Okay, I expressed myself poorly above. It was just after I’d watched the episode, and I was having trouble articulating my dissatisfaction. My problem, now that I’ve taken the time to think about it, is that so many people were out of character.
Chang, as mentioned above, is not a complete idiot who can’t function in society. He is somewhat like Jeff–without education, he was able to trick everyone (and not just the gullible dean) that he was a Spanish teacher, despite knowing very little Spanish and sounding like an idiot. He had a job, a wife, and even had friends. Yes, he’s much worse off now, as he was not as good maintaining a life as Jeff. But he’s not stupid enough to kidnap the wrong kids. Nor is he racist enough to make that type of mistake. (Yes, some people can’t tell people of other races apart very well, but we’re not just going to assume that any black kids in the school must belong to a certain person.)
Shirley, yes, hates Chang and is somewhat scared of him. She’s always been the most distrustful of him. But she also is very much motivated by and motivates with guilt. She couldn’t lie to get Chang in trouble without feeling bad about it very quickly. She might go with her plan, as he really did kidnap the kids, but she wouldn’t go with Jeff’s, and would think it overkill. I can practically hear her saying “I don’t know, Jeff. Is that right?”
Jeff was more in character than the rest, but the problem is that his character only works if he has a foil. And, even then, he does have a moral center, it’s just not always in the forefront of his mind. When it disappears is when he’s being cocky. When coming up with the idea to incarcerate Chang, he didn’t sound caught up in his ability to hurt him, but rather seemed matter of fact about it. It was more McHale’s portrayal than the writing.
Of the other three that actually appeared for more than a cameo, I have less of a problem with the two guys than with Britta. Britta is self-assured, or at least wants to come off that way. Sure, she is naive, but she thinks she’s right. Her portrayal here came off more like Annie. She would be doing everything to get people to like her, but she wouldn’t admit it and get all whiny about it.
Troy was pretty much dead on, but he’s a fairly unintelligent character and can get away with temporary stupidity. But Abed is the best judge of character on the show. He would have known that the jealousy trope was being played. It wouldn’t take much–just indicate that he was playing along, noticed the trope, and got the other guy to spill.
And, now, for an honorable mention, we have not!Theo, who they are apparently grooming to be a real character, so I’ll have to eventually learn his name. But right now, he’s showing up the main cast, and I don’t like that. His way of pointing out the problem just doesn’t work for me. There’s no great insight that Shirley and Jeff were being bad people, and we didn’t need a Cosby Show style moral lesson. And, what’s more, if they’d played that up as a Cosby Show style lesson, it would have been hilarious.
WHich takes me to my final point. I’m being really hard on the characterization, but, honestly, that’s usually not that big a deal to me. It’s the lack of humor in this episode. Every joke that was made was subdued. There was nothing to get me started laughing so the smaller jokes would catch on. Sure, there was Britta’s comic overacting that I called a caricature earlier, but that’s not a joke.
I mean, look at this thread. Usually there are a bunch of posts about the best one liners. Here we might have one or two, if you actually think they qualify. I watch Community for the zingers. That is why it was the first show that got me laughing continually until the end, as the zingers just kept coming. I didn’t find this one funny, so the characterization killed it for me.