Next to Big Bang Theory, Community is the geekiest sitcom on the air. I didn’t think this season could top last season but it did. They started the season with madness when Betty White subbed as the Anthropology professor. She constructed a weapon in class and almost killed Jeff with spear! A disgraced Senior Chang becomes a student and wants to become a member of the study group. He spends the entire season trying to be one of the gang but never makes it in. One of my first favorite episodes of the season is ‘Basic Rocket Science’. The study group’s orbital launch simulator was sabotaged by a rival community college and the episode fell into an Apollo 11 homage. In ‘Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples’, Shirley got a little lame and wanted to make a Christian rap video that ended in Abed becoming a messiah for Greendale. He had Jesus-styled long hair extensions and everything! These episodes can be ranked as five-star episodes but the show managed to top itself with ‘Epidemiology’. It was Halloween and a virus broke out in the school. Everyone eventually turned into zombies, there was a lock down and before the whole of Greendale could be exterminated, everyone was saved by turning up the air conditioning. Shirley and Chang had sex that night and for the rest of the season everyone wondered if the baby was Chang’s or Theo Huxtable‘s (Malcolm Jamal Warner as Andre). ‘Cooperative Calligraphy’ was all about the group locking themselves in a room and stripping down to their underpants because Annie’s pens kept going missing. It was an ultimate “bottle episode” where nothing really happened but was funny as hell. In ‘Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design’ Abed and Troy make the most elaborate blanket fort that I’ve ever seen. It spanned most of the Greendale dorms and even had ethnic neighborhoods. If these episodes didn’t sell you then ‘Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas’ should have. The whole study group became stop-animated and went on a Rudolph The Red-nosed Reindeer-styled adventure. The Dungeon’s and Dragon’s episode was great but it reminded me of an episode of The I.T. Crowd. ‘Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking’ was another episode that showed the fluidity of the acting of everyone on Community. Every episode seems like a different show with the study group changing gears as any and every scenario is thrown at them. It was shot like a heart-felt and emotive documentary. The shaky-cam and silence changed the mood of the show and made it a sad and reflective of the human condition. LeVar Burton was in this episode and shined like always. He even made Kunta Kente jokes. There was a Pulp Fiction birthday party arranged by Jeff for Abed that went awry. The finale was a two-part episode about a paintball competition. They did paintballs last year but this year they went overboard into paintball insanity this year. The highly competitive and rival City College disguised as a company sponsoring a paintball competition sent Greendale into a paintball warzone. Part one was Wild West themed and had a cameo by the sexy Lost‘s Josh Holloway. The second part was Star Wars themed which portrayed City College as The Empire and Greendale as the Rebel Alliance. It was a worthy finale to an already over-the-top and wacky show.
Community has been nominated for a lot of awards but hasn’t won anything… yet. I look forward to new episodes in its third season next fall.
Community returns next fall on Thursdays 8/7c on NBC.
