Community, "The Art of Discourse": See if you can guess what I am now

A review of last night's "Community" coming up just as soon as I meet Sting at a Cracker Barrel...

"Ridiculous situation descending into heavy-handed drama for the illusion of story... check." -Abed

After last week's all-out "Goodfellas" parody, "The Art of Discourse" confines most of the meta/pop culture humor to the Abed and Troy subplot, while going more straightforward in showing Jeff and Britta, and also Pierce and Shirley, dealing with being the old men (and women) out on campus.

Jeff and Britta's conflict with the high school kids was played entirely for laughs, as we once again see that those two are more entertaining when they join forces for some ridiculous goal than when we're supposed to care about the simmering sexual tension between them. This was a really strong episode for Gillian Jacobs as Britta let herself get sucked into trying to pwn the three Schmitty kids, whether pathetically trying to defend her life choices (invoking Winona Ryder and wearing a Discman) or going pure evil in that moment when she had the brainstorm to send Jeff to have sex with Lisa Rinna.

The Pierce and Shirley plot, meanwhile, did a nice job of balancing laughs (Pierce being oblivious to his racism, the gang all turning on each other in the search for New Pierce) and some more genuine character moments about Shirley and Pierce's feelings about each other and their respective places in the group. Unlike the scenario Abed described in the quote above, this felt like actual story, and like something the show's been building to for a while. If the series wants us to care about this community and its characters beyond their role as avatars of pop culture gags - and it clearly does - then sooner or later Pierce's treatment of Shirley in particular and the group in general had to be addressed, and in a mostly heartfelt, sincere manner. Some very nice work by Chevy Chase and Yvette Nicole Brown in this one, and ultimately their moment of bonding climaxed with a nice callback to the pantsing joke that started the whole mess - and by the time we got to the food fight and the extended riff on the end of "Animal House," it felt okay to go whole-hog on the parody, and I look forward to seeing Troy and Abed in "College Cut-Ups 2: Panty Raid Academy."

What did everybody else think?

Community, "Contemporary American Poultry": Rags to riches

A review of last night's "Community" coming up just as soon as throat surgery humanizes me...

I talk a lot in these reviews about how much pop culture referencing is too much, and "Contemporary American Poultry" took the idea about as far as it could go with an extended, marvelously-executed homage to "Goodfellas." We got Abed-as-Henry-Hill voiceover, push-ins, doo-wop on the soundtrack, freeze-frames, the extended piano coda to "Layla" accompanying a massacre of sorts, and even a brief homage to the end of the famous tracking shot of Henry and Karen at the Copa(*). There was also a bit of "The Godfather" thrown in, with people kissing Abed's ring, while the door was closed on Jeff as if he were Kay Corleone.

(*) Poniewozik wondered why they didn't do a full-on tracking shot, and the answer to that is that they take forever to shoot, and no weekly sitcom has that kind of time in the schedule.

All of that was very well-done, and appropriate for an Abed spotlight episode, in that Abed tends to relate to people through popular culture. And it led to a very nice character moment between Abed and Jeff in the kitchen, and it's the show's commitment to its characters, and also to showing how a community works (here with the chicken taking on too much currency) that makes it something far richer and more interesting than just a live-action "Family Guy." And because the "very special episode" conversation between Jeff and Abed felt earned and true to both men, it then gave the show license to throw in the "Sixteen Candles" gag at the end.

Some other thoughts:

• The "streets ahead" running gag is apparently Dan Harmon getting one final bit of revenge against some guy who attacked him on Twitter. I'm sure others of you can fill in the background on this.

• A monkey with the name Annie's Boobs was just the comedy gift that kept on giving, wasn't it?

• Add Alison Brie to the list of sitcom actors I want to see dancing as often as possible, after she busted out both The Running Man and The Robot in celebrating her new backpack.

• Shirley had a great line about Abed stealing Sexy Dreadlock Guy and how Tyler Perry has made a lot of movies explaining why that's wrong.

What did everybody else think?

Community, "The Science of Illusion": Wunza housewife, wunza Girl Scout

A review of last night's "Community" coming up just as soon as you agitate my sciatica...

Last week, I complained that "Beginner Pottery" tipped the pop culture reference scales too far and threw off the show's balance. In many ways, "The Science of Illusion" was even more reference-laden, yet I enjoyed it a lot more.

