I Don't Know What to Tell You

It’s taken me a while to post this (birthin' season for the sheep), but here goes.

Todd seems to be baiting me with this one.  Well, dear sir, I will take that bait.

But the episode I’m most reminded of . . . is one that perhaps won’t immediately leap to mind from this episode but, nevertheless, was on my mind after watching this one: the puppet episode.

Of course.  The puppet episode.  Perhaps the single worst episode of Community.  An episode in which I laughed exactly zero times.  Tons in common with this hilarious episode.

And done better it is. “Cooperative Polygraphy” is easily the best episode of the show since the third season and maybe even since that magical stretch around the midpoint of season two.

Woah, whoa, whoa, Todd.  I would not go that far.  A very good episode; a lot of laughs.  But the best since season two?  Have you forgotten about the third season?  That shit was awesome. 

It’s an episode that contains ample amounts of both the laughs and the deeply felt emotional core that make this show work so well at its best.

Fine, true.  Emotions: these do play a part in Community.  But Todd continues to live under the permanent delusion that emotions equal character growth.  I’ve said it a million times and I’ll say it again.  They are not the same. 

It’s an episode built entirely around the idea of who these people were when they first came together and how much they’ve changed since they found each other, and it’s an episode where the conclusion pushes into territory that’s unexpectedly bracing and moving.

You have learned nothing.  How much they’ve changed?  Let me just quote from the episode. Annie: “You’d think by now we would have learned to be better people.”

Jeff:  “We got into this mess by thinking there was such a thing as better people.”

They’re not growing to be better people. They’re the same people they were in the beginning (or, at least, once the writers figured out who they were going to be—remember, writers?  They put the words in these “people’s” mouths).   To quote the Talking Heads: “same as it ever was.”

The moral, according to Mr. Winger: true allegiance to Pierce’s memory is “admitting we’re monsters and clawing joyfully for some of his cash.”

Better people, definitely.

But that’s also one of the points of the episode: We keep something a secret because we know that someone we love, fear, or respect will be upset by it.

The Werff turn: make an incredibly banal point that has nothing to do with the episode. Episodes of sitcoms, you realize, are not legal defenses.  Or Powerpoint presentations.  They do not have to have “points.” But if you’re going to be tossing out clichés, you might as well make them accurate clichés.  Really, that’s why we keep secrets? Might be other reasons.  I’m going to blow your mind, but we might, even, keep secrets from ourselves.  Yeah, I’m deep. 

To you, what Annie did might not seem like as big of a deal, while Troy and Abed’s Netflix use is theft. Or you might think that Jeff keeping a pair of Britta’s panties is the worst offense of all. Or even Abed taking a shower at Jeff’s place (allowing him to see the way the mirror reads “You’re special” when it’s fogged up). Transgressions don’t have to be huge to be meaningful.

Sentences don’t have to be long to be vacuous. 

It’s here that “Polygraphy” both builds upon and improves the puppet episode. The “big secrets” there felt weird and unconvincing, drawn directly from one of the kids’ movies the episode was meant to ape. (In general, the problem with season four’s concept episodes was that they never pushed as deeply into dark, unsettling emotional territory as well as the first three seasons’ concept episodes did.)

“Dark, unsettling emotional territory?”  Are you watching Community or In Treatment?  I kind of think the problem with season four was that it wasn’t funny. 

“Polygraphy” grasps that the speaking of these secrets holds just as much potential to do harm as good, no matter how much the characters tell themselves they’re going to remain friends no matter what. It gives the episode genuine dramatic stakes in a way that the show sometimes lacks,

As I said last week, you are a schmuck, sucking down schmuck bait.  That would end the show.  Guess what?  The study group ain’t breaking up.  Not till the show gets cancelled, at least, or Danny Pudi joins Donald Glover in realizing his comic-rap dreams.

“Polygraphy” is also wildly, wildly funny, tossing out a great joke seemingly every other second, even when it’s in the midst of its more emotional climax.

Finally! Talking about humor in relation to a TV comedy!

There’s so much great material here, and so little of it is driven by the sorts of pop culture gags that the show has become best known for in the popular imagination. Indeed, almost all of these gags are driven by the characters and the relationships between them as they’ve been built up over the course of the series. But the jokes are about more than just “Britta is the worst” or “Jeff has self esteem issues.” They’re, instead, about the differences between the characters as they were originally presented to us and the people they’ve become, about the gaps between who they could be and who they actually are.

I’m so sick of you and your fucking telos.  There is no difference between “who they could be and who they actually are.”  Or, again, the only difference is that it took a few episodes to realize Troy shouldn’t be a dumb jock. 

