Well, that was a…weird episode of Community. I’m not quite sure how to grade “Intro to Recycled Cinema”; it’s one of those lofty, ambitious installments that’s never 100% successful but deserves praise for what it attempts. Do you see where I’m having trouble? It was an episode about Chang that featured very little of the man himself, and it could have served as a send-off for Ken Jeong, but Jeong has made it known that he’s willing to do Community forever, and Chang clearly isn’t going anywhere. It was pretty funny, but its moments of poignancy were undercut by the fact that Community has drawn water from this well before. Maybe I’ll figure out how to score it as I write.
So Chang, improbably, is on the cusp of actual Hollywood success; his one annoying catchphrase (“Haaaam, girl!”) has him fielding calls from Steven Spielberg, and crafting a sob story about being picked on and ignored that doesn’t sit well with the people back at Greendale who did neither of those things. (Art imitating life: Rene Russo is an alumnus of my high school, and she’s spoken in interviews about being bullied; men and women from her graduating class have told me that’s patently untrue.) Frankie sees the silver lining in Chang being gone (the school’s insurance premiums have gone down six percent) and soon the group alights on a new revenue stream: Abed’s unfinished film Police Justice, starring Chang as Chief Starr. If they can finish the movie, they stand to make half a million dollars through distributing it. And thus begins production on Chief Starr and the Raiders of the Galaxy.
Obviously, Chief Starr is really, really bad. Jeff plays the Mayor of Space who exclaims things like “What in space?”; Britta keeps breaking character to chastise Annie’s wardrobe choices; Annie keeps snapping at Britta to pay rent; and Garrett appears as a crappy CG character called GlipGlop. One of Community‘s best running gags – intentional or not – is that for all of Abed’s love and encyclopedic knowledge of film, he doesn’t seem to have any aptitude for it. Granted, the production schedule for Chief Starr is pretty compressed, but it’s not like the tin-eared dialogue in Police Justice was going to win him any awards, realistic though it might have been (Abed alludes to Buzz Hickey lending a hand).
So for most of “Recycled Cinema,” we’re watching the production slowly ebb away at Abed’s soul and his integrity, as he has to make one artistic compromise after another. So that’s a pretty normal episode of Community, insofar as anything about Community can be interpreted as normal. But where the story lost me was in Jeff’s breakdown over Abed’s decision to cut his climactic death scene (and speaking from a film watching perspective, cutting a major character’s death scene is kind of a no-no). It’s been established – in the superb “Documentary Filmmaking Redux” – that Jeff has a tendency to get, um, invested in his film roles, but here the obsession escalates to the point of physical violence: Jeff is literally choking Abed, and I think that’s where the episode lost me. For all of Jeff’s intensity and cynicism, he’s never been violent, and I think this shift came on way too abruptly.
“Recycled Cinema” stuck the landing, more or less. Jeff’s breakdown turned out to be more existential than narcissistic, as he’s worried that everyone except him will leave Greendale. Again, we’ve seen Jeff agonize over this before (most memorably in last season’s “G.I. Jeff”), so we’re not exactly breaking new ground.
Chang manages to screw it up in Hollywood by telling Spielberg to lick his butt; in a hilarious shot, he’s forced to leave a recording booth through a tiny door in the back wall, only to be immediately replaced by Fresh Off the Boat‘s Randall Park. He sheepishly returns to the study room, and while it’s awkward and tense for a moment, no one objects when he takes his usual seat. Because in the end, that’s what Community, and Greendale, boils down to: a place where there’s always room at the table.
A Few Thoughts
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Jeff’s running commentary about Chris Pratt was great, and weirdly poignant given Jeff’s previous weight problems. You can see him trying to convince someone, anyone, that Pratt’s muscles in Guardians of the Galaxy were digital
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Frankie returning on steel drums was a nice callback, even if it’s to an episode that’s only two weeks old
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Loved how cocky Garrett got there at the end. I’d totally sport a #WhoIsGlipGlop shirt
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