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Wednesday, June 8, 2011

"Community" Service: 201 - "Anthropology 101" or "Betty White and the Giant Middle Finger"

(NOTE: I want to preemptively apologize for what you're about to read. When I started the "Community Service" series, I had no idea what form the episode-specific entries would take, and unfortunately, in the case of this entry, that turns out to be VERY recap-heavy and bitter towards Dan Harmon. Bear with me. I knew this first one would be a test run of sorts. I hope you can power through it enough to want to come back for the next installment. Thanks.)

In the week since I started this feature, it seems more and more every day that Season 2 of Community WANTS me to tear it a new asshole.

First, two weeks ago, NBC started their summer rerun cycle on Thursday nights with this, the first episode of the show's sophomore season; with the second episode coming the following week and presumably the remaining 23 (unless they edit the finale into the one-hour episode it was originally intended to be) airing from now until the show's return in September(?).

Then, one of my favorite podcasts, WTF? with Marc Maron welcomed the show's creator Dan Harmon for a very insightful 90-minute discussion about his work on the show and how his beginnings with Channel 101 and as a co-creator of the gone-and-very-much-missed The Sarah Silverman Program led him to the universe of Greendale.

...and then, finally, like the icing on a cake made of material from which I could draw my rantings, just this week The A.V. Club started a four-part series in which Harmon takes them through all of Season 2, six episodes at a time, explaining how these episodes came to be what we saw on our screens this past year.

Let me start by thanking the entertainment world for giving me these gifts, and then cut to the ending Tarantino-style to find the conclusion I've drawn:

Community creator Dan Harmon is a severely-damaged, borderline alcoholic son of a bitch who is DESPERATE for your approval, no matter what the cost.

Rest assured, that statement is not entirely meant as insult/criticism. I can't speak ill of a man who is mentally in the same place a lot of entertainers (including myself) have been countless times before. Moreover, let me make it abundantly clear; this series I've embarked on here at "Entertainment on Jeff's Terms" isn't intended as an indictment of anyone who actually enjoyed what this show became in its second season. If anything, it's an indictment of the exclusivist, short-sighted, closed-minded dolts who now populate places like The A.V. Club comments section and have turned this show into something more hateful and condemning of its own past than it has sadly become on its own. (Seriously, it didn't need any help in that department.)

With that being said, let's finally embark on our journey with Episode 201 entitled "Anthropology 101".

Courtesy of my DVR, I've re-watched this episode three times since its re-airing on May 26. It's been an absolute rollercoaster of emotions. I actually made a point to re-watch all of Season 1 on DVD shortly before I pressed the big black play button on my DirecTV remote. I needed to get my head in the right place, and truth be told...it starts out well enough.

I remember how wide my smile was the first time I saw the opening montage; a clearly Wes Anderson-inspired left-to-right tracking shot, passing by a tableau of each of our leads' bedrooms. It truly felt like all my old friends at Greendale Community College were as happy to be back in my life as I was to be watching them; Abed in particular, whose calendar (the camera's first object of focus) has been crossed out day-by-day until it reaches the big, multicolored circle reading "FIRST DAY OF CLASSES".


We pass by Troy's new bedroom in Pierce's mansion as he joyously springs out of bed in Spider-Man pajamas; a nod to Donald Glover's famous attempts to snag the lead in Marc Webb's upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man. We move (I would say) one room over to the circular waterbed of Chevy Chase's cantankerous moist towelette magnate; a painting of Pierce/Chase in his younger, more Fletch-like days hanging above him. On to the bedroom of Yvette Nicole Brown's Shirley, being happily jostled out of her bed by her two young sons; her bedroom decorated like EVERYONE'S grandmother's bedroom, complete with outdated flower-print wallpaper and a wooden crucifix over the bed. To the grey and black, minimalistic, presumably IKEA-furnished bedroom of Joel McHale's Jeff Winger, who does hanging sit-ups from an iron bar in his doorway. To the predictably pink, frilly, lacy bedroom of our once-prudish teenage sexy librarian Annie; staring off into the middle distance, absent-mindedly brushing her hair and smiling with thoughts of her infamous smooch with Jeff at the conclusion of Season 1, no doubt.

...and then, finally, we land on the disorganized, anarchistic, indie rock poster-laden bedroom of our one-time lead love interest, Britta Perry, whose look of wide-eyed terror is overscored by the sound of Dean Pelton's morning announcements as we cut to the courtyard of Greendale for the first time this year.

