3x07 Studies in Modern Movement

[8.2/10] It’s always tough to maintain the balance between characters being appropriately outsized for the purposes of a sitcom, while also keeping them grounded enough to support realistic stories and emotions necessary to exist within that structure. Troy and Abed’s antics are hilarious for us as viewers, and their college-students-qua-ten-year-olds routine is an adorable and memorable ingredient in the Community stew. But living with those guys, their naiveté and incompetence, could easily be beyond trying if it was a day-in-day-out sort of thing rather than a twenty-minute visit every week or so.

Which is why it’s easy to sympathize with Annie here. She is rarely the fun one in the group, more often one of the few members of the Greendale Seven trying to hold everything together. So her attempts to take Troy & Abed’s idiosyncrasies in stride (to go “loosey goosey” as Britta suggests) are admirable, and speak to the well-observed comments from Britta that the things you love about your friends can become the things you hate about your roommates.

But what makes this more than just a generic sitcom episode is that Annie calls out Troy and Abed for this. When her new “room” turns out to be a blanket fort, only for her to discover that there’s a whole other bedroom, dubbed “The Dreamatorium” that she could be sleeping in, the shit hits the fan. Annie’s speech that she’s always worried about keeping up with Troy and Abed, but they’re not worried about hanging with her, has some meta commentary involved, and it’s a little blunt but solid way to dramatize the conflict.

The things that recommends the episode, though, is that Troy and Abed are oblivious, not insensitive. When they realize they “messed up bad,” they immediately acknowledge it, and make up for it in a sweet gesture, sacrificing their bedroom for Annie and moving into the blanket fort, a sideways solution to a sideways problem. The decorations put up in Annie’s new room are a nice touch, and their various questions for Annie, like how to use the iron, get out kool aid stains, and whether something’s infected, show that she’s as vital to them as they are to her.

The rest of the episode can’t help but suffer by comparison with the strength of that one, but the best of the various subplots is Britta and Shirley’s mini-debate over Shirley’s Christian ethics vs. Britta’s atheist/humanist ethics. The picking up of a hitchhiker, who turns out to be Christian, then to believing he’s Jesus, and various other reveals creates a nice series of reversals for the pair. And the fact that they’re united by telling him to get out when he starts to sing a song about interracial marriage is sweet in that twisted Community way.

The other major story features Jeff “running into” Dean Pelton (who’s just a “Craigular guy” on the weekends) at the mall, and being blackmailed into spending an afternoon with him or risk the Dean spilling his fib about being sick to get out of helping Annie move. Joel McHale and Jim Rash have such a wonderful comedic chemistry together (“The gentleman will have—“ “Oh!”) that they almost always make for a fun pairing. The problem is that the story doesn’t really go anywhere. Jeff loosening up and actually having fun is a neat enough idea, but the reveal that the Dean planned this after spying on Jeff’s email, which somehow teaches him not to skip out on his friends (or at least to come clean with them) doesn’t click as well as it should. It’s all amusing enough in the moment, but the story just kind of ends.

The weakest of the subplots is Pierce attempting to fix the outlet cover in Annie’s old apartment and causing additional problem after additional problem. It’s the kind of broad, physical, almost cartoon quality that are often Chase’s bread and butter, and while it gives the character something to do, there’s not many laughs to be wrung from it.

Still, it does tie into a superlative sequence that connects all of these stories in musical splendor. The montage where Jeff and Dean Pelton sing Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose,” Troy & Abed are putting on a shadow puppet show for Annie, Shirley and Britta are listening to their off-kilter hitchhiker sing uncomfortable songs, and Pierce hallucinates himself playing piano with Hula girls while high o paint fumes is one of the show’s best visual and sonic interludes. There’s not much to be gleaned from it, but it’s still a neat way to check in on everyone.

And the puppet show in particular serves as a nice reminder that despite Troy & Abed’s peccadillos, what makes them endearing is their sense of whimsy and joy, and that they really do care and are excited to have Annie as their roommate. As much as Community could delve into darkness, it could also find the silver lining in the grayest of clouds and reaffirm the connections and affections among its characters.