Community continues its march towards six seasons and a movie with the start of the unlikely season five. Jeff Winger and the gang having completed their courses as Greendale, have moved out into the world. Unfortunately, their time outside hasn’t been so fruitful.
The first episode of the evening shows us a nice glimpse into how good, and evil, Jeff once was during his evil lawyer days. After failing at his hero lawyer practice, Jeff ends up going back to Greendale to see if he can’t convince everyone to sue the school for their failure in their post school life.
It was pretty amazing to see how sly Jeff really can be, actually convincing the group to not only sue the school in a class action suit, but also making it think it was their idea to begin with. It’s classic psychopath manipulation, and it was brilliant. It was crazy to see Jeff go very dark, beating down his main foe slimy lawyer Alan Conner with his own tie.
The other main theme of the first episode, “Repilot” centered around the idea of a show rebooting and reorganizing. One of the weird touches was how the episode wove in many Scrubs references, namely about how Scrubs 9th season was also a repilot, with changed cast roles.
In the second episode, we start to see how Jeff’s teaching style forms, and some of the challenges he has to face now that he’s no longer a student. No more leering at hot students, no more insulting Leonard. What’s brilliant is his new mentor Buzz Hickey, a criminology professor. Jonathan Banks (famously known for his role in Breaking Bad), joins the season commanding fear and respect out of the student body.
On the other side, the gang takes a class on Nicholas Cage, “Good or Bad?” with the ending result of Abed freaking out into a pretty good Cage impression and summary of his general acting style.
Other Observations
- The show makes many references to Harmon’s other show, Scrubs, including literally playing back one of JD’s signature end of episode monologues.
- Donald Glover makes a funny Scrubs reference about how Zach Braff’s departure after 5 episodes in the relaunched Scrubs was a horrible thing to do. Donald Glover himself will be leaving Community after 5 episodes.
- Even Dean Pelton doesn’t believe that “Greendale is a good place for good people”
- They comment on how it’s weird not having “magnitude” around anymore, though he makes an odd cameo as a hologram.
- Annie is a pharmaceutical rep.
- Britta is a modern day therapist….a bartender
- Abed directed Jeff’s video
- “How can every number start with 555? Are there only 10 thousand numbers?”
- “I’ve spent so much time with computers your tears are just ones and zeros to me.”
- Chang get’s rehired as a math teacher.
- Abed starts to join in on a slow clap when Alan Conner walks in.
- “In real life, the robot wins.”
- “Screw you Abed”
- “One more, more teachery…” “I want to kill myself” “Use that”
- “I can’t just pretend I’m teaching. I’m not Mythbusters”
- Abed is infamous for driving the previous media professor crazy.
- Teachers give minuses to keep students in line.
- Always Be Cageing