Britta--in her traditional leather jacket--stands, quietly taking a series of deep breaths, finally getting up the nerve to take those first steps back onto the campus where she poured her heart out in the middle of the school transfer dance the preceding May. She finally feels secure...until...the inevitable.

"Celebrate your fresh start TONIGHT(!) at the Fresh Start Dance in the cafeteria...THE SAME CAFETERIA where Britta Perry publicly professed her love to Jeff Winger...who then walked out on her. UNFORGETTABLE!"

Thanks, Dean Pelton.

Britta hides her face and quickly scampers away, as the camera pans over to the arriving Pierce and Troy, discussing the fun they've had over the summer, with Pierce eventually comparing them to Batman and Shaft. Troy whips out his phone, quickly texting Pierce's latest ignorant slip of the tongue to a Twitter account he's established called "Old White Man Says"; a reference to that other Twitter account. Cut to the arriving Annie and Abed, already reading the fresh tweet on Annie's cell phone, and then we're off to our comfort zone: the study room, where Shirley runs to the camera, the study group, and all of us with open arms and a big hug waiting.

Everyone is hugging and catching up; notably Jeff and Annie. The latter of whom has latched herself onto the former, who kindly pries her off before addressing the group, who suddenly realize they aren't complete. Britta isn't here. A moment of silence, some brief (and as always, hilarious) sobbing from Troy, and then...Pierce...

"Hey! Did you guys see Toy Story 3?!"

Sadness over, as the group becomes a cacophony of voices expressing their child-like wonderment at Pixar's latest work...which is about the moment when Britta finally emerges from her hiding place behind the couch, and the group guiltily greets their quickly-forgotten member. (One of my favorite moments here; in the midst of all the hasty greetings, Troy: "HEYYY, TOY STORY 3...how's it goin'?")

Britta shushes the group and declares her profession of love to Jeff a foolish act; a moment of weakness brought on by her competition with Lauren Stamile's since-unseen Professor Slater. She wants to forget it ever happened and offers Jeff an apology...which Pierce quickly accepts. Her new concern is dealing with derision from the rest of the Greendale population; particularly the fresh-out-of-high-school female quotient, who she fears will bring her back to the awkwardness of her own teenage years. Jeff argues that he's the one who was most embarrassed, to which Britta agrees to disagree and our study group heads off to their first day of Anthropology 101. (Hey, that's the title of the episode!)

Once in the hall, Britta's fears are seemingly realized as she's immediately approached by a pair of teeny-boppers (including much-lusted-after 5 Second Films star Kelsey Gunn, in a recurring cameo) who gigglingly declare Britta "the coolest" for her "fearless" declaration of love last season. Britta kindly tries to explain that she may have overstated her feelings, but the teeny-boppers won't have it, even asking for her autograph...which she quickly provides.

"I don't like where that's going," intones Jeff, watching from a distance, before turning to face Annie, smiling up and him with a wealth of adoration. He quickly informs Annie that their kiss was a mistake, and that anything they might have going needs to stop NOW, before he ends up a social pariah or worse, a registered sex offender. Annie unconvincingly giggles out that she understands completely and vows to end it here before skipping off to class.

"I don't like where THAT's going," laments Jeff...and I would argue, Dan Harmon.

I apologize for how recap-heavy that just got, but I felt it important to fully capture these first four minutes, as I believe they're the last we'll ever see of what this show was just a scant season before it. I can't promise I won't recap further (seriously; I'm writing this as I go), but on this third viewing, it became abundantly clear that THIS was the divide.

This is, intentionally or not, no better illustrated than in the opening sequence that follows it, as this particular playing of The 88's "At Least It Was Here" (the show's wonderful and infinitely catchy theme song) sounds like it's being faintly echoed through a tunnel. Assuredly, this is merely a lapse in the sound mixer's better judgment and/or a random technical difficulty on my local NBC affiliate's part, but today, it felt like an aural representation of how far we're about to travel away from what this show once was.

(Alright, screw it. Recaps with commentary peppered throughout are the way this is going to go. I'm figuring this out right along with you. Sorry. I tried. Don't leave.)

We come out of that dank sewer pipe of an opening to the bright orange-painted classroom where most of our academic experiences will take place this season, as Jeff and Annie pass by their disgraced former Spanish teacher Ben Chang (Ken Jeong); now a student, who assures the pair that his presence in this course is NOT because he misses them, nor is it an attempt to join their study group.

