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 …an episode reminding us all the importance of “being a sexy cat”

If the excellent premiere episode was all about re-acclimating us to Harmon’s vision of Community and allowing us to fall in love with his characters again, the second one—even better than its predecessor—was all about tickling our funny bone.  And if you didn’t find yourself erupting with laughter at least a half-dozen times throughout this installment, then it’s likely that this show just isn’t for you.  Because if this is the kind of humor we can expect from an invigorated fifth season, then I would like to take all of the classes, please.

I loved the thematic lynchpin of this episode, as both the A and B stories hinged on a sort of identity crisis for those involved.  Jeff, Greendale’s Fundamentals of Law professor, found himself in need of an identity overhaul when the episode began.  Business as usual was no longer appropriate for Mr. Winger; apparently, it’s not socially acceptable for a teacher to leer at his female students or to ridicule those who chose to pierce their ears (I’m looking at you, Leonard).  Chalk that up as Jeff’s first learning experience as an educator.

And this is where this second episode of Community found a way to mine fresh life out of this series: introducing the teachers as a new social group.  With the exception of Chang (the newly minted math teacher whose advice to Jeff is to have students break up into groups and grade each other, dangling episodes of Planet Earth in front of them as motivation), the teachers didn’t really fly in the study group’s orbit on any consistent basis.  But getting to know this bunch is going to be a hoot because Harmon’s opening up this world in very new ways.

Which leads us to Criminology professor/amateur cartoonist Buzz Hickey.  As played by the incredible Jonathan Banks, Hickey is a cantankerous, cynical, and grizzled educator, scoffing at Jeff’s insistence that this teaching thing is just a phase.  Though Jeff is by no means in love with teaching (though, by episode’s end, he does concede that he wouldn’t rule out hooking up with it from time to time), Hickey’s palpable disdain for his students is off-putting even to him.  Hickey schools Jeff in the darker realities of teaching: it’s a world of chalk (teachers) vs. lead (students).  And sometimes, that means threatening students with cafeteria flatware and stealing their meatballs to establish dominance.  Such is the life of an educator in America.

A peak into this distorted world of teaching was hilarious enough—commentary on the laziest of teachers proved ripe with comedy—but Harmon took it a step further.  After Annie catches wind of Jeff’s lackadaisical teaching style, she enrolls in his class to make sure he’s qualified to teach law, which, of course, he’s not.  In an act of friendship, Hickey gives Annie a dreaded A- on her Witness Intimidation Project (hilarious), forcing her to drop Fundamentals of Law to put all of her efforts into Hickey’s class.  Because, you see, this is the darkest secret of all: the A- was invented by teachers as payback for students they don’t like.

Fed up with Hickey’s bad attitude, Jeff lets this slip, leading to a literal riot as the students of Greendale realize their perceptions of their teachers and themselves as students has been a lie.  “Minuses are made up!” Annie screams to the masses, provoking them.  Even Magnitude joins in the ensuing chaos, hurling a garbage can through a window and shouting the most blood-curdling version of “Pop pop” you’ll ever here.  As I’m writing this, I’m still laughing about it.

After quelling the riot, Dean Pelton forms a Teacher-Student Alliance, featuring our usual study group members plus (oh goodness gracious I’m giddy with excitement just thinking about it) Professor Hickey.  Plus, Jeff found out teaching might not be so bad after all.

During all of this, a second (perhaps even funnier) identity crisis was taking place.  A two-session class called “Nicolas Cage: Good or Bad?” piqued Abed’s interest and, with Troy and Shirley in tow for emotional support, he enlists.  Needless to say, it’s not long before Abed goes full-on Carrie Matheson as he tries to deconstruct Cage’s performances in myriad films, including a half-baked theory about aliens early on in Snake Eyes.

When Abed comes back to class holding a binder thick with notes and rife with post Its, evidence of his analysis, I knew something special was about to happen.  But I had no idea just how special, as Danny Pudi delivered one of the best comedic performances I’ve seen in a while, devolving into a virtual revolving door of Cage-isms.   When he climbed onto the desk and declared himself a sexy cat, I laughed until I cried.

That this plot somehow managed to become an exploration of faith is just so wonderfully Harmon-esque.  I never thought I would hear a human being utter the phrase, “So Nicolas Cage is Jesus?” in my life.  But I’m so, so glad I have now.

This was simply a brilliant episode; its exploration of what it means to redefine yourself when you least expect or want to, coupled with gut-busting humor, launches it to the top of my list of personal all-time favorite Community eps.  After season four, I thought the show’s best days were behind it.

Apparently not.

Quotes from the Refurbished Study Room

–   Jeff: “Any questions?  You, Red Hair.  I’m not going to learn names.”

Student: “Will there be a syllbas?”

Jeff: “Will there be a syllabus.  Is a good example of a question.  Moving on.”

– Jeff: “Oh, Elaine.  Take it easy on the Oxford commas!”

– Shirley: “I don’t know. If I was in 70 movies over 30 years, and I spent each one of them speaking at random volumes, I might accidentally win an Oscar.”

– Troy: “Abed!  Think of something safe!   Like Holly Hunter!  Or Don Cheadle!”

– Did you catch the board in class?  ABC = Always Be Caging.  Words of wisdom if ever there were any.

…an episode reminding us all the importance of “vision boarding!”