Part of that is conceptual: Shirley as a salty sea captain seems incredibly random, whereas Shirley and Annie as buddy cops competing to be the alpha dog seemed both more potential-laden (Alison Brie totally went to town playing Annie as a snarling, toothpick-chewing renegade cop, just as Danny Pudi did a perfect Disapproving Black Captain impression) and because it seemed a bit more on point with the characters. Annie and Shirley are constantly trying to prove they're not the timid mouses people take them for, and it felt right to then place their police misadventure in an episode where Britta and Pierce and even Troy(*) are also taking ridiculous steps to transcend people's preconceptions about them.

(*) As I've said before, Donald Glover trying to talk while Troy weeps will never not be funny, no matter what he's saying, and it was especially funny here because the writers were acknowledging that Troy is too young to get the Cookie Crisp reference they were making. (Wikipedia has a good breakdown of the history of Cookie Crisp mascots.) Too often, the writers on shows try to apply their own tastes and references to characters who are younger than them, so I always appreciate a kind of meta acknowledgment like that.

The Britta story was also a good example of the "Community" writers continuing to turn into the skid with that character, rather than trying to fight it. Whatever the original conception of Britta was, it didn't really work. But because the show has embraced and acknowledged that she's the group's buzzkill, she's become more likable, and then jokes can be built around the difference between how others perceive her and how she perceives herself. Britta's self-deprecating knock-knock joke ("Cancer!" "Oh, good, come in! I thought it was Britta!") was a very sad, sweet, funny and charming moment for Gillian Jacobs.

There were a lot of funny jokes scribbled in the margins - old man Leonard as the most ruthless and vulgar prankster on campus, Senor Chang's fear of frogs, Pierce's gay psychic reading of Jeff - but the main jokes were even funnier. Annie doing a foot pursuit of Jeff and running through the pepper spray mist alone was worth the price of admission.

So, the big question is, which buddy cop spin-off would you rather watch: Annie and Shirley, or Sawyer and Miles from "Lost"? Could we combine them all? Or would Annie spontaneously combust if asked to spend a lot of time with a shirtless Sawyer?

What did everybody else think?

Community, "Beginner Pottery": Winger vs. ringer

A review of last night's "Community" coming up just as soon as I'm Goldbluming...

The February 5th episode was listed in many services (including whichever one supplies info to my DVR) as "Beginner Pottery," when in fact that episode was "Romantic Expressionism." I don't know if this was just some kind of clerical error, or if "Beginner Pottery" was supposed to air a month and a half ago and got bumped at the last minute, but I suspect the latter. "Beginner Pottery" was the first episode of the show in a while that didn't really work, and networks tend to shuffle the air order (particularly during sweeps) if they're concerned about a given episode.

"Community" is such a delicate balance of tones - self-aware snark mixed with completely sincere emotions - that it's a wonder it works as well as it does as often as it does. In this one, though, the balance felt off: too strange and too pop culture-obsessed even for a school like Greendale and a show that includes Abed. There were parts that were still very funny (Abed admitting voiceover is a crutch, Pierce's anguish at Shirley leaving him to die) and Pierce's pep talk to Jeff worked as a heartfelt moment (as Pierce/Jeff moments so often oddly do), but overall the humor felt too self-conscious. The final moment in the pottery class in particular seemed exactly the wrong note to end on, like someone wanted to throw in one last pop culture mash-up with Rich the ringer's memories of his mother scolding him (which combined bits of a dozen different movies, including "Ordinary People" and "Stand By Me") even if it didn't tonally fit.

I like the characters enough that even an off episode like this one feels worth watching (if anyone still cared about the idea of "the family hour," I'd be amazed that they were allowed to show Alison Brie working a pottery wheel like that), and I like the idea that Greendale is weird enough to have a sailing class in a parking lot (even if "Cougar Town" beat this show to the boat-in-a-parking-lot gag by months). It's just that recent episodes suggested a new show that was starting to make what Bill Simmons calls The Leap, and "Beginner Pottery" - which, again, may have been made much earlier in the season and held - was reminiscent of a rookie still suffering growing pains.

What did everybody else think?

Community, "Basic Genealogy": Now switch!

A review of "Community" coming up just as soon as I choke the Little Mermaid with a bike chain...

