“Basic Crisis Room Decorum” is scattered, and it’s paced unevenly, but it’s notable for being the rare episode of Community that’s actually about, well, community college.
Annie gets a heads up that City College (remember them?) is going to run an attack ad on Greendale, so she gathers everyone at the study room in the middle of the night so they can respond to it. Why this couldn’t have happened anywhere else, I don’t know, but the study room set already exists, so screw it. Turns out that City College’s ad attacks Greendale for giving a degree to a dog named Ruffles. Everyone has mixed reactions to this. Well, not really, it’s mostly just anger. “Decorum” makes good use of silence, as Annie asks the Dean if the dog actually got a degree and he responds by basically just staring at her and Frankie for a good few seconds (later, Elroy gets in a hilariously cold stare when Frankie says she doesn’t own a TV).
So that’s the basic setup, but “Decorum” is, like I said, scattered. It makes no attempt to hide the fact that it has nothing for Britta to do; she shows up drunk (she works at a bar, remember), and doesn’t really play a role in the proceedings. She gets in some nice physical comedy bits, and one solid line (“Everyone thinks I’m a joke, but if the school gave a degree to a dog, then we’re all jokes”) and passes out. Chang is likewise dismissed early, because at its core, “Decorum” is yet another episode that pits Jeff’s cynicism against Annie’s optimism.
It’s in Jeff’s approach to combating City College’s ad that “Decorum” approaches nuance, which is saying something given that the director is Bobcat Goldthwait, whose film God Bless America aims for the lowest-hanging fruit imaginable (OMG they wanna kill reality TV stars! What great satire!). Jeff’s approach is to run a different ad, one that attacks Ruffles instead of City College. Going into full lawyer mode, Jeff presents his strategy in such a way that I couldn’t help but think of the way victims of campus sexual assault are routinely smeared and investigated in an attempt to discredit them. Maybe I’m reaching, but as a commentary on actual college life, it was pretty well-done. As much as I love Community‘s absurdity, it’s nice to see it wade in real life every now and then.
The ad itself isn’t a big deal – it’s airing at 7 AM, for crying out loud – so the stakes of “Decorum” are never really that high. When Annie threatens to transfer schools over Jeff and Frankie’s reaction to finding proof that Ruffles never got a degree, it’s an empty gesture that rings truer for the characters than for the viewers. Still, it sets up a sweet moment where the group runs their own ad, wherein the Dean (with Ruffles by his side, who is still somehow alive despite enrolling at Greendale in 2001) admits everything and promises that the school is getting its shit together.
It’s not that “Decorum” isn’t funny – Community is always funny – it’s just that it was all over the place. It raised some good points, and I would have preferred to see the episode focus on that critical approach.
A Few Thoughts
- Frankie, after Annie tells her she sounds like Jeff: “And Jeff says I sound like Abed. I’m sure Britta thinks I sound like Chang, and Chang thinks I sound like distant explosions and crying babies. You know he’s unstable, right?”
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That running joke about the olives was weird, but it paid off in Jeff’s exasperated reaction
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Speaking of weird, that ending was clearly tacked on for time, but goddamn I love when this show indulges itself
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