Maybe I’m feeling sentimental about this show. Maybe that’s why “Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television” worked so well for me. Maybe it’s because every goddamn Community season finale has to also work as a potential series finale (which, if you’re Dan Harmon, must be a hell of a cloud to work under). As far as series finales go, I don’t know if Community could do much better than this – hell, imagine if season four’s “Advanced Introduction to Finality” was the show’s swan song. It’s unclear if Community is coming back, but I’d be surprised if it didn’t; the show has significantly boosted Yahoo! Screen’s profile, even if it is the world’s worst video player.
The best thing about “Emotional Consequences” was that it finally made sense – and also use – of the meta commentary that Abed has been doling out all season. When he began commenting on the use of billiard shots in bar scenes, I groaned inwardly, but the script (by Dan Harmon and Chris McKenna) uses that as a nice jumping-off point for one of the show’s weirder episodes – but it’s a quiet weird, as opposed to, say, “Basic RV Repair and Palmistry,” an episode I hated.
The premise of “Emotional Consequences” is pretty simple: the gang sits around at Britta’s bar, all pitching their ideal “seventh season.” It’s a smart setup, in that its execution is evocative of two of Community‘s finest episodes, “Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps” and the brilliant “Remedial Chaos Theory.” This works because – and you’ll know this if you too have a large group of friends who regularly congregate – nothing is potentially funnier than friends doing impressions of each other (of course, for this to really work, we have to consider these characters friends, which I think is a foregone conclusion). “Emotional Consequences” is a hilarious, immensely quotable episode, and it notably includes two uses of the word “fuck,” the first of which caught me so off guard I had to rewind (which then caused Yahoo!’s shitty player to have to buffer intermittently. IT’S 2015, BUFFERING SHOULD NOT EXIST).
As a quick digression, some of my favorite bits:
“Lizard. Fire hydrant. Obama. CHANG!”
The Tom Waits-style singing over the intro to Britta’s show
Ice Cube Head (voiced by Rick and Morty‘s Justin Roiland)
Dean Pelton’s ubiquitous diaper
“Aren’t you supposed to be in Dean Class?”
That whole tag at the end. “You stupid child…”
Okay, moving on. It’s been established that “Emotional Consequences” pretty expertly addresses one of Community‘s problem spots this season (Abed), but it does well by its other problem spot as well, too. I’m talking, of course, about Jeff’s anxiety about everyone leaving Greendale but him. I don’t know if the show will do a better job of expressing this than “G.I. Jeff” (especially not if its current efforts, like “Intro to Recycled Cinema,” are any indication), but with Troy and Shirley gone, Pierce dead, and Elroy, Abed, and Annie leaving, maybe for good, Jeff’s dread is slightly more resonant. Joel McHale does some great facial acting this episode, to the point where we don’t even need a Winger speech.
There’s really not much more I can say about “Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television.” It was a slam-dunk of an ending, and ends season six on a high note, which is good, because after “Intro to Recycled Cinema,” “Grifting 101,” and “Basic RV Repair and Palmistry,” I was getting genuinely worried. If this is the end of Community, then it’s a good one. As Jeff tells his cadre of hot redheads: you’re not friends anymore, you’re a community, which is the whole point of the show. Community is something beyond friendship and beyond familial bonds, something that this show tried often to express. Community‘s successes outweighed its failures, and this finale is absolutely one of the former. If “Emotional Consequences” taught us anything, it’s that there’s really only one thing to say when someone says goodbye.
But you’re coming back, right?
“Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television” score: 4.75/5
Community season six score: 4.25/5
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