I’ve been getting into a fair amount of Twitter discussions lately

I’m sorry to hear that.

about whether Community is worthwhile as a character-based sitcom, or if its primary function is simply to have some great jokes and make fun of movies and TV shows.

What do you mean by character-based sitcom?  As opposed to what?  Stand-up comedy?  It’s true, Patton Oswalt‘s Comedy Central special is not a character-based sitcom.  It’s also not a sitcom.  If it’s a sitcom, it kind of has to have characters, n’est pas?

Are the characters three-dimensional, or do they simply exist to be joke machines?

Ah, the joke machine.  The AV Club bête noire.  Since you mention it, I’ve been trying to build a joke machine on the back forty.  But I keep having trouble with the distributor cap.  Won’t hold its charge.  Keeps on churning out jokes about Kim Kardashian.  Turns out building one’s a lot harder than it looks.   

This is a Gladwell-level “Straw We” argument, by the way. No one would ever argue that Community isn’t about, on some level, its characters.    But lest you forget, it’s a comedy—it also has jokes.  So it should be, you know, funny. 

Todd really seems to be wanting to make this false binary between automated joke-machine shows and character-based shows.  Let’s consult a prominent online TV critic to put him in his place:

One of the most persistent critiques of the cult comedy—and let’s use Community as an example here­—is that its humor is based less in “character” than in gags, whatever that means.

Exactly: “whatever that means.” That is a stupid distinction between character and gags.  Who wrote this thing?—it’s pretty sharp.  Let’s see what else it has to say.

Leaving aside for a moment the thought that a sitcom character one person deeply attaches to can be seen by another person as a one-dimensional laugh generator and little else (an inevitability of this genre),

Yes, please can we leave that thought aside.  For good. 

the idea of meme-based comedy being a new invention isn’t really accurate. It’s certainly a new development to call this sort of comedy, but sitcoms have had catchphrases and running gags since they were invented, and even the best sitcoms of all time have leaned into these a little too heavily at one time or another. But to look at Community and Get Smart is to realize that there is a certain kind of comedy that highlights these elements intentionally and points out their artificiality to heighten the humor by inviting the viewer to examine the discrepancy between fiction and the real world. Compare this to something like, say, Cheers, where the stories are meant to be intentionally grounded and realistic. This is not to say that these “sitcoms about sitcoms” can’t be grounded and realistic, but it’s rarely their primary reason for existence.

Yes.  Sitcoms like Community and Get Smart are primarily interested in meta-commentary and genre parodies.  They shouldn’t be judged by whether they’re “realistic,” with the same standard as The Cosby Show.  Are you listening, Todd?  Don’t judge Community by whether the characters go on metaphysical journeys.  Though, at heart, realism or no realism, it still has to be funny.

So who is this insightful TV critic, who shoots down false binaries between characters and gags? 

Oh.  It’s Todd Van Der Werff.  Writing a piece about Get Smart.  Shit.

See, he is capable of a modicum of sense.  Consistency, though?  Not so much. 

Maybe he’s doing something Emersonian with his refusal to be consistent, but nevertheless it’s all that much more dispiriting to return to his Community recap:

 Now, obviously, if you’re already pretty well dug in on the latter part of that argument, then nothing I say here is going to convince you, but I think “Cooperative Polygraphy” is the best evidence yet that the writers of the show at least intend for us to take these people seriously as fictional human beings with hopes and dreams that can be just as easily snuffed as anyone else’s.

I’m glad that you acknowledge that they’re fictional.  Progress!  And I don’t disagree.  The characters do have hopes and dreams.  Jeff wants to return to being a lawyer.  That was established in episode one, season one.  He still has that dream.  He is still not a lawyer.  Progress!  Oh, wait.  No progress.  No change. 

There’s a core of deep, real sadness running through “Polygraphy,” underneath all of the jokes,

True—the show is sometimes sad.  Again, it’s more emotional than the average sitcom.  That’s not the same thing as growth, journeys, and all that bullshit. 

 and it’s a sadness that’s directed both at the death of a beloved friend and at the fact that none of them has quite matched up to the best possible versions of themselves.

Maybe it’s a sadness caused by them, you know, not changing.  And never going to be able to change.  Which also makes them funny.

What is the best possible version of themselves, anyway?  Winger 3.0!  Now with fenders!  Get him in the chrome model. 

I don’t know if there’s a way to read Pierce’s final bequeathals without taking it as a deeply earnest statement from the show’s writers on their own beliefs and hopes for the characters.

