Full blown animation is always hard to pull off. The last time Community did it was the foosball battle scene between Jeff and Shirley way back in S3. That scene was pretty good, as was the much needed storyline between those two, but I feel like it would have done better without the animation. The lines in that scene are great and Yvette and Joel are strong enough actors to have made that scene a more memorable one. So hearing Community were doing a whole episode of animation was very exciting news, but made me wary.
This episode immediately draws two comparisons to previous eps. The first is the S4 premiere, where Abed retreats into his sitcom and daycare animation in order to avoid the truth at that point in the show: that it was Jeff's final semester at Greendale. Those same themes are drawn upon here, the mind palace to retreat into in order to avoid reality. It does lack the setup at the start of the episode like Abed's, which I feel was one of the mistakes. We are immediately plunged into a battle without any sort of context whatsoever, though it isn't hard to pick up where we actually are about halfway through: Jeff's mind. I feel like this premise is less plausible only because of what we have seen from Jeff this season: not much. Apart from the first two episodes, we have not heard anything from what Jeff feels like doing in the near future or his aspirations once Save Greendale is over. We haven't seen much regret or fear of his career from him and so it is hard to empathise with these sudden emotions.
The other episode it reminded me of was the claymation one, one of my favourites. Abed also is the source of the imagined world and goes to find a place of solace once releasing his mum is not visiting for Christmas. Unlike GI Jeff, AUC had real interaction with Abed from within his Christmas world and real emotional reactions to what he felt throughout that journey (Britta-bot, anyone?) and this made it feel much more like a group adventure instead of what we got here.
Everyone apart from Abed felt a little like side characters in this ep. Chang and Duncan were funny but really only got a few lines. Shirley got hard done by. We've had nothing from her this season and you might as well write three kids on her identity because that's what they have reduced her character to. Britta had gone back to her 'witty' anarchist save the world character, again not taken seriously and having her lines become jokes. Hickey had his worst episode yet, which does say something about how well they have written him. I never thought they would resolve to old man jokes but they did.
Abed, or Fourth Wall, was nicely played. While his continuous narration and explanations felt a bit like telling not showing, it is exactly the role that is perfect for him and he excels. And his last line was absolutely brilliant.
I have not watched GI Joe as an animation, but I like the playful mix between the animation which impressed me (flying through a vortex, architecture) and the deliberately bad (them 'walking' into the study room, the repeated kicks and punches). It is very typically whimsically of Community to be making fun of but giving homage to the cartoon much like they did for L&O. A standout was them using rocks as a repeat weapon, probably the funniest joke of the ep. Also Jeff's covering fire. S5 hasn't been that funny but this ep was, and I loved the screechy blue Cobra boss, every line he had was hilarious.
It was wrapped up a little too quickly for my part, but at least they didn't oversell the sentimentality. Hickey smiling for about the first time was used very weirdly. It's good to Annie's boobs again. I can't help but feel Troy would have killed it in this episode. Two episodes to go, but now they have at least set down an emotional storybase which might help us react a little better to whatever Jeff does in the finale.
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