Ah, Community. I express frustration at your ratings all the time, but with episodes like this, it's easy to see why some people might feel alienated. First off, NBC went ahead and advertised the Pulp Fiction part of the episode so the casual viewer might have thought "Oh, a Pulp Fiction homage, I'm down" (because these people are still living in the 90s, apparently). However, the actual episode turned out to be a My Dinner With Andre homage, with the Pulp Fiction stuff merely serving as a background for the other characters. On top of being a "stealth homage" (that's the name of my Weird Al Yankovic cover band), the episode wasn't particularly funny. But not like "Celebrity Pharmacology", where the show was clearly trying to be funny. This episode had its joke moments ("Man, NOBODY likes Britta!"), the show was very clearly trying to go for a more character-based episode that didn't rely on humor. And it worked remarkably well for a sitcom, who'd you would think the primary objective of is to make us laugh.
First off, props to Joel McHale and Danny Pudi for some very good work in this episode, particularily Pudi. Abed's "Cougar Town" monologue was just absolutely mesmerizing ("Chad had lived, Jeff. Chad had lived more than Abed") as were Jeff's admissions. This is one of the first times (at least one of the most notable) that Jeff has been hurt or embarrassed due to his newfound attachment to his study group and it really showed and was believable. Just the mere fact that this show can do episodes like this that mess with not only the structure of the show but the structure of the characters too really makes me love it even more. But I can also understand why somebody used to The Office could watch this show and not understand why a comedy should do episodes like this. And really, a sitcom shouldn't be doing episodes like this. Then again, Community does a lot of things sitcoms shouldn't do and does all of them extremely well.
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