Monsters of Television

“…every dollar from the period fairy.”

Obviously I like Community, and a lackluster episode is often more enjoyable than other comedies on television. “Celebrity Pharmacology” falls into this category. It’s good, but it’s not terribly inspired. And as Cory Barker tweeted to me last night (and then wrote about in his own review), the episode is pretty broad.

Last week, I needled Perfect Couples for being broad (okay, I  skewered it), but this shouldn’t imply that I don’t like broadness, or think it’s incapable of being funny or entertaining. Broad comedy is great if it’s well-executed, and while Community does kind of stick the landing in the episode. It’s just that the episode a bit creaky in its broadness: anti-drug message gone awry, mistaken text messaging, friendships challenged by money. When I said Perfect Couples would be good as a Disney show, I didn’t realize that Community would do an episode right out of Hannah Montana.

Part of my frustration stems that the episode plays itself a little too straight without enough emotional payoff. Community, when does a straight-er sitcom approach, normally does it to emphasize the characters and some particular moral (and there is on in this episode, too, of course, delivered helpfully by Dean Pelton), with “Mixology Certification” being the prime example. “Celebrity Pharmacology” makes gestures to this, as we learn about Annie’s money problems and where Pierce’s need to be the center of attention comes from, but there’s not enough of a pay off for those things to matter. Pierce and Annie really don’t seem to learn anything, and in a show that generally follows through with character development, that’s disappointing.

Certainly some of this stems from Pierce himself, the broadest drawn of the group. Again, I don’t necessarily think this as a bad thing since there are often depths to Pierce’s character (his doling out of wisdom through season 1, the loss of his mother this season), but he’s a parody of what the perception of old people in college (or more generally, perhaps) are: buffonish, annoying, and unhip, striving to fit in with younger peers. When we place Pierce at the center of the episode (and this is a fairly rare occurrence), it should indicate that broadness it to follow.

Those depths within Pierce’s character, however, never appear. I like that he wants to help Annie, but am frustrated by his scheming that follows. We know Pierce will pay for the feeling of family, but by the end of “Basic Genealogy”, we know he’s in on the con and is okay with it because he’s lonely. With the realization that the study group is a new family, he’s able to move past it. This episode is unnecessary character regression for the sake of a school play (which is, actually, pretty funny), where everyone else feels very stuck in the background.

Shockingly, it’s the Chang beats that work for me here, which is something I never thought I would type. An even broader character than Pierce (albeit in a limited scope, if that makes sense), I like how he uses those psychotic aspects of himself to salvage Annie’s production and still be in keeping with the character. But the episode does hint that Chang is willing to change himself to be better person so he can be a part of his potential baby’s life. And while I like the show’s ability to deepen Pierce, I balk at Chang’s development because I can’t trust it. Is he being genuine, or is he seeing it as just another way to get into the group and then destroy them from within, as was originally planned?

So, yes, not my favorite episode of season (though still funnier than “Basic Rocket Science”). I would like to see Community do broad comedy, but I’d like to see it played with a bit more of the show’s intelligence and daring.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• No mention of the text messaging plot, you say? Do I need to? It was predictable, not super funny, and I kept wishing for Abed to make some meta-comment about it (though silently judging Jeff was funny).
• I commented during the episode that while Community had done an excellent job showing the dangers of alcohol, it wasn’t excelling with drugs. But Chang’s clever turn at the end does deliver a nice anti-drug message.
• “How come he gets a front stinger?” Happy to see that Dean Pelton has moved on from Dalmatians.
• “The next time you think about drugs, think about baseball instead.”
• “He sent her an emotipenis!”
• “Well that answers my question. Jeff Winger is sexy even in a coffin.”
• “Drugs are like special honey.”
• Did they ever explain why Shirley was a green crayon?
• I will say that I am a bit uneasy about next week’s episode based on the description, but we’ll see how they pull it off (purposefully avoiding the description for the most spoiler phobic readers).