It's been instructive to watch the ups and downs of "Community" and "Modern Family" this season, not only on their own paths, but in relation to each other. (And I say this as someone who enjoys both shows a great deal and thinks the whole "there can only be one" attitude among some fans of each to be pretty silly.) Though "Community" got pegged at the start of the season as the colder, more ironic show with all its meta humor and pop culture references, I've found that it's not only displayed more heart over the course of the season than "Modern Family," but done it more naturally. Where "Modern Family" has felt compelled to spell out its morals at the end of each episode and make sure no one could possibly forget that these kooky people really like each other deep down, "Community" has chosen to show and not tell the story of its impromptu family coming together and learning to care about each other.

Yet this week, the roles reversed. "Modern Family" gave us the show's first episode in a long time (if not ever?) that didn't end with a voiceover where one of the actors summed up the deep meaning of the story. "Community," on the other hand, gave us an episode where the characters more blatantly talked about their feelings, about what they mean to each other, what they should take out of relationships with each other and with their biological family members, etc.

And I didn't necessarily mind it, particularly in an episode that had as much good comedy as "Basic Genealogy" did. But the slight change in style was noticeable, particularly in this week when "Modern Family" ducked away from this particular pitch. In particular, Abed reassuring Shirley that she's a good mom and Annie getting Jeff to realize he wants to be a good friend were a bit more on the nose than the show usually gets. (Though in both cases we at least got a good punchline, with Jeff again marveling at Annie's powers of manipulation, and Shirley's son winding up in the vending machine.)

As for the comedy, Troy trying to talk while crying has now become one of the show's most reliable laugh-getters, and the unlikely Troy/Britta partnership again yielded great dividends, with Britta's more-enlightened-than-thou whiteness getting her a good switchin'. Katharine McPhee was fine as Pierce's grifter stepdaughter (and certainly much more lifelike than fellow "American Idol" alum Carrie Underwood was on "HIMYM" last week), and it had been a while since we got some good Pierce/Jeff interaction. Early episodes had established that Pierce is who Jeff will become if he's not careful, and it was nice to see Pierce himself recognize this and for once have the self-awareness to try to talk Jeff out of it. (And that also had a good talking-while-crying gag, with Jeff venting about "Glee.") And the Pictionary/swastika/Rabbi Chang gag was wonderfully set-up.

NBC renewed "Community" last week, after the hilarious "Physical Education" aired. (Here's video of Dan Harmon telling the cast the good news.) This has quickly become one of my favorite things on TV, and I'm glad I'll get to see both the show and the study group grow and evolve for another year.

What did everybody else think?

Community, "Physical Education": Naked came Jeff

A review of tonight's "Community" coming up just as soon as I commit a third sin...

When I wrote my story for Sunday's paper about TV shows that do and don't label characters as having Asperger syndrome, a few of you asked why Abed wasn't included. Part of that was simply a function of space - only so many inches in the paper, and Abed's on a much less well-known show than "Big Bang Theory" or Bones" - but part of it was that, other than the "ass burgers" joke from the pilot, Abed has seemed more TV-quirky than specifically Aspie. Dan Harmon talked about this a bit in Jace Lacob's own story about Hollywood tackling autism, and said, "I want my characters to be my characters, with rules that I create, based on my life experiences, not rules set forth in someone else's manual."

That's an entirely reasonable approach, and it's one that allows the show to do an episode like "Physical Education," in which Abed is shown to be far more together and sure of himself than any of his well-meaning friends, and to have a perfect understanding of human relationships, even if others don't recognize that at first. The idea of a character who has so much self-esteem and natural talent that he can be anything he wants is pretty cool, and so far the show has been careful not to take it too far and turn Abed into Fonzie.

It was a really nice, sweet Abed story - once again, this show that allegedly leans so much on irony and meta references has no problem finding and showing its heart - and one where Danny Pudi still got to inject some humor with his makeup-enhanced portrayal of Joey (aka White Abed).

And the existence of White Abed (who thinks of Abed, of course, as Brown Joey) was one of several surreal touches in an episode that was frequently content to go for broke and embrace the crazy.

Jeff's half-naked, then all-naked game of pool with the uptight phys ed teacher was completely gonzo. I thought I was laughing hard enough when the soundtrack started using Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London" (which accompanied this similar, iconic Tom Cruise scene from "The Color of Money"), but when the coach ripped off his underwear and let out a primal scream, and then Jeff followed suit, I completely lost it. No real logic to any of it, but there are times when you have to sacrifice plausibility for the sake of a really ridiculous, funny, extended sight gag.

