Thank God Jeff understands that kissing Annie is one of those things that will put him on a website that people look at before they buy a house. She’s a teenager! It’s amazing how the part of me who has grown up with sitcoms was so disappointed to see the Jeff/Britta relationship handled so callously. I really thought I was better than that, but as Dan Harmon seems to know, none of us are.
Instead, Community handles the love triangle (Square?) with the same sitcom-mocking attitude that it handles everything else — and it’s brilliant. Sometimes sex on a table during a paintball game doesn’t automatically lead to everlasting love. Neither do public declarations. Usually they just lead to awkwardness and regret.
I do think Britta and Jeff have genuine feelings for each other, but they’re both so broken that all they can concentrate on is their competition. So instead of stopping and talking about what happened and how they actually feel about each other, they instead share a cringe-inducing public tongue kiss and the angriest marriage proposal I’ve ever seen.
Even though the entire episode is spent spitting on sitcom conventions, with Abed’s “wedding episode” extravaganza and plea to get out of the soapy relationship stuff and back to the hijinks, the big season 1 cliff-hanger was wrapped up in a pretty little bow. Britta and Jeff got through their issues and are friends again, Annie is over her short-lived love of Jeff, and Slater… wasn’t even in the episode.
But you do know who was in the episode … Betty White. I knew that she was going to be on and playing a professor, but what I didn’t realize is that she’s going to be their Anthropology professor. That’s a big deal because Anthropology is to season 2 what Spanish was to season 1. So my sincere hope is that Betty White will be this year’s Senor Chang. White has been making one-off appearances on TV shows for years, and I know she’s been doing movies, but I would love it if she became a recurring character like Ken Jeong did.
Speaking of which, I love “Student Chang.” Ken Jeong is a genius, and he’s exactly what the group needs. Plus his Sybil-like breakdown at the end makes me even more excited for what’s in store this season.
Oh, and for those into lyrics and all that, here are those from the final segment with Troy, Abed and Betty:
Kingdom: Anamalia
Phylum: Chordata
The class is Mammalia
‘Cuz boobies, we gotta
The order is Primate
Family: Hominidae
Genus is: Homo
But you know you’re into me
‘Cuz I am in the species
known as Sapien
Dogs used to eat me
But now they bring the paper in
It’s gonna take me a lot to get away from you
There’s nothing a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa! (Oh, bless the rains!)
I bless the rains down in Africa!
I bless the rains down in Africa! (Africa!)
Clacked by Kona Gallagher 
on Sep 23, 2010 @ 20:30 EST5EDT
Sybil? That was totally Gollum from Lord of the Rings.
Betty White’s character got suspended at the end of the show, for nearly choking Jeff. I’ve read that they’ll be using another professor as a substitute–John Oliver will be making more appearances! I can’t wait.
Community was the only returning NBC comedy tonight that made me laugh, repeatedly. It feels like a show on the upswing–30 Rock & The Office feel like the writers are bored and stuck with another season. (I only hope that “Big Bang Theory” doesn’t kill it in the ratings.) And I loved that we got the whole opening credits sequence, instead of the 5-second version–that music and those graphics are so much fun.
You saw Sybil in Student Chang’s scene at the end? I saw Gollum from “Lord of the Rings”–considering their usual movie references and target audience, I’m pretty sure that’s what they were going for.
And the repeated mocking of CBS trying to make a show out of “S**t My Dad Says” was fantastic. There’s a real oldwhitemansays Twitter account, with all-new material–and the first tweet was back in July.
Yeah, I saw ‘Sybil’ because that’s what multiple personalities means to me. I hate Lord of the Ring SO MUCH.
I too, am a LOTR hater, which makes it very difficult for me to live with Keith! ;-) By the way, Community and Castle (oh and Vampire Diaries) were the best premieres so far. The rest have just ‘meh’ed me.
-I replayed the scene where Betty White shot Starburns with a blowgun so many times I made Windows Media Center crash.
-As over-bloated as the Lord of the Rings was, come on Gollum was awesome! Plus acknowledging it for what it was makes the scene 10 times funnier than it could possibly be passing it off as a Sybil reference.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t think it was a Sybil reference, I just didn’t pick up on the Gollum thing because I only saw the first movie, and as I mentioned before, I loathed it.
Hey hey people. Focus. There’s no room for LotR hate here. This was an awesome episode of “Community” and that’s that. The Gollum bit was forgettable but the rest was so extremely well done. They managed to reset the whole show believably. Compare that to the “Bones” premiere. Oh I guess now I’m starting to be a hater. Sorry :-)
I loved how long they had Joel McHale run around with the blood in his face. I loved how Annie smacked him in the face with rings on. That was awesome. The whole episode was so great I can’t wait for more. This show is really on the up and up. Love it.
You’re absolutely right, Sebastian. I absolutely loved the return of the Troy/Abed tags. Also, Donald Glover’s Spider Man jammies. DONALD GLOVER FOR SPIDER MAN!!!
During the whole Twitter thing I kept chuckling because Donald Glovers Twitter Username is @donglover
Still cracks me up :-D
I am a LOTR freak, and I still didn’t like that Gollum scene. It was the worst part of the episode – the rest was awesome.
I love Community, and this was my favorite premiere of any show thus far. I hope it runs for many seasons.
I watched this and never laughed once. I’m also getting OD’d on Betty White.