Community ‘Course Listing Unavailable’: Sausage Making

There are times when even the best shows try to do too much, and ‘Course Listing Unavailable’ happened to be one of those for Community. Cramming the funeral for Starburns, the Greendale 7 trial, and Chang’s master plan left little room for the episode to do much in the final act, but skip ahead to the part where everyone smiles and feels better. That’s not to say it was terrible: each act had its own funny set of jokes, but the episode’s tone was all over the place, and the progression of emotions from beginning to end was inconsistent.

It begins strong in the study room, with Britta trying to shove her psych major down everyone’s throat by over-analyzing Alex’s death.  Grief quickly turns to anger when its announced Professor Kane has quit, leaving them with an incomplete and guaranteeing them all a spot in summer school. That alone in the first act felt a bit rushed, especially when the show opens with a ‘in case of death’ video diary from Starburns and the roundtable scene, where it feels like the episode is being set up for a nice, contained episode of everyone coming to terms with both Starburns death and themselves.

Instead, we get a really uncomfortable scene at Alex’s funeral where Jeff and co. turn eulogies into professions of anger at their school. I understand that these characters aren’t supposed to be lovable all the time, but the entire group turning his funeral into their soapbox was a real selfish move, even for them. And for some characters, it clashed totally with the growth we’ve been seeing from them this year: would season 3 Jeff Winger really chastise Dean Pelton like that in public, over something a professor did?

This posturing leads to a riot, the result of which enacts Chang’s master plan of martial law. He replaces the dean with a dummy, schmoozes the school board, and gets each member of the Greendale 7 expelled. Another piece of story I’m fine with, but I didn’t think Chang was really needed to push the board far along, integrating a plot arc the show’s been slowly building all season (Chang’s last stand) and tying into a short-term plot line (Greendale 7 expulsion) that we’re only getting into now.

I think the trial would’ve been a lot more effective if what followed was better. Instead of really getting into the darker things at hand with their expulsion, the last scene turns into a meta-parody of ‘Remedial Chaos Theory’ and ends with a completely unearned moment of happiness for the group. The theme they’re touching on is certainly a realistic one, and there’s nothing wrong with being positive, but it all came with nearly no reflection on how their narcissism is costing them their futures.

So in reality, there was three storylines in ‘Course Listing Unavailable’ that could’ve been entire episodes: the mourning of Greendale, Prof Kane quitting leading to riots leading to the trial and fallout of the Greendale 7 being expelled, and Chang’s master plan. And with all these themes and events flying around them, they couldn’t do a lot with the characters except broad jokes we’ve all heard about all of them before. A rushed episode, but one that was bound to happen juggling all the seasonal arcs Community has this season.

Overall: B-

Other thoughts/observations:

– enough with the Britta/Troy looks and smiles. They’re going to do it, we know it, let’s get down to it already. No backing in and out of this one like Annie and Jeff; there’s been way too many shots of them smiling at each other in the last three episodes.

– Garrett’s ‘Ave Maria’ was the highlight of the episode by far. That, and “aahh… it’s all peppery!!!’

– you cannot tell me that is the end of Michael K. Williams. If so, they really underused him, and I’ll be really disappointed.

– “How one-armed was he?”

what did you think of ‘Course Listing Unavailable’? Leave your thoughts/comments below!!!