And the rest of the episode was filled with other great jokes, like the runner about the rest of the study group understandably mocking "I lived in New York"er Britta for her pronunciation of "baggel," or Shirley and Troy needing every pop culture reference translated into its black equivalent, or one of the best Abed/Troy tags to date, with their Bert and Ernie impression interrupted when Troy remembers he's supposed to be at a funeral. Like the naked pool thing, there was no point to it, but it was silly and really damn fun.

The show can't be this strange every week, but every now and again it works.

What did everybody else think?

Community, "Communications Studies": Drunk-dial 'C' for 'comedy'

A review of last night's "Community" coming up just as soon as I get in a fight with animatronic Ben Franklin...

Another week, another big step forward for the transformation of Britta from annoying fifth wheel to funny, integral part of the ensemble. In fact, given that we've had three Britta-centric episodes in a row (albeit one here where, by design, it's more about Britta than it actually features Britta), I wonder if this is a concentrated effort by Dan Harmon and company to respond to the early complaints about the character. And, if so, it's working. Gillian Jacobs played hungover very well, and was just as good at portraying Britta's shame as she was her later smugness after having received Jeff's own drunk-dial. And Jacobs' chemistry with Joel McHale continued the improvement we saw last week in "Romantic Expressionism." I still don't know that we need the inevitable Britta/Jeff coupling - particularly since Lauren Stamile has fit in so nicely as Professor Slater - but I don't see that I'll mind it as much when it happens.

If you've read me long enough, you know I'm a sucker for funny dancing (and no, I will not link to the Turk dance again; you know where it is if you want it), and so of course I'd dig an episode that not only featured Jeff and Abed recreating the dance number from "The Breakfast Club" (complete with Karla DeVito's "We Are Not Alone," the song from said number), but Senor Chang booty-dancing with Pierce and Troy while the guys are clad in elegant ladies' pantsuits(*).

(*) It was particularly genius of Chang - and writer Chris McKenna - to insist on pantsuits and not dresses. Not only is "elegant ladies' pantsuits" funny to say, but it's less cliched and more bizarre-looking, and I loved watching Donald Glover show Troy trying to maintain his dignity in the thing. This was the episode being filmed when the TV critics made our field trip to the set on the first day of winter press tour, and while Ken Jeong was in costume for the dance, Glover and Chevy Chase were not. I'm glad I didn't have that surprise ruined for me.

This was also a great Abed showcase, from his attempt to make his sarcasm more obvious to him bossing around his actors to him trying to coax a real performance out of Jeff (and then to him waking up "broken" from all the booze). There's always a danger this show could fly off and become too meta and too dependent on the pop culture references, yet by cofining it largely to this one character - whom Danny Pudi manages to play absolutely seriously - this stuff never feels that self-indulgent.

What did everybody else think?

Community, "Romantic Expressionism": Who's your Greendale daddy?

A review of last night's strong "Community" coming up just as soon as I die from a lack of service...

I've talked a lot in these "Community" reviews about the dangers of trying to force an Unresolved Sexual Tension situation when the chemistry's lacking, as it was with Jeff and Britta. "Romantic Expressionism" kind of brilliantly reacts to that concern by creating UST between every single member of the group, regardless of gender, age, or Pierce-ness. (Okay, so maybe Pierce-ness is still a problem for the rest.) I doubt the series is going to follow up on most of the potential combinations we saw in that hilarious staring contest scene at the library - unless NBC pushes for the Annie-Britta one to goose the male demo numbers, that is - but at least they're out there now, and the characters have accepted that they're not really a family, but a collection of unattached, consenting-but-weird adults.

And I will also admit this: Jeff and Britta were great together last night. Not necessarily in a "now they are clearly meant to hook up" way, but just as comedy partners. Britta opposing Jeff's antics in the early episodes was a cliche, and it also didn't serve Gillian Jacobs very well. But having them work towards the same goal - in this case, protecting Annie from "gateway douchebag" Vaughn - with markedly different levels of skill at manipulation was very funny, and the first time in a while that I enjoyed them as a duo, sexual tension or not. Give us a few more stories like this for the pair, and I might stop objecting to the idea that they're each other's romantic density, even if I don't know how necessary it is.