"Have you checked out the course description?" he asks, indicating a course catalog on the desk, "Ancient weaponry? GENITAL MUTILATION?--This subject's talkin' my Chang-uage." (The first of many Chang puns we'll hear this season.)

Across the room, Britta enters to a round of applause from a group of teenage girls up front. Jeff takes a seat next to Abed who quickly explains that--in addition to recurring character Starburns (Dino Stamatopolous) deciding to start wearing a top hat in a bid to reinvent himself--Britta has become an admired figure in the wake of our Season 1 finale, "making her the underdog, the jiltee, the Aniston."

A quick detour from our recap now, as the next few lines mark another turning point. Abed asks Jeff if he has any hillbilly cousins, a wealthy uncle, or an old drinking buddy-turned-transgender; explaining he's looking forward to the new year in the hopes that the study group may "move away from soapy relationshippy stuff and into bigger, fast-paced, self-contained escapades."

Back in September 2010, this line went past me as no more than some classic Abed pop culture-loving goodness...now, this moment rings darker. In this moment, creator Dan Harmon has taken the most lovable character, the very heart of this show and--much like Jeff just moments earlier--used him as a mouthpiece for his desires as this show's figurehead.

Now, before I continue, let me say this. This is Dan Harmon's show. I get that. Art--and particularly comedy--is a very subjective thing; so there's no right or wrong here. (Don't hold me to that, though; particularly when we get to "Epidemiology".) However, in listening to his interview on WTF? and reading his interview over at The A.V. Club, it's become clear the true root of why Season 2 took such a drastic and--in my view--unwelcome turn.

As always, it's a combination of network pressure (although, NBC really has no business questioning the direction of their programming given their recent failings; just saying) and Harmon's own desperate need for approval. As will become clearer as we go on, he saw the massive public approval of Season 1 episodes like "Contemporary American Poultry" and especially "Modern Warfare", and didn't ever stop to consider the old adage about too much of a good thing...but we'll get there.

Back to our show now, where this week's guest star Betty White (I love her, but my God, was she on EVERY show last year) kicks off her first class as Professor June Bauer by hilariously blowing a sedative dart at Starburns, and introducing herself in a short and fantastic monologue...

"My name is Professor June Bauer and this semester, I will guide you to the very threshold of your humanity. We will lock eyes with the SHRIEKING, BLOOD-DRENCHED, SISTER-RAPING BEAST from which we sprang. ...You will also have to make a diorama."

Love it.

Cut to the Greendale cafeteria, where after Pierce provides Troy another line for "Old White Man Says", Chang approaches Jeff at the lunch line for the following exchange (and disregard what happens after the 20-second mark; we'll get to that shortly)...


...that having happened, Jeff's attempt to get some mac-and-cheese is rebuffed by a snarky cafeteria lady who quips, "Sorry. Looks like your food just walked out on you." From behind, we hear a group of Britta's newfound fans giggling, leading us to this...


Gillian Jacobs delivery of "HIGH ON MY OWN DRAMA?!" is one of my favorite moments on this show ever. That will never change. (I've found myself overexpressively mouthing it along with her every time I've watched this scene lately.)

Jeff makes a hasty exit, followed by Annie who offers comfort (READ: herself) but instead gives him an idea. An awful idea. Jeff Winger gets a wonderful, AWFUL idea. (Yeah, I busted out a Grinch quote. Wanna fight about it?)

We return to Anthropology (presumably the same day, which...I've never heard of a college class that breaks for lunch, but no matter), where after Professor Bauer disgusts her students with a certain "restorative" beverage (READ: her own urine), she issues them their first assignment: a box full of nine native items, one of which is the most important tool for humanity's survival.

Jeff raises his hand, stands up, and walks in front of a table at which sit Annie, Shirley, and Britta...and raises a giant (albeit, hilarious) middle finger to not just all the overdramatic romantics who created all the Jeff/Annie and/or Jeff/Britta 'shipper videos on YouTube, but--as would eventually become clear--people like me who thought Season 1 was PERFECT...with this...


One of the most recurring concepts put forth by Dan Harmon in interviews and very often on the Season 1 DVD commentary, is that he never wanted Jeff and Britta to follow a typical, sitcom romantic plot. He specifically and repeatedly cites The Office's Jim and Pam as a path he never wanted to take...and good for him...but--despite the fact that last September, I LOVED THIS and still appreciate it a great deal now--THIS was a drastic and I would argue, somewhat insulting way to go about avoiding it.

