . . . people .. .. Not real. . . .  Losing blood.  One more thing to make fun of before I go . . .

Something really tickles me about the notion that the Dean would tell people “If you wanna make Trouble, go work for Parker Brothers!” It’s such a goofy reference.

That’s a great joke.  I really liked that.  Maybe, as a, I don’t know, ostensible TV CRITIC, you might say something more specific than “something really tickles me.”  What, pray tell, makes that joke so funny? 

Let me answer that.  That joke initially seems like a parody of a bad sitcom line—one of these overly elaborate put downs that are incredibly common on shitty shows.  Except: that reference is so arcane and bizarre—“goofy,” fine—but also so incredibly specific.  The phrasing has to be just right—“make Trouble,” “go work.”  That’s just really precise writing so that the joke totally works.  That’s why that’s funny.  Now let me go collapse in a heap.