Community 2.10: Mixology Certification

Every week, I watch Community, and every week, I think it can't get better. And then the next week comes. Seriously, tonight's episode was so amazing. It's Troy's birthday, and the study group goes to the bar. And then it gets interesting, but not in a TV sort of way. This episode will probably get a lot of flak because it didn't have the technical complexity that episodes like "Modern Warfare" and "Conspiracy Theories" had. It wasn't insta-quotable or pop-culture-riven. It wasn't boggling. It wasn't water cooler fodder. It was weird and unsettled and dislocated. It started out all sitcommy--and don't mistake me, this was still a funny episode--but it ended up exploring the growth of each character, in a different way. It pushed, and it didn't resolve. Sitcoms are supposed to resolve things. That's the point of them. They lob a handy situation at us, and we watch our beloved characters act wacky and/or neurotic and then we laugh, and then things turn out for the best, and we have closure. The credits roll and we hit the reset button. The pieces move back in place, and we aren't haunted by threads left dangling, irritating, disturbing our equilibrium. We don't worry that things are changing, that we might be facing uncertainty. We want our characters, our narratives, to stay in their box and do what we expect, because we expect them to do that. This episode did not do that. Good.