On the other hand:
This is the 2nd campus-wide goof episode of the season. And like Geothermal Escapism it fails at getting things right. So much cool imagery and such. But the dialogue just bombed. And that took the rest of the episode down with it.
And I do miss Troy for an episode like this. Abed was pretty much on the sidelines. Without a partner-in-meta, Abed is left out. If anything, this should have been an Abed-centered episode.
Starburns is Zed. Cool, cool, cool, cool.
At first I agreed with this, but I also figured out that, if it was Abed’s app, then a whole different subplot about blame/credit, peer-pressure, etcetera would beg for exploration and, most importantly, he wouldn’t be able to just covertly push it out of Beta and into the market; he would have announced the plan to do so to his cohort and that would open a subplot about all the different voices and influences that go into releasing a product – quite a distraction from the main plot(s).
I just loved the multi-entendre of that observation (by Abed, I believe).
While I got that blatant satire, plus the references to Huxley and so on, I also thought it was poking fun at the whole political economy of popularity and power in society. Facebook is just another venue in which it plays out, but it’s been a reality in high school and the post-high school high school arena of community colleges for a long time. To a certain extent, the stock market and the general market operate in much the same way, as well.
I thought it was a quiet observation that many revolutionary leaders have leveraged their charisma (in Britta’s case, a lack thereof) as a distraction to gain the attention and support of followers. After that, they have to have a compelling theme and speeches to motivate everyone. After that, it sometimes turns out that the leaders’ distraction merely hid the fact that they just wanted to be in power – or simply wanted the opposition’s leaders out of power. I thought that was a pretty powerful statement to throw around, considering the play-out of real-world events during the week in which it aired.
–G!
She’s gettin’ what she wants
She’s a popular girl
Settin’ the world on fire
Everybody wants
to be part of her world
she’s a
Popular girl
such a
Popular girl
…–Peterik & Sullivan (Survivor)
…Popular Girl
…Vital Signs
Nah - if the premise is popularity and the political exploitation of popularity, Abed almost by definition is immune because of his pseudo-Aspergish indifference. I can see Troy conflicted in wanting to be a 5 but thinking it’s not cool to want to be a 5…
Just had a though. Magnitude’s not a 5?