I only watched an episode or two of the bridge, but it ties into his speech about a bunch of shows that focus on basically semi-autistic detectives. Most of them have nearly-magical detective abilities, tempered by the social/mental problems that come with them. It’s why he was making that speech at all - the dean insisted that because he was semi-autistic himself, Abed could come up with some sort of magic detective powers.
Oooh, them’s fightin’ words. As bad as Community can get sometimes (gas-leak year!), never, ever has it sunk to According to Jim levels.
NEVER!!!
That said, while I laughed quite a bit at last week’s episodes, this one left me … not impressed. Some of the jokes landed towards the early part of the show, but I didn’t know exactly what was being parodied, either, and it just didn’t work that great for me.
I thought the whole episode was hilarious and the tone actually managed to creep me out a bit.
Loved it when the dean was on the phone will the ass crack bandit and he was wildly gesturing to the secretary, who just calmly sat looking at him.
“When I snap my fingers like this it means trace the call!”
“Just check the extension.”
That bit with Abed trying and giving up was pretty good.
I’m fairly confident it was a parody of the genre as a whole, not one specific show.
Backwards-dressed-Chang was stupid but hilarious, and I laughed a LOT.
Maybe what we’ve learned about this season of Community is that no one can agree about which episodes are funny?
I’m impressed by the fact that every single article in Annie’s “ass crack bandit” scrapbook was fully written. Not a single lorem, ipsum, or dolor.
I think the ACB was Annie. The look on her face at the end after the very touching “hold hands in the dark” speech struck me as longing. She did it to bring the group together, especially her and Jeff.
Or at least that would be the case in a normal sitcom.
I thought it was a great episode. No, I didn’t have a clue what specifically it was parodying but those cliches are everywhere.
How can people not be seeing the gigantic differences between this show and last season? The most important one of all was the ending: they didn’t solve anything and they certainly didn’t end with a warm and fuzzy sitcom lesson learned.
Harmon’s back (even though he didn’t have the credit on this). It’s like flashlights cutting through the darkness.
After a fairly disappointing pair of eps last week, nice to see the show back to form with a great one.
Incredible! Loved the episode. Changs backward character creeped me out in a Slenderman/Ringu sort of way.
Loved it! I got the genre they were parodying right away. It was superbly silly.
Damn it! Why am I just now hearing that Dan Harmon is back!? I gave up on season four, but I’ll have to catch up now for sure.
“This extra large churro sure tastes good in my REAL mouth”
Professor Duncan’s “Oh, American high five” got me too.
I am hoping we break out of the drearies next episode - this season’s been kind of a downer so far - still funny, but the tone of the events in the episodes are veering towards the bleak. Jeff’s law failure, Abed’s Nicholas Cage breakdown, him and Tory’s overhearing of that bummer conversation in the postscript to the second episode, the death of Pierce…
I need some zany, stat.
I think there were multiple ACB’s. This would explain how the Bandit(s) could move from victim to victim so quickly without necessarily cutting through the teacher’s lounge.
I love the idea that Shirley, Britta, and Abed might have been up to something without Jeff and Annie being in on it. Messes with the established dynamic a bit.
To those who thought this episode wasn’t funny: Not sure what you were watching, but my wife and I were cracking up the whole time. Had to keep going back to catch lines we missed because we were laughing so hard.
“I think you just admitted you already owned a fake butt.”
Hey! If you wanna make Trouble, go work for Parker Brothers.
Including one on the Assy Knoll.
The episode most closely parodied Zodiac, but in general it was shot like a David Fincher murderfest (Zodiac, Se7en, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).
I liked it quite a bit. What are you going to do, not have butts?
Churro Chang was disturbing.