Although ‘Conventions of Space and Time’ takes place at a central location, I don’t know if I’ve ever watched an episode of Community without the community. With characters scattered about in wildly different (and mostly silly) story lines, ‘Conventions of Space and Time’ is a terrible episode, continues its slow downward trend from the beginning of the season.
‘Conventions of Space and Time’ is way too focused on romance: dominating the episode are Troy/Abed/Britta and a frightening apparition of Annie acting out a Mrs. Winger daydream. The Britta and Troy relationship in particular is becoming an issue: they’ve gone from not being able to hold hands to having regular sex together in the blink of an eye, a fact they’ve decided to hide from Abed (but he knows). Although the opening scene is kind of jarring, their relationship really starts to unhinge whenever Troy starts worrying about Abed – to which Dr. Britta coddles him through every scene.
As the story morphs from Troy and Abed growing apart into Troy’s mission to save Abed, the most important issues of their odd little triangle are completely thrown away. And it’s important: Community‘s gone out of its way to establish the dysfunction growing between Troy and Abed – a fact that’s thrown away in the end of this episode when everybody’s happy and smiling in the end. Abed leaps from cutting Britta out whenever possible (something Troy would willingly do, even suggesting it to Abed), to accepting her wearing a Minerva t-shirt in the end.
Even more confusing is Annie and Jeff. The show’s all but hurling them at each other this season, and it led to the most painful Annie scenes since her crush on Troy back in the first season. She spends the majority of the episode alone, living out a fantasy that her and Jeff are married. It’s not funny in the least, and from the dialogue to the facial expressions, it doesn’t feel like the Annie Edison we’ve known for three years. It feels like the show’s thrown Annie’s character completely away, for some facsimile gif-friendly season one version that exists for will they/won’t they stories with Jeff.
‘Conventions of Space and Time’ has a few isolated funny moments, but jumps from story to story so much that they all feel underdeveloped when the happy ending arrives. Season four of Community has shown its attention to detail when it comes to the facts of the Greendale 7, but the most important facet of the show – the relationships between these characters – has been lost in a sea of relationship drama and goofy out-of-character antics.
Grade: C-
Other thoughts/observations:
– Britta’s physical bit in the opening scene definitely makes Community feel like a different show – but when it’s something well thought out and executed like this, it works well to establish some kind of personality for this new, Americanized version of Community.
– Pierce and Shirley do nothing!
– Why do hotels exist? Adultery.
– we miss you, Greendale Community campus.
– Jeff being mistaken for Thoraxis was a poorly-disguised bit to get a real Doctor Who character on the show (the girl he flirts with).
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