At the same time, Alison Brie was on fire (as she's been for most of the season), regardless of which character Annie was paired with, be it Vaughn (who turned out to be just simple, but not bad, in the end), Troy (being hilariously gross as he tried to mark his territory with her, and calling back to his obsession with "butt stuff" from the psychology episode), Jeff(*), Britta, etc. And seeing Annie absolutely melt in response to Vaughn's song was a reminder that, for all the pop culture references, meta jokes and withering sarcasm, "Community" is a show with a lot of heart, and the kind that rarely feels as forced as it does on some other sitcoms.

(*) I don't think it was an accident that, in the staring scene, Annie's gaze lingered on Jeff for a very long time, given the abundant sparks between the two in the debate episode. I wonder if, in retrospect, the writers regret making Annie so young, as it makes a potential Jeff/Annie romance kind of icky. On the other hand, they seem to be having a lot of fun with the characters' awareness of the icky of it.

The B-story was a simple but effectively funny one, showing old man Pierce's struggle to adapt to yet another college ritual: snarking on bad movies in someone's dorm room. The "Kick-Puncher" movies were amusingly awful in their own right, as were many of the comments, but Pierce's need to hire a writing team was a great touch (as were complaints like, "What are you, my third wife's therapist?"), and then we got another vintage, slightly meta(**) Chevy Chase fall where he knocked down lots of things and made everybody laugh.

(**) This week's winner for meta humor, though, was Vaughn referring to Shirley as "that Sherry Shepherd lady."

What did everybody else think?

Community, "Interpretive Dance": What's 2 x 7?

A review of last night's "Community" coming up just as soon as I spend money on breakaway clothing...

14 episodes into its debut season (which just added three more episode, as part of NBC's push to avoid repeats post-Leno-in-primetime), "Community" is still exploring different combinations of its large cast of characters, here striking unexpected gold with a Troy/Britta pairing. As the show's token straight person, Gillian Jacobs has a tougher job than the other actors, and the writers have often struggled to make her funny when the situation calls for it.(*) But she had some very nice moments here, first with her delight in getting to be outraged over Shirley saying "You people," then with the goofy "Tea for Two" tap dance. And Donald Glover, who's already established himself as a terrific physical comedian on this show, was as fun as you'd expect in showing Troy learning to express himself through modern dance.

(*) This isn't an uncommon problem - see also how "The Simpsons" tends to sag when episodes are built around Marge, who fills the same role in that family that Britta does in the study group. While sitcom straight men can be funny - Michael on "Arrested Development," Dave on "NewsRadio" - it's fairly rare.

What concerns me, a little, is the way Britta's stage fright was caused by seeing Jeff and Professor Slater holding hands. I was glad to see Slater come back, as Lauren Stamile and Joel McHale had great chemistry in the Halloween episode - and certainly more than McHale and Jacobs had in the early episodes when the show was still trying to make us care about Jeff and Britta as a couple. I had thought that later episodes (including that Halloween show, where Britta didn't care at all about Jeff's date, even though Shirley kept assuming she did) suggested the creative team had recognized Jeff/Britta wasn't working and that the writers had just turned their initial attraction to each other into a running gag. But we're clearly meant to see that Britta still has feelings for Jeff, which I think is a mistake. The only thing more frustrating than a show that drags out sexual tension for too long between two characters with chemistry is a show that tries to force chemistry where none exists in the first place. It's entirely possible Jeff and Britta could work at some point, and Britta has become a more interesting and likable character since the start of the series, but I don't want the show to keep going to that well just because the writers think they're supposed to.

But overall, "Interpretive Dance" was another winner, also giving us smaller character moments like Annie's repeated panic at the thought of Troy and Britta being together, Dean Pelton's repeatedly creepy behavior around Jeff and Slater, Troy denying that he thinks of Shirley as his mom, Jeff comparing the truth to Jim Belushi, and every joke about Pierce's Twitter account. So I'll worry about too much Jeff/Britta when there actually is too much of it, and not when an episode only hints that there could be.

What did everybody else think?

