Community – Troy becomes a man

“Hello during a random dessert. The month and day of which coincide numerically with your expulsion from a uterus.” - Troy’s cake

All I knew about this week’s episode going into it was that it was about Troy’s 21st  birthday, and that creator Dan Harmon said on Twitter that he really, really loved this episode. So based solely on that, I was expecting a typical off-the-wall crazy episode — kind of like The Hangover (Ken Jeong is in both, after all). Point is, I was expecting someone to get naked. However, what we got was an episode that was funny, but as close to “a special episode” as we can get with Community, and Donald Glover did a fantastic job actually giving some depth to Troy.

Instead of debauchery, surreal fun, and Troy “becoming a man” in a Champagne room somewhere, we got a half an hour of Troy actually becoming a man. The painfully familiar and realistic portrayal of a group of friends going out drinking was such a fascinating thing to watch. We see the end of the night from sober Troy’s perspective, and it brings home a personal belief of mine. Drinking can be fun (lord knows I like my wine), but it’s usually covering up for something, and at the end of the night, everyone looks like an asshole.

It’s the unspoken agreement between friends that we all politely forget about how much of an asshole everyone looks like. As Jeff pointed out at the end, nobody did anything terrible. That’s what made this episode so interesting — nothing horrible happened: no one got assaulted, or lost, or slept with someone they shouldn’t have. Troy drank too much beer and didn’t have gay sex with a dude, Annie realized she doesn’t know who she is or what she really wants to do with her life, and Jeff and Britta realized they’re both douches and made out. But really, they’re always going to make out. That’s just who they are.

Before we move onto the funny, Shirley’s storyline was genuinely sad. We’ve seen before that Shirley has had a really hard time with her divorce, but shit got real tonight. Shirley did not look pretty in those photos all over the wall. She didn’t look like a woman who liked to party — she looked like a woman who had a problem. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about it in upcoming episodes. Speaking of which, what about her pregnancy? Do you think she’s actually pregnant with Senor Chang’s baby?

The funniest part of the episode by far has to have been comedian Paul F. Tompkins‘ guest appearance. I’ll admit that I’ve never seen Farscape, so I have to ask those of you who have: is talking about it generally a good doorway to sex (gay or otherwise)? I can totally understand how a dude like Abed would love to talk about it, but is it really something that’s going to lead to drawer dropping?

This episode was a departure, but they pretty much all are. What did you think about the shift in tone?

Clacked by Kona Gallagher
on Dec 03, 2010 @ 10:00 EST5EDT