Let’s be clear on this: the writers do not have beliefs and hopes for the characters.  Other than: I hope I can get this script turned out by deadline and keep my job.  So let’s hope I can make these characters funny.

Also, I definitely want my sitcoms to be “deeply earnest.”

A phrase like “heart of a hero” applied to anyone could be laughable, but something about the gravity of the situation, Walton Goggins’ delivery, and Donald Glover’s reaction underscores the moment, making it play.

It’s still kind of lame.  That’s what makes it funny.

And Pierce’s pep talks for the other characters are similarly insightful and trenchant.

To quote from Pierce’s pep talks:

To Jeff: “Did you know that you’re gay?”

“Abed Nadir, did you know that you’re insane and nothing that you said ever made any sense to me? Here’s your sperm.”

Insight!  

As such, it’s when Pierce tells these characters all that they are and could still be that I think we get a sense of where Harmon’s voice is in this season. He still cares, in his way, for these people. He still wants them to come to some sort of goodness or some sort of happy ending.

No, he doesn’t.  You do.  They, as characters written by writers, may desire that happy ending, if they state explicitly that they want something.  Other than their words, they have no desires.  And Mr. Harmon certainly does not desire happy endings.  Mr. Harmon desires six seasons and a movie.  One more season and a movie to go.  There will be no happy ending till then.  Because goodness and happy endings do not equal comedy. 

And he’s still prodding them from just off to the side, sometimes through the voice of one of the departed.

Here we go again: they’re not real people.  No matter how much you shout from the audience when you go see a film, the characters ain’t gonna hear ya. 

Look, Todd, I feel like you’re starting to come to grips with the fact that these are just fictional characters, not friends you can cuddle through the screen, but to make up for that you’re now reaching out for a warm and fuzzy showrunner to bake you cookies and brush your hair. But no. Stop watching TV as a way to uncover someone’s “intent.” There’s just the show.

Unfortunately, to become all that you can sometimes means that you need to leave, and when “Cooperative Polygraphy” reaches its final moments, it’s turned the corner to be not just about Pierce’s leavetaking but about Troy’s, about the fact that to be the man he could become, he’s going to have to leave Greendale and embark on a new voyage.

Let’s rewrite that last sentence.  “It’s turned the corner to be not just about Pierce’s leavetaking but about Donald Glover’s, about that fact that to be the comic-rapper he somehow desires to become, he’s going to have to leave Community and the writers need a way to write him out.”

You think for one fucking moment he’d be taking this “journey” if he weren’t leaving the show?  That’s when the growth and journeys happen on sitcoms, Todd.  When the show is over.  When the actors leave.  As long as it’s still on the air, I have a feeling they’re still going to be gathering around that Greendale study table, arguing with each other, making jokes, and coming together at the end.  Cause that’s the formula for the show.  Without that, there wouldn’t be a show.  With this desire for change disrupting the stasis that makes the show work, Todd seems again to desire the show to end.  Happily.

In fact, the writers even make fun of the whole idea of growing into a better man or whatever cliché you want to go with.  Here’s Troy: “I think he knew something about me that even I didn’t know until now, because he’s offering me something that I’ve been searching for my whole life . . . millions of dollars . . . and, being a man, or whatever he said.”

Psst: It’s about the millions.  Also, the humor. 

So, no, I don’t think Community is a show just about jokes or about movie parodies.

But it actually kind of is.

If you disagree, fine, but the characters on this show have developed meaningful relationships and personalities over the years,

Well, over the first season, until the writers figured out who the characters should be to make them optimally funny.

 and in episodes like this one, the writers are able to examine them with such deftness and acuity that I’m often left amazed.

The writing is smart.  There’s no doubt about that.

“Cooperative Polygraphy” is a very funny episode of television, yes, but it also has a lot to say about this specific group of people and how they’ve come together and how they will inevitably break apart.

It actually has nothing to say about that.  Or nothing more than any other good episode of Community.  Let me tell you a story about how this specific group of people came together: Dan Harmon had a pitch meeting with the good people at Sony.  He said, I’m going to do a show about a misfit band of students at a community college; one will have Asberger’s, one will be a jock, one will be a cocky ex-lawyer, etc., etc.  And then Sony pitched it to NBC.  And then they did casting, and they wrote a script, and made a pilot.  And then that pilot got picked up. 

And let me tell you about how they will inevitably break apart: one day, hopefully later than sooner, the show will be cancelled.

And if you think that doesn’t count as character development, well, I don’t know what to tell you.

You can start with this statement: “I don’t understand the meaning of character development.”