What a long, strange trip it’s been for Community to reach its sixth season. After the show was canceled by NBC, it was subsequently picked up by Yahoo!, and luckily creator Dan Harmon decided to stay true to its network roots – I mean, would Community really be better off with swearing and nudity?
“Ladders,” like the season five premiere “Repilot,” functions mainly as a way to show the audience what it can expect from the show’s new season. Where “Repilot” was a retraction of season four’s disastrous “gas leak year,” “Ladders” aims to introduce viewers to Community‘s new cast, which is three members short of the original roster. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still miss Pierce, Troy, or even Shirley, but luckily the show has lost none of its zip or zeal.
“Ladders” formally begins when a mountain of Frisbees collapses the roof of the library (Leonard, holding a crumbling Frisbee in his hand, laments: “Like tears in rain”). Dean Pelton brings in Francesca Dart (Paget Brewster) who has, as he says, “experience in roofs not collapsing.” She immediately rubs the group the wrong way, maybe because the Dean introduces her as the “new Shirley.” Britta, who is now running Shirley’s Sandwiches, vows to name a sandwich after Francesca: “My sandwiches suck.” Francesca is officious and literal-minded, and not inclined towards the study group’s flights of fancy. If anything, her presence will help keep season six more grounded in reality, as Dan Harmon has said it would be.
Ironically enough, the group member with whom she has the strongest connection with is Abed, who, with his talk of montages and describing peoples as characters, comes perilously close to pushing “Ladders” into the realm of self-parody. Abed and Francesca – or Frankie, as she prefers – have a strange bond, but in only a few scenes, Brewster and Danny Pudi are able to sell the connection. Abed needs someone to ground him; Frankie needs someone to unmoor her.
Things come to a head when Abed sides with Frankie, whose banning of alcohol from the teacher’s lounge leads Jeff, Annie, and Britta to start a flappers club in the basement, because that’s Community logic. But relationships can’t be torn asunder for long on this show; even Chang redeemed himself after season four’s ill-fated Changnesia experiment. Community is nothing if not a show about friendship, and the group finally embracing Frankie just proves it. This is a group of weirdos, and a self-confessed bore like Frankie fits right in – maybe because she doesn’t fit in anywhere else.
For “Lawnmower Maintenance and Postnatal Care,” Community wisely chose to focus on possibly its most problematic character: Britta Perry. When we met Britta in season one, she was an intelligent, outspoken anarchist, but throughout the show’s run she’s devolved into the group ditz, to the point where Jeff at one point asked her “How did you used to be smarter than me?”
“Postnatal Care” did a great job of fleshing out Britta by introducing her parents. Rather than seem like a cheap stunt this far into the show’s run (like Linda Caredellini as Zooey Deschanel’s never-mentioned sister on New Girl), the joke works because as it turns out, everyone in the study group has known Deb and George Perry for years. This is the kind of joke that is most representative of Community, and it shows that the show exists outside of the twenty-two minutes we get every week. In its own small way, “Postnatal Care” shows that Community is building its own universe, Marvel or DC-style.
The business with Britta’s parents is great, not only because it affords Gillian Jacobs the meatiest material she’s gotten in ages, but because it refuses to conform to sitcom tropes, where estranged parents are either misunderstood or total assholes. The Perrys aren’t perfect; they are by turns permissive hippies and coddling enablers, and Britta’s frustration with their largesse doesn’t ring false. But they’re fundamentally good people, and at the end of “Postnatal Care” Britta is ready to admit that her she does have friends, and the fact that they’ve been secretly close with her parents for years doesn’t mean they love her any less.
Elsewhere, the Dean’s VR plotline didn’t go really go anywhere (tellingly, he spent much of it literally running in place). Jim Rash’s enthusiasm will always be a great foil for Joel McHale’s “over it” sensibilities, but this whole subplot basically existed to introduce us to Elroy Patishnak (Keith David, who loyal viewers will recognize as the narrator of season three’s “Pillows and Blankets”). Elroy, a failed inventor, is obviously on hand to replace Pierce, but I can’t really fault Community for adhering to the old axiom, “Nothing succeeds like success.” There was a lot of doubt about how Dan Harmon & Co. could pull off a sixth season, but I have to say I’m optimistic. Two episodes in, the show is hewing to its strengths: self-referential absurdity and surprising pathos. And I have to say, the show is doing it quite well.
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