Community 2.11: Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas

I...I think my heart just grew three sizes.

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.

Clearly we need more diversity in the writers' rooms.

Note: Vague spoilers for past episodes of How I Met Your Mother and Community, and major spoilers for past episodes of Castle and NCIS. Last week's episode of Community had a joke about Dead Poets Society. This week's episode of How I Met Your Mother had a joke about Dead Poets Society. Either Sepinwall or the AV Club made note of this, with the comment that TV writers have the same median age, and thus the same cultural references. And that's fine. "O captain! My captain!" is a cultural touchstone when we start talking about teaching, and if shows don't reference it, often we the commenters do. NOW. Last week's episode of Castle hinged on Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, wherein two commuters make a deal to commit murder for each other, and they specifically referenced Strangers on a Train. This week's episode of NCIS hinged on Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, wherein two commuters did some insider training together, then one murdered the other. And they specifically referenced Strangers on a Train. Different plots, yes? Except, since I already had the plot in mind from last week's Castle, when they started talking about how the two people had nothing in common, I immediately went to the Strangers on a Train scenario. And spent the rest of the episode being bored. I don't watch procedurals for the surprising! Plot! Twists! But honestly. Sigh. I'm not proposing any sort of solution, or pinpointing any sort of complaint, because we can't change our cultural references, nor can we function without them. I just find the coincidences fascinating, and also annoying.