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?
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