Review: Community ‘Paranormal Parentage’ – The Living Choose To Be Haunted

I want to like ‘Paranormal Parentage’: it finds a few good character beats, and mostly does a good job avoiding the pitfalls of its layered referential humor. But there’s a disconnect between the humor of the first half and the emotions of the second half that leave the resolutions feeling hollow. It’s certainly not a bad episode of the show, but there isn’t a lot to alleviate my concerns from the season premiere.

Through two episodes, most characters just feel different. For example, it seems the writers have lost Troy as a character, resetting his maturity and intelligence back to the pilot – not to mention being unable to find anything to ground his relationship with Britta in because of it. “Troy is really childish and goes along with anything.” is not what I want to see from his character 73 episodes into the show. ‘Mixology Certification’ is such an important episode of Community for Troy’s character (along with others), but moments of growth like those appear to be forgotten in this new season. Some of these principles apply to Dr. Britta, as well: her therapizing is great for a few jokes, but it’s become unattached from her character, less of a defining characteristic than a index card of jokes and obvious emotional notes to point out with other characters.

Outside of Jeff, it feels like most characters have regressed: Annie and Abed feel more akin to their characters near the end of the first season. Annie’s pining over Jeff, Abed’s disconnected from everything, and Britta and Jeff are getting into arguments. That makes the Jeff and Pierce material near the end feel completely disconnected from the rest of the episode, where one story line reaches emotional highs, and the other two simply peter out into nothing at the end. The Jeff and Pierce resolutions are the highlights of the episode, but even those feel a bit redundant: Pierce and Gilbert reconciled already, and Jeff’s daddy issues are well-known and explored at this point. I’m intrigued to see him call his father at the end (although that particular moment felt a little drawn out over the past two seasons), inspired by the loneliness Gilbert felt for a father he didn’t really even like – but I am a little worried about where it might be heading. Jeff’s dad has to be a meaningful character, not a one-off archetype of a shitty dad for a cheap resolution. This is the insight into why Jeff is Jeff we’ve been waiting for, and something like that (which I fear) looms over my hopes for the plot line.

At the end of the day, ‘Paranormal Parentage’ isn’t even that funny by Community standards: Britta’s on fire as usual, but Troy, Abed, and Annie aren’t really given much to work with (and Yvette Nicole Brown makes me laugh when she makes sounds with her mouth closed, so she doesn’t need much to work with). The best jokes are the throwaway ones: Pierce still hates Vicki, Britta’s ‘shrink ray’, and Annie dressing up as The Ring girl (not a ring girl… the Dean knows what Jeff was looking for). But there isn’t a lot of depth to it all, especially with characters like Troy and Annie, who are just kind of floating around without purpose, even when its supposed to appear they have one (does Troy even care that him and Britta are dating? Is he excited about it?). ‘Paranormal Parentage’ is a step forward from the season premiere, but not a very promising one.

Grade: B-

Other thoughts/observations:

– THE TABLE IS THE SHOW’S MAGIC… we need a study room-heavy episode IMMEDIATELY – even if it’s just a farewell to the classic location. The show can grow, but it can’t abandon the study room format – I don’t even care if it’s in a different room. The feeling of togetherness is definitely missing this season – and that might be my biggest worry moving forward.

– Pierce’s neon fireplace was hilarious.

– Shirley can’t quite convey her Christian concerns about Britta and her libido to Troy.

– Not a single Calvin and Hobbes joke? C’mon!

– “Intellect this!”