Regardless of your opinion on Community’s maligned fourth season (for the record, I didn’t hate it as much as most), you can’t deny the show’s dire need for a creative boost.  While the first three seasons crackled with a maniacal creative energy, last year seemed content to recycle gags—Inspector Spacetime, Darkest Timelines, and paintball—and become more insular, much to the show’s detriment.

In reclaiming the throne previously wrestled from him, re-appointed showrunner Dan Harmon needed to do two things: reestablish the show’s madcap comic sensibilities (duh) while somehow assuring us that last season was simultaneously an anomaly but not a complete waste of time.  This required the fifth season of Community to both distance itself from last year while also building off it in some capacity.  Um.  Yeah.  Sounds simple, I guess?

Going into Thursday night’s premiere, I’ll make a confession:  I was worried.  Harmon’s behind-the-scenes shenanigans, at this point, are well documented and won’t get more play here, but I had a very real concern that his ego would interfere with his ability to pull off this virtual high-wire act of a reboot.

Sometimes, I love being wrong.  Of course he pulled it off.

From the first shot of Jeff’s absurd attorney promo film (an Abed Nadir joint, we later found out), this all felt so…right.  In the tradition of the best Harmon-era episodes, the narrative of “Repilot” was driven by a close attention to this ragtag assemblage of characters, and it gave us a chance to fall in love with them again.  After all, when character (and not gimmick) drives the story, the jokes feel fresh and organic, and fresh and organic jokes tend to land, which they consistently did tonight.

What’s more, Jeff’s post-graduate law practice failed before it really began—that inflated SFX budget on his film did not prove a wise investment—which sparked a plot that found a very believable way to put Britta, Annie, Troy, Abed, Shirley, and Jeff back in the study (now record) room together, which had been closed for sentimental/asbestos reasons after graduation, according to Dean Pelton.

You see, it turns out Greendale graduates have a track record of ineptitude.  In fact, a local bridge collapse can be traced back to one such alum, Marvin Humphries, whose path toward mass destruction could probably have been predicted by his end of coursework thesis: a faulty Lego bridge.  His attorney is, of course, Jeff Winger’s nemesis Alan Connor (a hilarious Rob Corddry).  Connor’s defense strategy is to prove Humphries was “irresponsibly educated” by an institution that, as he says, “turns idiots into bridge collapsers.”  Jeff, feeling as if he’s lost his lawyerly mojo, agrees to retrieve Humphries’s Greendale files for Connors, and before you can say E. Pluribus Anus, he’s strolling the halls of his old stomping ground, prompting raspberries from Leonard and gasps of ecstasy from Dean Pelton.

Naturally, Dean Pelton shredded Humphries’s records, so Jeff has to embrace his inner sleazeball in order to both prove he’s still got it and get payback on a college he believes failed him.   After Abed wrangles the crew together to take part in a “Save Greendale” Committee, Jeff seizes the opportunity to suggest to the former study group about bringing a class action suit against his alma mater.  All it takes is some minor Machiavellian manipulation of his closest friends.

There was something really interesting bubbling under the surface here, a heft that gave the comedy more meaning.  As we caught up with these characters, none of them were living the post-graduate lives they imagined they would be.  Britta’s a bartender.  Abed gave up filmmaking; apparently, irreconcilable creative differences  over inserting Jeff’s “derivative” 555 office number during his film left a rotten taste in his mouth.  Andre left Shirley again, this time because of Shirley’s diverted attention with her business.  Annie is pushing pens for a drug company that both invented and cured fibromyalgia.  And Troy, well, Troy is waiting to sue Abed—don’t ask.  The sequence played like Community’s version of group therapy, both for the study group and the audience.  By checking in with each character, or more to the point, Harmon’s version of each character, it seemed like the perfect way to make sure our transition back to the Community of yore was a smooth one while also addressing the very real notion of post-college anxiety and disappointment.

Of course, the study group ultimately opted to skip the class action (thanks to a hilarious and surprising message from Pierce Hawthorne in hologram form who gave Jeff the reminder he needed).  Rather than destroy Greendale, they decided to rebrand themselves, torching the old study room table and rebuilding a new one.  But Harmon played this heavily symbolic moment, which might have otherwise come across as hokey, just right, having them fail a woodworking assignment for making a table but not the required birdhouse.  For me, this was a microcosm of Harmon’s genius: the zany bond of friendship flying in the face of logic.  It’s what Community has always been about, and I loved seeing it addressed so cleverly once again.

As the episode closed out, our study group friends are re-enrolling at Greendale to quit making excuses and grab their lives by the throat.  Good for them!  Oh, also Jeff’s a teacher now.  And a bald-headed, vision-boarding dean is definitely hot for him.

The Community we love is back, folks.  Oh, happy dean!

Quotes from the Former Study Room:

– Britta: “I’m on sabbatical.”

Troy: “You’re Jewish?”

– Britta: “I don’t believe in evil.  But this school clearly got a finger up its butt as a child.”

– Dean Pelton: “I’m going to cry.”

Jeff: “Please don’t.”

Dean Pelton: “Request denied.”

– Hologram Pierce Hawthorne: “Don’t turn your back on this place.  It’s a crappy place, for sure.  But only because it gives crappy people a chance to sort themselves out.”  Vintage Pierce: crude but sweet!