Community, "Investigative Journalism": Hawkeye vision and Jack

Swamped with press tour stuff (so swamped I'm not sure when I'll have time to watch and write about "Parks and Rec," so please save your comments until then), so very quick thoughts on last night's "Community" coming up just as soon as I grow up in a land without sun...

"We can do anything we want! It's Greendale!" -Jeff

For me, a little Jack Black(*) goes a long way, even when he's relatively dialed down like he was here as Buddy. But Black's presence allowed the show to do a nice job of examining the evolving dynamics of the study group, to show Jeff trying to be more Zen and Hawkeye-like in his approach to Greendale, and to portray the awkwardness of newcomers trying to join a well-established (if weirdly-established) group.

(*) Who starred in the Dan Harmon co-created "Heat Vision and Jack," one of the most famous (and weird) unsold comedy pilots of all time, about a former astronaut fighting crime with the help of his talking, sentient motorcycle. The motorcycle's voice? Owen Wilson, who made his surprise cameo at the end as the leader of the cool group.

There were still plenty of good jokes - Senor Chang's rap, Dean Pelton's stereotypical black guy voice, Pierce mistaking Shirley's voice for Troy's, Shirley pushing for her boring friend to join the group, and the tag with Abed and Troy and then Pierce auditioning for Starburns - but what I like is that, for all the show's meta references and sarcasm, there's a genuine heart and interest in character development that doesn't feel forced to me. I was just as happy with Abed explaining the other side of Hawkeye to Jeff as I was to see Senor Chang eat Annie's brains.

Couple of other quick thoughts:

• Note that Annie is very interested in transferring out of Greendale, as someone with her background and ambition would be. When we visited the set last week on the first day of press tour (which seems a lifetime ago), Dan Harmon said he had some ideas in mind for how and why these people might all stay together at Greendale without it seeming out-of-character. (He also reminded us that you can, in fact, get a bachelor's degree from a community college, so Jeff has no real reason to leave.)

• Also, speaking of Starburns, he's played by Dino Stamatopoulos, a writer whom Harmon originally brought in to consult on the show. Then he thought it would be funny to make him a background character in the Spanish class, and now Dino has to spend so much time on the set that Harmon almost never sees him to talk about the writing. Also, the Starburns sideburns were originally made by the hair and makeup department, but Dino eventually decided to grow them for real. So he walks around with them.

(Harmon had a bunch of good Starburns anecdotes. If I ever get home from this place and have time to transcribe the interview, I'll put up some of the better quotes in a future "Community" review.)

What did everybody else think?

Community, "Comparative Religion": Merry happy!

I'm half-tempted to review all our of NBC's Thursday comedies in the same post this morning, not because I didn't like them, but because my opinion of them is largely the same: that none of these four represented their series at its funniest, but that there was a core of warmth to each to compensate.

Still, I have enough specific thoughts on each to avoid the dreaded grab-bag post. So spoilers for "Community" coming up just as soon as I give you the Forest Whitaker eye...

Given the show's love of both meta and pop culture references, I was surprised that there wasn't more interaction between Chevy Chase (aka Clark Griswold) and Anthony Michael Hall (aka the original Rusty Griswold). But I thought Hall - whose weird and mostly disappointing career arc makes people forget what a good comic actor he was in his teens - fit in nicely, and I hope Mike and his shirtless fly dancer buddies become recurring characters like small-nippled Vaughn and the various professors.

Shirley's fear of all the non-Christians in the study group maybe went a little too far (though it gave Yvette Nicole Brown some very funny scenes to play, notably the menorah interaction with Annie), but in the end the writers redeemed her with the recognition that she cares more about her friends than about which deity they do or don't pray to. And it turns out that Alison Brie is just as convincing as a neurotic Jew(ish person) as she is as a repressed WASP; her "eh" at the news that Senor Chang would be teaching them for Spanish 102 was priceless.

Setting this episode at Christmas, and at the end of their first semester, puts to rest any idea that the show might try to get around the whole two-year problem of community college by having each season cover a semester. I like this show and would like it to be around a while, so I'll be curious to see how they deal with this down the road, particularly for characters like Annie and Jeff who are motivated to do more than just hang around at Greendale.

But if Jeff wants to get out, badly - an emotion well-played by Joel McHale - the spirit of the season, and the help of his friends during that ridiculous brawl(*), lets his heart grow three sizes so he can at least briefly acknowledge that life at Greendale hasn't been all bad for him. Again, they've done funnier episodes, but the emotion at the end felt genuine, and much moreso than some might have expected from such a snarky show.

