“Pantsing someone was on my list.” – Abed
Another very very strong episode of Community that breaks down roughly as follows:</p>
The case of the high school punks
Jeff (Joel McHale) and Britta (Gillian Jacobs) get mercilessly taunted by a trio of high school punks. “So we were just wondering. Can you tell us exactly what you did in your lives to end up here so that we don’t make the same mistakes?” the lead punk asks. Later, he turns again on Britta with one-liners such as, “Oh my god, is she wearing a Disc Man?”
Abed and Troy’s bucket list adventures
Abed (Danny Pudi) busts out what’s a mix of a Bucket List for college and Earl from My Name Is Earl’s checkoff list of “quintessential” things to do during his first year in college. These include bonding with a loveable band of misfits (check) and “pantsing” someone, which is ticked off when he pulls Troy’s (Donald Glover) pants down. Those two… really get along, don’t you think? Later, the duo end up doing such thing as pledging a fraternity, building a Revenge of the Nerds-era robot (Boob A Tron 4000, of course!), and walking around with pretzels up their butts (Troy just knew he shouldn’t have put mustard on his).
Pierce gets kicked out of the group
Pierce (Chevy Chase) just didn’t know the proper parameters of pantsing. A guy pantsing (pulling down the pants of a fellow schoolmate for humorous effect) another guy: acceptable if (literally) sophomoric. A guy pantsing a middle aged woman in public without asking: not so cool. When Pierce goes too far and drops the pants/skirt of Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown), he is booted out of the gang. It seems, of course, that he has been a blatant racist/sexist/dumbist and other –ists for quite some time, of course. I like that Community operates on a level where there are some rules, that Pierce’s pantsing (say that 10 times fast) does have some consequences and is not just laughed off and forgotten as a quick hit bit.
Instead, it turns into a clever plot device as Pierce’s departure creates a hole in the group’s dynamic. Community works so well because it does a wonderful job of exploring the social dynamics of that amorphous entity known as “the group.” In this case, the lack of Pierce creates a need for “the new Pierce,” the scapegoat (and wouldn’t you know it, this conversation happens while there is an actual live goat in the room). Of course, no one wants to be the new Pierce, so the gang has to convince the old Pierce to come back on board.
The storylines do meet
After a failed attempt at “banging” the high school punk’s mom (AKA Frankenmom), Jeff and Britta end up in a “duh off” with the punks. Pierce and Shirley arrive (after a little of their own strictly platonic making up and bonding time) and realize that the group dynamic badly needs them both. As Abed points out, Jeff and Britta have the most fragile egos of the group, which brings out a true moron-athon in screaming “duh” at high school nobodies for some amount of time north of 12 minutes. Fittingly, Pierce pantses the lead punk, causing a fuzzy decision of a “win” to be called in Jeff/Britta’s favor. And to finish things off, there’s a good old fashioned food fight straight out of Animal House, replete with captions of what the gang will be up to in the “future.”
More thoughts on “The Art of Discourse”:
- Is it just me or has Britta been trending nerdier/quirkier lately? I feel like the writers have acknowledged that her character was boring and wasn’t really going anywhere, so they’re reinventing her not as Jeff’s romantic interest, but as the weird cat lady shut-in type of the gang.
- Abed (calmly smashing Pierce’s acoustic guitar to bits (as he croons a crappy croon), followed by saying “sorry” is simply awesome.
- Senor Chang (Ken Jeong) tries to console Pierce by offering him Girl Scout cookies at $10 a box. This is followed by two girl scouts trying to hunt down a “Chinese kid” who has stolen their cookies. That is gold, Jerry. Gold.
- “Ooh, check out Frankenmom!” – Jeff on the high school punk’s mother
- “You have to bang his mom!” – Britta
- It should be said here that Donald Glover has been on fire as Troy this season, very hilarious dude.
- “You sure you don’t want some vodka” – Frankenmom (Lisa Rinna). “No, I’m good. I’m good. I’m at school, at 2pm” – Jeff.
From Around the Web: Community, “The Art of Discourse”:
- starpulse: After last-week’s dead-ringer mafia movie/Scorsese parody, the writers took on the godfather of college hijinx flicks- Animal House.
- What’s Alan Watching?: Some very nice work by Chevy Chase and Yvette Nicole Brown in this one, and ultimately their moment of bonding climaxed with a nice callback to the pantsing joke that started the whole mess – and by the time we got to the food fight and the extended riff on the end of “Animal House,” it felt okay to go whole-hog on the parody, and I look forward to seeing Troy and Abed in “College Cut-Ups 2: Panty Raid Academy.”
- Paste Magazine: I’m perfectly fine with Community staying safely in its pop culture comfort zone, but there was something exciting about the few minutes when that dropped away. The tension of these two different realities came through wonderfully, and once again the set-piece at the end of the episode was thoroughly brilliant.
Some stats and info about Community, “The Art of Discourse”
TV SHOW – Community
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 1, Episode 22
AIRED ON – April 29th, 2010
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – NBC/Yahoo! Screen
GENRE – Comedy, College Shows
CREATED BY – Dan Harmon
CAST – Joel McHale, Danny Pudi, Donald Glover, Chevy Chase, Gillian Jacobs, Alison Brie, Yvette Nicole Brown, Ken Jeong, Jim Rash
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.