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Thursday, April 19, 2012

I Didn't Get Inception, SO MANY LAYERS: Community Goes Inside the Dreamatorium


Okay…I’m not really sure what just happened to my mind…but I’m pretty sure it was awesome. Normally I try to analyze episodes after I watch them…but my brain feels broken right now, so I’ll do the best I can.

Tonight’s Community was…well…something. Still not really sure what that something was (and I’ve watched it twice now) but alas it was something.

This year I had the pleasure of seeing the Community panel at Paley Fest. I specifically remember Dan Harmon talking about this episode. He said something akin to “this will either be the best episode to ever happen to television, or the worst.”  While I won’t go as far as to say that this was the best episode to ever happen to television, it was definitely good. I mean, it was an episode that took place in the dreamatorium…that in itself is quite a feat. We constantly hear about the dreamatorium, and occasionally we get glimpses of what Troy & Abed do in there, but we’ve never gotten to experience it the way we did tonight.

Abed is such a complex character. At the Community panel, Danny Pudi talked a bit about what it is like to play Abed. He made an interesting point that I had never thought of: although Abed acts emotionless on a constant basis, in actuality he is full of emotion-- it’s just internalized. This type of episode helps to explain exactly what Danny Pudi meant by this. We constantly see Abed as an observer, the impartial character that never lets feelings influence the situation(AHEM FRINGIES). And I don’t know about you guys, but since I think of him as an observer so much I tend to forget that he is still a person with emotions. He has insecurities like the rest of us. As Annie talked about in the end of the episode, Abed is afraid of not being needed and not fitting in. While these insecurities seem to affect Abed deeper than we know (I mean when he envisioned his friends’ thoughts, he assumed he would be tossed aside in some locker) they also are what tie Abed to the rest of the group. Hopefully his experience with Annie in the dreamatorium gave him some insight to this (and judging by the end scene where he smiles at Annie, I’d assume it did).

Okay now away from Abed, we also got a lot of great character development from Annie tonight. Even though Annie taught Abed some lessons tonight, Abed also taught Annie a few as well. We constantly see how obsessed Annie is with Jeff, but we never really delve into why she feels the way that she does. Tonight Abed made her confront her own feelings and try to analyze why she “loves” Jeff. This helped to bring some of her own securities into focus (i.e. wanting to be loved). Now as I’ve made clear plenty of times, I am a HUGE supporter of Jeff & Annie. I love them so much…so I was a little sad that she didn’t just admit her undying love for Jeff and ride off with him into the sunset. But if that would have happened, we wouldn’t be watching Community. Community isn’t a show about clichés. It’s a show about risks, risks that result in amazing television.

Now I’m not going to go into my spiel about why Community deserves to be renewed, and how asinine people must be for not taking the time to watch it (I do that enough on Twitter). But I will say that tonight was indeed another example of why TV critics rave about it, and fans remain so loyal (#sixseasonsandamovie).

What did you all think of tonight’s episode? Did you think it was brilliant? Or simply off its rocker (I’ve clearly been seeing too many commercials for Betty White’s new show)? I love hearing from you guys so please leave your thoughts below!

PS – Emma Claufield presented the very interesting theory on Twitter…perhaps this ENTIRE SEASON has been inside the dreamatorium…yeaaaah…think about THAT.

Comment away!!

1 comment:

  1. I thought it was a really good episode. I especially liked how we got to see Abed pretending to be the other characters with the whole semi-voiceover thing.

    Troy's truth serum rant is especially funny when you realize it's actually Abed saying all those things, but they were so true!

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