(*) The song accompanying all the punching and dancing was "Kiss with a Fist," by Florence & The Machine.

What did everybody else think?

Community, "The Politics of Human Sexuality": Unsafe sex

No time for a full "Community" review today. Thought it was a good but not great episode: another fine showcase for Alison Brie, a nice ratio of pop culture references ("Over the Top," "Porky's") to actual character-driven humor, good use of the dean, and a solid guest star turn by Sharon Lawrence. Don't love where they seemed to be heading with Jeff at the end, but we'll see how that plays out. And Troy's obsession with writing the perfect punchline for Pierce's set-up was a fine meta-touch, given that Donald Glover used to be a writer at "30 Rock."

What did everybody else think?

Community, "Environmental Science": Tigre, tigre, burning bright

Spoilers for "Community" coming up just as soon as I rest gently on your pecs...

This was a really strong night for all four of NBC's comedies, and this week I think "Community" was my favorite of the bunch. I'm always more kindly disposed to comedies with multiple storylines if they find a way to tie them all together (see the best episodes of both "Seinfeld" and "30 Rock"), and the climactic sequence here - with Abed and Troy's duet of "Somewhere Out There"(*) accompanying both Shirley's presentation and the Senor/Senora Chang dance reunion - was both hilarious and oddly touching.

(*) In case you didn't get the reference, or why Abed called his rat "Fyvel," go watch the original performance from "An American Tail."

Beyond that, "Environmental Science" was just a nice showcase for virtually everyone in the cast, including Ken Jeong. Jeong was added after the pilot (no doubt due to his performance in "The Hangover"), and there have been times where he's either felt shoehorned into episodes, or else working in a style that's just a little too broad for the room. But he melded very well with Joel McHale, and the opening classroom scene - from pulling Annie, desk and all, out into the hall to lengthening the paper in response to Britta's ass-kissing - was the best of those since Chang's debut scene in episode two.

Pierce got to be right several times (and briefly usurp Jeff's role in the group), Shirley got to give everyone a sandwich, Abed got to question other people's level of reality, and Troy got to squeal like a little girl - a lot.

Strong, funny, very satisfying episode.

What did everybody else think?

Community, "Debate 109": G vs. E

Quick thoughts on tonight's "Community" coming up just as soon as my shirt gets out of my pants...

"Debate 109" continued Alison Brie's comic hot streak that's bounced impressively between the period repression of "Mad Men" and the pop culture silliness of this show. Despite the difference in eras and styles, Trudy Campbell and Annie Edison turn out to not be so different in their ambition, in their indomitable wills, in all the emotions hiding behind that plastered-on sunny demeanor, and in their awareness of how to manipulate their man when needed.

My one big issue with the Jeff/Annie storyline is that it never really addressed the huge age gap between the two of them. We've established that Annie's 18, and Jeff's at least in his mid-30s (Joel McHale turns 38 in a few days). While I suppose you could interpret sme of Jeff's reluctance - and the head pats - as him being very aware of the gap, I think there was some material they could have mined there but either forgot to or chose not to.

As with tonight's "Parks and Recreation," the episode's biggest laugh came from what was practically a throwaway moment, with the arrival of the fuh-laming Greendale men's basketball team (complete with midriff-baring jerseys and handlebar musaches) in the middle of the debate. But as with "P&R," the rest was a lot of fun, too.

Despite the focus on Jeff and Annie, everyone had their great moments, whether it was Troy's brain being wrinkled by Abed's psychic films, Shirley being so excited to hear Jeff invoke Jesus in the debate, or Pierce tripping over the drums the second time(*). And Abed's films provided this weirdly satisfying layer of meta humor, complete with Not-Troy and Not-Abed appearing in the tag, alongside the actual Troy and Abed. A very satisfying episode.

(*) The first time seemed lame, but the second fall reminded me of Chevy's physical comedy genius back in the '70s. The difference, I think, was in the slowness of the second fall. If you watch any of Chevy's old Gerald Ford sketches, what made them work so well was that time seemed to slow down and it took Ford forever to hit the deck, knocking into/over many things on the way down, and yet he could never stop himself. That's funnier than just your basic pratfall, which the first one was.

What did everybody else think?