Trust me, I'm as tired as anyone of the repetitive nature of relationships on television; the idea of "Oh, here are our two attractive opposite-sex leads! They have to be DESTINED for one another!"...but what Harmon doesn't seem to understand, is that he had already dodged the bullet of conformity. That the first season of Community so quickly stopped being about Jeff Winger's pursuit of Britta Perry and became the ensemble comedy it should be already told me and anyone else that he had no intention of giving us years of "Will they?/Won't they?" horseshit and I--along with I'm willing to bet, a lot of its viewers--accepted that. In short, the remainder of "Anthropology 101" adds mean-spirited insult to a nonexistent injury.

We were with you, Mr. Harmon. You didn't have to spit in our faces.

Commercial break, and then we're back to a close-up of Britta and Jeff angrily and repeatedly kissing and gritting their teeth through declarations of love, as Annie (who quickly leaves to go vomit), Shirley, Abed, and Britta's "fans" watch gleefully.

"I downloaded a song that makes me think of you," Jeff grits, producing an iPod, "let's listen to it, each using one earbud." (Dan Harmon REALLY kind of hates Jim and Pam, doesn't he?)

Across the room, Abed proposes that he and Shirley spinoff together (perhaps opening a hair salon), lamenting, "I wanted to come out of the gate having adventures like paintball. This is boring."

"Well, I think that's selfish, Abed," retorts Shirley, "If you were a friend of Jeff and Britta, you would see their relationship as an adventure." Annie returns to the table just in time to see Jeff and Britta walking away, an earbud apiece, a hand in each other's back pocket...at which point she promptly exits to vomit again.

This exchange sends such a mixed message. Abed is once again clearly--and I would argue, uncharacteristically--acting as Dan Harmon's mouthpiece; or more likely, the mouthpiece of a Dan Harmon who has been convinced that Season 1-style episodes are unacceptable and hence, won't get him the attention/approval he demands. Abed, indeed, wouldn't be so selfish.

As for Shirley, I've done a lot of thinking as to who she's meant to represent here. Is she the teeny-bopper YouTube 'shipper video type? Is she the network? Is she me and others like me, who--while agreeing that this intentionally cartoonish leap in Jeff and Britta's relationship is ridiculous (yet hilarious; once again, I won't dispute that)--think that the gradually evolving course of the show in Season 1 was the right course for Season 2, as well?

Regardless of who she's meant to represent, I feel somewhat offended that this party who disagrees with Dan Harmon's new direction is portrayed by the most naïve--which I say with love--character on this show. Yes, it's Harmon's call where this show goes, but if I as a fan disagree, that doesn't make me uneducated or beneath him, and it bothers me that he doesn't seem to get that. There ARE occasions where the customer is right. It's not always, as the incorrect (trust me, I've worked a lot of retail) adage goes...but it's also much more often than he's giving his audience credit for.

Moving right along, to the study room where the group (sans Jeff for the moment) is inspecting all the native tools given to them for their class project. Pierce makes his bid for what the most important tool to humanity's survival is (I'll give you a hint; it's NOT in the box the professor gave them), and we have our next "Old White Man Says" quote, as Jeff enters, apologizing for being late...


Their competition still going strong, Jeff and Britta both fumble for the ring. They each HAVE to be the one to propose...but Britta wins this round, popping the question to an immediate--and defiant--"Yeah. Yeah, of course" from Jeff. (Make no mistake. I love surreal comedy, and I can't stress enough, I DO--for the most part--love this. Name one other show that has turned a romance into such a messed-up competition. I rest my case.)

Save for Annie who is visibly crushed, the rest of the study group--most notably Shirley; continuing to feed my theory that she's meant to be Dan Harmon's detractor--celebrate wildly, as Abed dips out of the room momentarily. In the midst of all this, Shirley lets slip her knowledge of Jeff and Britta having had sex on the study room table during "Modern Warfare", and the room turns from celebration to disgust (or in the case of Troy, half-disgust/half-impression, as his reaction is hilariously, "AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH...some."), at which point, this happens...


...a moment of silence, and then, THIS...


With that most hilarious reappropriation of a Cranberries song out of the way, Troy informs Abed what the group has just learned, with Annie explaining that the kiss happened outside the school Transfer Dance (or as fans will remember, the Tranny Dance), mere moments after Britta professed her love to Jeff. Shirley is the most vocally disappointed which leads to this...


