by Thom Yee

Community images courtesy of Sony Pictures Television.

6×12: “Wedding Videography”

I realized that up until recently my Community reviews had regressed into a pretty stable formula:

1. Make some odd, but broadly related statement;
2. Lay out the episode’s premise;
3. Talk about how the episode is kind of good but not really;
4. Make reference to some bit of season one or two esoterica that’s long lost its validity;
5. Lay out my complaints; and
6. Conclude in a way that suggests profundity in the absence of having anything profound to say.

It was while writing my review of “Basic Email Security” that it really hit home how routine covering Community’s sixth season had become as that whole review spilled out almost fully formed, completely from the stream of consciousness I had during a quiet period at work. It took about fifteen minutes to write. That’s what Community had become at that point: routine. Continue reading →

by Thom Yee

Community images courtesy of Sony Pictures Television.

6×11: “Modern Espionage”

It’s been two years since we’ve had a paintball episode, and four since we’ve had a good one. The first two — “Modern Warfare” from season one and the two-part “A Fistful of Paintballs”/”For a Few Paintballs More” from season two — are episodes that helped to define the early years of the show and still stand as some of the greatest episodes in the series. You can’t just close every season with “a flawless, postmodern homage to action-adventure mythology” under the guise of a campus-wide paintball game, however, so it’s a genie that’s largely been back in the bottle ever since the end of season two. We did have the gas leak year’s failed attempt to refresh Community paintball (an attempt [and year] best left forgotten) and last year’s thematically similar “Geothermal Escapism”, a game of hot lava that engulfed much of the school grounds, but for the most part, paintball as a concept has been allowed to rest and recharge its batteries until a true and proper successor could be produced. Words like “rested” and “recharged” are far from what I would choose to describe most of what we’ve seen this season, but mercifully, the decision to pick the lofty mantle of paintball back up here, near the end of season six (and quite possibly the series), turned out to be the right one. Continue reading →

by Thom Yee

Community images courtesy of Sony Pictures Television.

6×10: “Basic RV Repair and Palmistry”

So pretty much nothing happened in this episode. In fact, I had to go back a couple of times just to fully understand what was happening, with the story beginning in media res and taking place over only a few hours inside Elroy’s RV. In terms of plot or character development, this week’s episode is probably the least active of the entire season so far, so it’s weird that it’s also probably the most important.

Community has always been a weird, self-referential show obsessed with and consumed by contemporary pop culture, but at its best it’s also used its eccentricity and self-awareness to insightfully find essential truths and drive home its thematic meanings. Continue reading →

by Thom Yee

Community images courtesy of Sony Pictures Television.

6×09: “Grifting 101”

Something that’s been hard to track throughout the last two seasons of Community is the progression of the school year. Without the benefit of a year-round/fall-winter release schedule, thirteen episodes can go by relatively quickly in about one semester’s time, and this year and last have also been without markers like a Halloween or Christmas episode. When the topic of picking new classes from this semester’s new course catalogue comes up, as is the starting pitch for this week’s “Grifting 101”, the whole thing sort of feels out of left field. On the other hand, we’ve already gone pretty far in abandoning the central conceit of school uniting our characters anyway; classroom settings rarely show up even as framing sequences anymore. And since when was Chang a student again? Hasn’t he been the math teacher since last year? And even then, along with photography and martial arts, shouldn’t that assignment have gone against every fibre of the mysterious, inscrutable nature he may have but doesn’t want to have any conversations about? Maybe I’m just living in the past (I miss 2009, when twenty years ago was still the 80s). Continue reading →