Hello again! Last night I began my rewatch of Community's fabulous show running, so this morning I'm planning on posting reactions of the episodes I've watched. This doesn't really have much of a purpose; I'm only doing so because, well, all of my TV shows have ended for the summer and there's really nothing else to do. =P
1x01- Pilot
Episode Rundown- So, obviously, this is the pilot, so it's the first episode of the show. We understand that Jeff Winger is a disbarred lawyer who is seeking a legitimate bachelor's degree at Greendale Community College and will lie, cheat, and steal to get there even faster than necessary. He meets Abed, moons over Britta, and proceeds to find a former colleague. He has a hilarious conversation with Professor Ian Duncan that explains all of this and when Duncan asks if he's ever heard the adage, "Cheaters never prosper," Jeff says no and that, "If I wanted to learn something, I wouldn't have come to community college."
After the jazzy title sequence, we see Pierce in all of his Pierce glory having a very hard time with a hot dog. Hysterical. Jeff then proceeds to make a move on Britta and invites her to his study group with very, very bad Spanish. In a turn of events much to Jeff's chagrin, when Britta shows up, she brings Abed, who later invites the rest of their soon-to-be "family." Jeff, not deterred by this, mentions that this group may be "untutorable" and when he intentionally makes them this way, Britta finds out he did all of this just for a chance to have sex with her. She's disgusted, as most people would be, and Jeff promises to right his wrongs if she'll have dinner with him afterward. She agrees reluctantly.
And then Jeff launches into the most perfect speech I've ever heard (up until this point, at least) in my life- Sharks, Pencils, Ben Affleck. It's random, it's hilarious, it's freaking genius and easily the best part of the entire episode. It calms everyone down, excites them, and then Britta drops the ball and tells everyone the truth- he's "a lying creep who purposefully upset everyone" and then she asks him to leave. Which he does, only to find out the test answers Duncan gave him are just blank sheets of paper, the last one reading, "Booyah." But it all ends on a happy note when the rest of the group invites him back in to study and Abed tells him he "sees his value, now." Aw, happy endings!
What Was Great
~ Sharks, Pencils, Ben Affleck- I cannot even begin to cover the amazing quality of this speech. It's literally flawless. "We're the only species who observes Shark Week. Sharks don't even observe Shark Week, but we do. For the same reason I can pick up this pencil, tell you its name is Steve, and go like this. *snaps pencil in half* And part of you dies. Just a little bit on the inside. Because people can connect with anything- we can forgive a shark, we can sympathize with a pencil, and we can give Ben Affleck an Academy Award for screenwriting..." Just... So, so good.
~ Abed- legit everything that came out of his mouth was pure gold- introducing himself to Jeff, The Breakfast Club and Dirty Dancing references, the end where he thought he went deaf. Just gold. Love him.
~ Learning just a piece of everyone's back stories- Annie's pill addiction, Troy losing his scholarship, Shirley's divorce and kids, Britta's "save the world" mission, Abed's parents' divorce, Pierce and his seven marriages. It was awesome because, even though it's a comedy, they all have these dark back stories which I'm anxious to read into in the future.
What Wasn't So Great
~ The episode in general. Because this is only the first episode and they were still trying to find their groove, the episode came out kind of... blah. It's an episode I feel like you can only appreciate after loving the show for a while; it has that kind of humor and wit. But it isn't the episode I would recommend to someone who's just starting to watch the show. Watch some of the more exciting ones first, and then come back to the Pilot.
Rating
I would give it a solid six out of ten stars. A funny but somewhat lacking introduction to a great show.
1x02- Spanish 101
Episode Rundown- The second episode of the first season introduced us to the most annoying Spanish teacher since my time in high school- Señor Chang. He teaches the episode title class, Spanish 101, in which the study group is enrolled and is possibly the most ridiculous television character NBC's ever seen (debatable, yes, but I literally cannot stand the man). Anyway, Jeff is still on his quest to pursue Britta, who couldn't care less about a relationship with him and continues to turn him down. However, when Chang mentions they'll be partnering up for a Spanish project, Jeff sees this as the perfect opportunity to get to her and bribes Abed, who is her assigned partner, with his shirt to switch partners with him. Until, uh oh, the sneaky bitch. Britta switched cards too, assuming Jeff would do so, and now Jeff is actually paired with Pierce. Ha. Fooled you!
Meanwhile, Shirley and Annie are bothered by a comment Britta makes in study group about how Guatemala is killing those who oppose the government and throw a protest in the middle of campus, complete with picketers, rap music, and brownies. So not the right way to protest. =P Britta is irritated by this, but joins in anyway because she realizes she doesn't do anything to help her causes anyway. They decide to have a silent protest, complete with duct tape over their mouths, which Jeff crashes later when he finally breaks away from Pierce's stronghold. Pierce comes in, drunk as a skunk, and accuses Jeff of abandoning him, but catches his arm on fire and has to dive into the fountain to put himself out. Ah, the doddering old fool...
The next day is the morning of their presentations and, though Chang offers Jeff a C and tells Pierce to do their presentation solo, Britta makes Jeff feel awful for everything he did (she's really getting good at that...) and Jeff decides to be a good person and do the presentation. It is not without hilarity- there are costumes, silly string, sparklers, robotic deaths, waving flags while wearing butterfly wings, and something in a fake canoe that involves Annie in captivity. In the end, they both fail, but Britta's impressed by Jeff's selfless act and tells him, "No woman in that room can look at you as a sexually viable candidate ever again." At first he's disappointed by this but then "she looks back." The ultimate pinnacle of hope. =P
And then there's the greatest ending tag in TV history- La Biblioteca Rap. Troy and Abed make a 30-second rap, in Spanish, about the most hilariously random things. When translated to English, it makes zero sense. In Spanish, it rhymes, but still makes zero sense. But it's absolute perfection.
