Episode: “App Development and Condiments”
Writers: Jordan Blum & Parker Deay
Director: Rob Schrab
I’m going to blame the Winter Olympics hiatus for this, but I kind of forgot just how crazy that “Community” can be. When the show goes for the high concept, it goes all the way. Even within the world of the show, the students of Greendale seem awfully malleable when it comes to changing their personalities and wardrobes to match the theme of the week.
This week, it was cheesy ‘70s sci-fi movies by way of The Social Network. I’m sure that a lot of the Logan’s Run references went over my head, but I loved the ‘70s sound effects and the hilariously hideous clothing. Even the outside of the school had been transformed into something post apocalyptic. Veteran TV director Rob Schrab gave the episode a very interesting style and the repurposed sets were well designed.
I wasn’t as high on the set up for this episode, as the Greendale students and teachers fell under the influence of MeowMeowBeenz, an extremely stupid social media app that allows people to rank each other. For the first week of the MeowMeowBeenz trial, Greendale becomes a caste system. After eight days, it’s all out class warfare.
The primary focus fell on the newly popular, Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown) and Jeff (Joel McHale), who coveted her popularity so much that he essentially pimped himself out to get his MeowMeowBeenz rating up. Jeff has a tendency to go after something once he sees that someone else already has it. We saw it last week when Jeff only took another romantic look at Britta (Gillian Jacobs) just because Ian Duncan (John Oliver) had developed eyes for her.
This time, Jeff was motivated by annoyance or possibly anger, since he had called Shirley out on her manipulative tactics. While the conflict between Jeff and Shirley seemed forced, it made a certain amount of sense. Both Jeff and Shirley define themselves by what others think of them. And I did enjoy the rapidly non-passive aggressive interplay between Jeff and Shirley.
The problem is that both Jeff and Shirley had to act out of character to make the conflict between them work. These two had solidified their friendship back in the third season, so their reconciliation felt like a pale echo of that scene. At least a**hole Jeff was fun as he traveled the halls in full douche mode. Even in his comedy act, Jeff made sure to be all things to all people.
Britta was a little bit better served in her B-plot, as she struggled to bring down the tyranny of the fives aka Shirley’s closest followers. Weirdly enough, I feel like the writers are trying to make Jeff and Britta a thing again. One of my favorite moments in the episode came when Jeff and Britta were conspiring in a study room before they were mistaken for starcrossed lovers.
Unlike most of Britta’s causes, she gains a massive amount of attention and support from putting mustard on her face. Even when Britta rallies against the fives, she can’t make any progress until she accepts the fact that Jeff’s comment about the mustard was right all along. Britta does eventually go too far, but that’s Britta for you.
The only member of the regular cast who didn’t get her own subplot was Annie (Alison Brie). Abed (Danny Pudi) found peace and acceptance as one of threes because they took all of the guess work out of being human in his daily life. Another really amusing moment in the episode came near the end when Abed rejoiced about being bumped back down to a 1.
Professor Buzz Hickey (Jonathan Banks) also had a minor subplot as Buzz initially resisted the MeowMeowBeenz before embracing it. It’s kind of sad that Buzz needed to constantly pretend it was his birthday just to prevent himself from being downvoted.
The showstopping moment of this episode came during Jeff’s aggressive comedy routine that earned him a five while Britta fumed. Following that up with the bizarre future dance between the Save Greendale committee and the guest stars was another inspired choice. “Arrested Development” creator, Mitchell Hurwitz had a surprisingly funny turn as Steve Koogler, Greendale’s resident party animals. “The Koogler” kept turning up despite the fact that we (the audience) had no idea who he was supposed to be. But the Koogler-centric tag scene/movie trailer at the end of the episode was comedic gold.
I don’t feel like this episode ever fully came together as a complete story, but there were more than enough things to enjoy. And the episode made me laugh several times, which is almost always the mark of a very good episode.
