Review: Community ‘Heroic Origins’ – No Biting

I’ve been thinking a lot about origin stories lately; New Girl aired one this week, Cougar Town did one during their fourth season – and of course, Friends had many (incidentally, my review of ‘The One with the Prom Video’ published today). Often, I find myself wondering if what I’m watching is necessary, or in some cases, even counter productive to the philosophies and narratives of the show. I certainly feel ‘Heroic Origins’ has a lot of these qualities, giving unnecessary back story to relationships, trying to rework the history of the show into this construction of destiny, where damaged people came together on a chance encounter one day at the same mall. It’s so detailed and on-the-nose, it feels more like fan fiction with a much bigger budget than an episode of great comedy.

‘Heroic Origins’ does what ‘Virgins’ almost completely avoids – it puts characters in direct contact with each other, threatening the fabric of its own logic by creating these preposterous interactions with tossed-in bits of dialogue to explain it. Don’t you think Annie and Troy would remember each other in college, one insulting another publicly after he causes her to overdose out of envy? Forget what it does to the foundation of their friendship on the show: it turns Annie’s character into something a lot more disturbing, a mentally unstable female who literally goes psychotic over jealousy. Annie’s back story was a lot different when she was the girl who folded under the pressure she piled on herself; now her pain was catalyzed by Troy, who in turn was not the guy who injured himself out of fear, but because Annie called him an empty robot who could do nothing but go where he was told on a football field.

That is some ugly shit – traumatic moments characters wouldn’t just forget later on and become best friends without a mention of it. And like those later-season flashbacks on Friends where Monica makes out with Ross (and Chandler makes out with Rachel), stories that are so self-serving, they go beyond being empty thematically. Stories like this mess with the carefully constructed reality of this world, and almost completely undermines the show’s foundation.

It really doesn’t feel like an episode of Community at all. Sure, it gets all its references correct, and places them neatly on the playing board, but to serve what purpose? ‘Heroic Origins’ goes for the kind of ‘dark connections’ that Harmon specialized in (think season 2’s ‘Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas’), where the cold realities of life could be optimistic, unifying the group through the darker aspects of their lives and characters. Why did it work so well? Because all the referential humor, recurring gags, character beats, and story arcs all felt organic. ‘Heroic Origins’ just feels forced, trying to give this definition of “everything’s connected by destiny” by pushing characters towards each other for the sake of doing it.

In this episode, we get Shirley and Jeff being connected because the hooker Jeff defended in court (his last client, of course) was the girl Andre cheated on Shirley with (starting an affair because she had to go pick up the kids from the movies after Abed berated them in the theater about Star Wars prequels). Troy sends Annie to the crazy house – well, kind of: it’s really Abed’s fault, because he saw her steal a prescription pad after his father sent him to therapy. In turn, Troy purposely ends his football career in injury out of shame and totally forgets who Annie is and what she did to him.

That’s how everyone ended up in the yogurt shop together when Chang came through to deliver flyers about Greendale (where Britta was applying for a job, and a Pierce stand-in was re-hashing a joke from last season). Really?

For me, Community was always about a group of people who ended up at Greendale to work out deep-seeded issues within themselves, and that chance moment (or “destiny”, although I think that’s a silly phrase) occurred when they ended up in the same Spanish class. These people didn’t become a group because they fucked each other over so bad they ended up at the same college; if that was the premise of the show, I wouldn’t have ever been so invested in Community. To me, Community was seven people who fucked up in life, and were united by the fact they’re at the worst school around (one where 18 dioramas are made in a single semester, or the Dean forces everyone to go to dances twice a month). Eventually, that led them to heal each other, and become the awesome family we’ve known for four years.

I suppose that’s a really, really long way to say I didn’t like this episode at all – save for a few random funny lines (and Britta with purple hair and a nose ring), this was an episode of Community I’d rather just pretend never happened at all.

Grade: C-

Other thoughts/observations:

– The one moment this show’s had before – Shirley and Jeff’s foosball moment – worked because it was specific to those two characters and the emotional issues they were trying to work out. Their shared experience in the past brought to light something dark within them (Jeff’s insecurity, Shirley’s mean streak), but wasn’t treated as some moment of destiny where every single puzzle piece fell into place.

– didn’t care for the comic book/echo transitions. Felt unnecessary, as did the CGI sparkles from Jeff’s hooker client.

– Abed knows prequels are terrible… why would he do this in the first place?

– Shirley, just shut up.

– Britta: “What’s an anarchist to do without her organization?”

– the whole thing kind of falls apart when you consider Pierce is connected to anything at all. He’s literally written off in this episode with a Post-It note.

– Chang’s back to being Chang, but we’ll still have another Dean Pelton season finale. Hurray. At least Chang finally got to have his frozen yogurt date, I suppose.

– Did we need to find out Magnitude’s inspiration for “pop pop”?