What Was Great
~ La Biblioteca Rap = Donde esta la biblioteca? Me llamo T-Bone, la arana discoteca. Discoteca, muneca, la biblioteca. Es un bigote grande, perro, manteca. Manteca, bigote, gigante, pequeno. Cabeza es nieve, cerveza es bueno. Buenos dias, me gusta papas frias. El bigote de la cabra es Cameron Diazzzz!! Yea boi. Boi. Word. It's 2009.
~ Jeff and Pierce's Spanish presentation in dramatic slow motion with a sad-ish song in the background. Awesome.
~ Shirley and Annie's Chacata Panecos pinata. "You guys realize he was beaten to death, right?" "That's where we got the idea from. Poignant."
~ Pierce's toast during his and Jeff's presentation planning time. "To the empowerage of words!" "... To the irony of that sentence."
What Wasn't So Great
~ Chang. I cannot stand him. I do not think he's funny. I do not think he's entertaining. I just don't like him.
Rating
I would give this episode a solid six out of ten as well. Pierce isn't the most entertaining character and I dislike anything with Chang, but everything else was fabulous.
1x03- Introduction to Film
Episode Rundown- Intro to Film is the third episode of the first season and this, I thought, is where the show really started to get good. It starts off with Jeff sitting in Accounting which ends up becoming his standard "blow-off" class. It's taught by Professor Whitman who believes in "carpe diem" and says it an innumerous amount of times. When Jeff suggests the class to the rest of the group, everyone's on board except for Britta, who opposes anything Jeff likes, and Abed, who says his father will only pay for classes that will help him run the family falafel business. Britta's disgusted by this and offers to pay for a film class for him, since it's Abed's dream to become a filmmaker, and Jeff pokes fun at her for getting involved in everyone's personal lives. Oh yeah, Troy sneezes like a girl ("And how about I pound you like a boy? ... That didn't come out right.") and Pierce later helps him find a manlier sneeze.
Later on in Accounting, Shirley gets an A for expressing the real reason why she's at Greendale (and it isn't to get a degree in business so she can sell her baked goods and whatnot on the internet) and Annie stands on a desk. Professor Whitman tells Jeff that he'll fail if doesn't start seizing his days for real and Britta gets into an argument with Abed's father over what's right for Abed. It ends with Gobi Nadir saying that Jeff and Britta can raise Abed because he's out. This leaves Britta to have to calculate Abed's expenses while Jeff takes no part in the fatherly role and instead tries very hard to seize a day, with no avail. The next morning, he runs through campus with a kite and plays double dutch with a bunch of teenage girls, which Whitman calls "sloppy." Then at study group, Jeff and Britta confess their concerns about Abed's movie and both end up storming out, with Abed saying, "Perfect, that's a wrap!"
The next scene is Abed, making the final cuts and edits on his movie while Jeff tries to bring peace between Britta and Gobi (Yes, I looked up this guy's name and yes, it's Gobi. Odd). They argue for a while, with Jeff shouting over them unhelpfully, when Abed finally shouts, "I'm finished!" and makes them watch his movie. It's a story of his life from the very beginning and though Jeff and Britta don't really get it, it makes his father cry. He agrees to let Abed continue to study film, "with falafel as a fallback," and Britta says she made this all happen. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, Britta tells Abed that doing all of those awful things to her on purpose isn't a very nice way to treat friends, but he says that it isn't called "friend business, it's called show business." Poignant, Mr. Nadir. When Jeff and Britta leave the library, she says she owes him and tells him to kiss her, which he does without hesitation. He thinks she meant it romantically, but when they pull away, Whitman shouts, "DAY SEIZED!" with Britta saying, "We're even." and walking away. Ha. Sneaky bitch is at it again!
The ending tag for this episode was classic Troy and Abed. Troy is at the study room table with Abed trying to "krump" to this ridiculous music. He finally gets fed up, shouts "THIS is krumping!" and breaks it down ridiculously with Abed trying to copy him. Jeff comes in, Troy explains they're krumping, and he says, "No you're not. HIT IT!" And off they go!
What Was Great
~ Abed's movie. It was funny, sad, and important to the storyline all in one. We got to see part of Abed's family history and it was a little heartbreaking. But it was still funny, because it's Jeff and Britta playing his parents and then, of course, the Cool Abed! films thing at the end was great.
~ Gobi and Britta's fight on the quad. Love Jeff's line at the beginning: "Holy... war." And then the whole thing with "dreams are for sleeping, it's clinically proven," "so's polio!" "you lost me!" And of course her warrior stance. Hilarious.
~ Pierce's array of sneezes. So, so funny.
~ Whitman's "possibility" of death: "You could die in your sleep. You could get hit by a bus. You- that mole is raised and dark. It's not a good combo." I laughed so hard.
~ Jeff and Britta's kiss under false pretenses. Take that, shippers.
~ No Chang. 'Nuff said.
What Wasn't So Great
~ The tag just didn't do it for me. The bloopers were funnier!
~ That kid Jeff talks to in Accounting at the beginning of the episode. He just stared into space the whole time Jeff was speaking. Space cadet.
Rating
I would give this episode a solid seven and a half stars out of ten. Hilarious and a good start to what promises to be a great season. ;)
Check back soon. I plan on continuing this rewatch nightly. =D
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