"So this was all A GAME?!" cries Shirley, marking her transformation from representing the one who disagrees with the direction the show is taking to speaking for someone who is supposed to take the goings-on of the last few moments as an education, courtesy of Dan Harmon. By this moment, we're supposed to accept what the show is going to become. I can't do that, now that I know what's coming.

From here, the floodgates blow wide open, with Britta taking Annie to task for kissing Jeff, Troy taking Jeff to task for "hogging all the girls", Jeff taking Troy to task for "Old White Man Says", and a HILARIOUS slap-fight between Pierce and Troy in which we learn that Troy has his own moments of humorous ignorance (most notably believing that all dogs are male and all cats female, to which he retorts, "There's no way to disprove that. Have you ever seen a cat penis?"; God bless Donald Glover).

Abed, having heard enough, slips on his backpack and addresses the room, "By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you...CANCELLED." This is the moment that I believe sums this episode's place in Community's Season 1-to-Season 2 shift, illustrated by the following exchange between Jeff and Abed:

JEFF: Oh, good. Yeah, Abed, cancel us...and while you're at it, why don't you take your cutesy "I can't tell life from TV" gimmick with you. You know, it's very [air-quotes] "Season 1".
ABED: [pauses, turns to Jeff] I can tell life from TV, Jeff. TV makes sense. It has structure, logic, rules...and likable leading men. In life, we have this. We have you.

Abed exits, leaving the study room in contemplative silence. Jeff's once-best man, the George Clooney impersonator quips, "I'm on the clock for another hour if you want me to do some Batman lines." Commercial break.

Watching this scene this time around, I just want to yell at the screen..."YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS, HARMON!". In a matter of three lines, he's taken Abed Nadir, this sweetheart of a character whose pop-culture love made Season 1 what it was and had him simultaneously defend and condemn that love--and by exchange, his very character--in one fell swoop.

I feel it necessary at this time to recognize Abed's condition. Though never stated outright--outside of Jeff trying to put him down in the pilot by telling him he has Asperger's Syndrome--Abed is a high-functioning autistic. In a number of the DVD episode commentaries in Season 1, creator Dan Harmon expresses his deep gratitude to the members of the autistic community who have embraced Abed as a hero. He's brought a primetime televised voice to the untold millions afflicted by this disorder. Knowing this, I remember even the first time, feeling very uncomfortable watching scenes like what I've just described.

Rest assured, this isn't the most egregious occasion of this show ignoring/defying not just Abed's condition but the character's established personality in general (all in favor of making him Harmon's mouthpiece, once again; disgusting), and be damned sure I'll be making note of them as I cover Season 2's later episodes. It gets kind of offensive, to be honest.

When we return from commercials, Jeff slinks into the Anthropology classroom to the disapproving stares of his classmates, and takes a seat at seemingly the only welcoming table in the room; in the back, right next to Starburns who slimily commends him for having had his experiences with both Annie and Britta. "First the blonde, then the brunette," he raves, "What more could you have gotten out of that group?". Jeff has a look of realization on his face as Betty White's Professor Bauer enters...


Jeff awakens in the school medical center, surrounded by the study group, who inform him that Professor Bauer has been suspended and as such, the whole class has gotten an A on the assignment. While he's been unconscious, the group has come to agree with Jeff's answer. They need more respect in their relationships and less passion. Annie adds that she now finds Jeff gross, so there goes that plotline.

Troy apologizes to Pierce for "Old White Man Says" and vows to cancel the account...that is until Pierce finds out it has 600,000 followers, and suggests they find a way to monetize it. "How about Old White Man Says: The TV Show?" he posits. The group all agrees that's a bad idea (just like CBS did about a month ago), and Abed apologizes for trying so hard to make their first week back at school so great, when they already had something great in front of them, "An old woman drinking her own pee."

Enter a guilty-looking Chang, who finally admits he's only in Anthropology in a bid to join the study group, concluding with quite possibly the single funniest line (and without question the best Chang pun) of the season...


