Community’s “Advanced Gay” and the Season 1 Problem

Heart attack or clever way to get out of this episode?

After two stellar episodes from Community, “Advanced Gay” pales in comparison. “Remedial Chaos Theory” and “Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps” exemplified what was best about the show, a comedy that is not afraid to push the boundaries of how stories are told on television without sacrificing the status and growth of its characters. Yet “Advanced Gay” seemed to fall back on the tired, unimaginative threads of Pierce’s conservative social views, Jeff’s Daddy Issues (still left unresolved in any way), and Britta’s ill-informed overreaching. But most disappointing is the resuscitation of the “Look! Community college students! They take their studies so seriously. Aren’t they quaint?” approach to plotlines, which I was hoping the writers had gotten over by the end of season 1.

For some context, let’s take a look back.

“Remedial Chaos Theory”, aired on 10/13/11

Always count on a fedora to classy up the joint.

This episode epitomizes what has made this comedy one of the best for the past couple years, starting with “Modern Warfare” at the end of the first season. This episode is carefully constructed, with each iteration of the die roll telling its own story with its unique repercussions, but ultimately coming together to form a whole episode that is revealing about each of the characters and their relationships with each other and to give a simple, sweet message. This is how the Sideways worlds could have (and probably should have) been utilized in Lost, instead of trying to pull some heaven-we’re all dead-religious harmony bull out of its a**.

It almost seems like a throw-away line from Abed at the end to not let chaos rule their lives and have the group choose to send Jeff to get the pizza as a simple way to resolve the episode. Yet I can’t help but read into his pronouncement a Stoic moral, that the only control we have over our lives is how we face what happens to us, and facing it with courage and the support and caring of each other is how we find happiness. It’s sweet that such a positive sentiment can be expressed on a normally cynical sitcom without being ironic.

This episode is also one of my favorites because of how this episode plays off of the ambiguity regarding what constitutes a person’s identity and how, and how fragile those identities can be when exposed to different stimuli. Pierce managed to tell his Eartha Kitt story in every timeline (my favorite telling? “You know who got it in the long run? Eartha Kitt when I nailed her in the airplane bathroom“), showing his omnipresent desire to be popular in the group. Yet what I thought was even more revealing was that as the frequent antagonist for the group, and the member most likely to offend in whatever way possible, it was primarily external circumstances that determined whether he would give that troll to Troy. In the worlds in which he learned that his friend was actually grateful to him and cared for him, Pierce thought of his friend’s well-being and hid the damn fire-starter.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Pierce as the group’s foil, but it’s moments like this when he seems most human and interesting in and of himself.

I also just want to not that this episode was written by Chris McKenna, who also wrote the likewise fantastic episodes, “Paradigms of Human Memory” (by which I laughed more in that 21 minutes than by anything else I had seen that season on any show) and “Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking” (which made a shout-out to “Firefly,” and that automatically puts that episode in the WIN column). 

Let’s be real: that doll would scare the sh*t out of me too if it sat outside my bedroom and stared at me at night

“Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps”, aired on 10/27/11

 While not quite as high concept as the last episode, still “Horror” is a well-made episode that was an actually funny Halloween-themed episode. Each character is given the opportunity to tell a horror story, and thus the writers are able to both satire pop-horror staples and further draw out their characters. Annie’s story parodied Twilight-esque vampire romance, but in keeping with her ambitions, independence, and self-motivation (on the flip side, read: repressed aggression), Annie turns into a were-wolf and devours the vampire. Of course, she also had to teach him to read before she killed him.

Featuring a cameo by Annie's boobs. But alas, not Annie's Boobs.

It’s the details that gave this episode its richness. Each parody was actually made into a short film, and we got to actually see hints and clues at new aspects of these characters without them being thrown into our faces. Shirley may be a loud and proud warrior for Christ with a sweet voice, and a divorcee with three children, but I never actually thought about how innocent she still is, which is why seeing her literally hell-bent drug addict Britta dumping a container of pot leaves on her chest and getting high from it was particularly funny. Or that Abed may be signs of showing that he is a real boy, casting himself as the romantic lead opposite Britta in his own slasher flick.

In the same way that Pierce was humanized in “Chaos,” I likewise found Britta to be a bit more human in this episode. It is easy for her to be a screechy, pretentious yet ill-informed, unfeeling liberal stereotype if she is not treated carefully, but in this episode, she was able to be a bit dim and over-reach but still be caring and at least agreeable. It’s actually cute in this episode, that she has NPR podcasts on her iTunes but still mispronounces “macabre.” 

Is Coolio back? Can I un-ironically pull out my Gangsta's Paradise now?

And then “Advanced Gay” happened.

“Advanced Gay”, aired on November 3, 2011

Suddenly, our characters seem to flatten and lose dimensions. Pierce and Shirley are older than the show’s target audience, and therefore must both be homophobic, and in Pierce’s case, racist! Time to throw in some ironic homophobic jokes! And since the show is self-aware and left-leaning, it is okay to throw in stereotypical depictions of gay men, naturally.  Besides, gay mouthful jokes are only funny coming from Tobias Funke (“You, sir, are a mouthful.")

 The B-story this week was about the seduction of Troy towards the career fields of plumbing and air-conditioning, which saw the revival of the Good Will Hunting parody of Troy as a genius repairman. This plot just feels cheap, that the genius that community college students can aspire to is in repair work. This thread was one that I had hoped the show had abandoned, this attitude of mocking community college as opposed to… “real” college, I guess, as if the writers had some sort of superiority complex. This show works best when they cast Greendale as existing in some hyper-reality, home of the sweet but occasionally dim and extremely odd, who could point out the absurdities of the real world. It’s a similar to the successful move that Parks and Recreation made at the end of its first season when it abandoned its premise as the government version of The Office. (And sidenote, if you are going to cast John Goodman as a bad-ass assistant dean, come up with something more clever for him to partake in than a flat movie parody that you already made on the same show!)

Britta was back to her overreaching, screetchy, holier-than-thou attitude and I started tuning out. Britta: “In my psych class I’m learning about this thing called the Oedipal complex …” TiaC: “F**k me, wake me up when Parks and Rec starts.” She immediately starts diagnosing Pierce and Jeff with daddy issues, and while she may not be wrong, the writers need to be more careful with how far they take her character. I'm also becoming concerned that the writers don't know that if they continuously refer to Jeff’s strained relationship with his father, it they need to actually pull the trigger and SHOW him. It has been clearly stated, many, many times that Jeff and his father have issues to work out. Now it’s time to show the audience what it’s all about, or let it go.

Even God hates Britta

Final thoughts? I’m going to hope that this week’s episode was an anomaly, because this season has been consistently well-made. The biggest problem with this episode is that it just wasn't funny. Set aside lack of character development or insight, I didn't laugh once. No, wait- I laughed once, when the Reverend at the funeral said to Britta, "You're the worst," which I think is telling for how excessively-written she was this week. But I trust that the show will be back to form next week.

And because I am a glass half-full kind of girl, I am going to end on my favorite exchange from "Horror", courtesy of slasher flick Abed and Britta:

Britta: “I’m turned on by how logical you are”

Abed: “I’m comforted by your shiny hair and facial symmetry.”