You may remember in the first installment of "Community Service" my noting a marked change in the character of Ken Jeong's Ben Chang...and there it was. It's kind of odd, considering what goes on to be my overarching major problem with Season 2 (SPOILER ALERT: It's too many gimmick episodes) that I don't have much of a problem with such a bizarre left turn of a scene from this show. I should note that I'm even more grateful that this is about as crazy as Chang's character development got, especially after reading the following portion of the afore mentioned four-part A.V. Club interview with Dan Harmon (prepare for a LONG-ASS quote):

"The first episode—and I’ll put it on the DVD so people can see it—there was a debate about the ending. We do an ending of the first episode, where Jeff does the standard, ironic setup of, “Oh, what’s the worst that can happen if Chang’s in the study group?” and we cut to this sort of Gollum scene where he’s stroking the study room table, and it cuts back and forth, so there was pushback on that from the network, predictably enough, because it’s weird. And I was going, “Okay, first day of school, no problem, pushback, let’s use this as an opportunity to make this even better.” The way I make things better is by grounding them, darkening them, edging them, so I actually preferred the new thing that we did shoot, which was Joel saying, “What’s the worst that can happen?” And you just cut to Chang walking outside the medical office, and the camera dollies on him, and he’s twitching. And he’s got this glare in his eye, and it’s just a very slow dolly, and you hear, faintly, the sort of Chinese lullaby that you heard in “Modern Warfare,” when he was Chow Yun-Fat. And you hear, also, inexplicably, other sounds including a baby crying, and it builds to this intensity.

I liked it. It reminded me more of Spaced, where it’s like, “Okay, this is funny because it’s not that funny.” And, predictably enough, being presented with those two choices, the brass wanted the silly Gollum ending. The problem was that I’m a creative, I can’t unring bells, so I had seen that ending with Chang, and I had fallen in love with the storyline that we were gonna pursue. The reason I put the baby crying in there was because I wanted to link it with this concept that Chang had eaten his twin in utero, which was a joke that Andrew Guest had written in the first season for the Family Day episode. It feels like such a throwaway, but I just was in love with the idea of actually revealing this incredibly deep foundation to his personality and disorders, and we had this whole thing plotted out where we were going to tell this seasonal story of how he’s plagued by the guilt that his mother put in him that he had a twin in the uterus, and it was a little girl, and he ate her. And [his mother] dressed him up in little dresses and said, “I wish you were your sister instead,” and that rejection triggers these psychotic breaks in him. We were gonna slowly bring in the ghost of his dead sister, playing with a little ball and encouraging him to do bad things. We were gonna slowly uncork that, one step at a time, so that we wouldn’t have to pitch it to anybody, because obviously the answer would be, “No, don’t do that.”

And so I started looking at Chang like a big joke that would happen one joke at a time. So it’s ironic, sometimes, that the people who wanna protect your show from too much craziness often cause a less marketable craziness. Like, “Oh, that seems weird, don’t put it in the show,” or, “Okay, that seems less weird than the weirder thing, so do that instead.” And you end up with a character who spends—and this is not a bad thing—the year not knowing his place because he’s been disconnected from his God, i.e. the writers. So he just wanders, and that was the big discussion: what to do with Ken Jeong at the beginning of season two."

I'll be honest. I've been pretty dark and melodramatic about Dan Harmon's vision for this show in this entry, and I know that's probably pretty unfair. We've all heard horror stories of network executives who have ZERO business dipping into the creative side of things mucking things up something fierce. I sympathize with the man. I truly do.

As I stated above (and certainly contradicted countless times in this entry), I have no right to argue with a show's creator what's right or wrong about how he chooses to handle his stories, characters, etc. ...but there ARE certain...unpleasant (that's a good word for it) ways to handle a show like this, and as a lover of entertainment and a passionate fan of this show, I take it very personally.

(Right here is where I added that disclaimer up there. Don't worry about old Jeff. He knows when he's getting to be a bit much...or at least a few paragraphs away from that moment.)

However, let me stop this madness right now and just say it: I like this episode. I know, to read a lot of what you've just read, you'd think I not only despised the episode but the series at large. This is not the case. Matter of fact, as I recall, the first four episodes of Season 2 were alright by me when they originally aired, and I fully expect a positive result again.

What you just read was merely me laying the groundwork for just how dark and angry it's going to get during this series called "Community Service". (Seriously, by episode 6...yeesh. Hold on to your pants.)

...and so, in an effort to bring things to a pleasant (albeit, somewhat abrupt) conclusion, I'll leave you with this: from the closing credits of "Anthropology 101", a recreation of sorts of the beloved "La Bliblioteca" rap from episode 102 featuring guest star Betty White...

...and that wraps it up for "Community Service" this week. I'll be back next week to discuss (hopefully at much less length) episode 202 entitled "Accounting for Lawyers" with special guest stars Rob Corddry and Drew Carey.

Until then, seriously, Dan...it could be worse. Count your fucking blessings, sir.

PEOPLE'S CHAMPION!

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