After the Olympics I was craving for NBC Thursday and Physical Education gave me what I was missing for two weeks. Physical Education could be my favorite episode of the series thus far, two really strong plots, tons of funny one liners and some good character work. Earlier I blogged about how I liked Community's subtle twists on formulaic sitcom plots so long as they aren't winking too much at the camera. Physical Education successfully achieved that in both of their stories. The Abed plot sets itself for the cliche, "just be yourself" plot and veers towards the obvious cynical twist. You can be yourself in the world of family sitcoms where mean things happens solely so everyone can learn a lesson, but in the real world conformity is necessary. As I watched this unfold I felt the plot uninspired, but succeeded because of all the jokes along the way, however I didn't anticipate the final wrinkle. Abed was never acting like himself and he was doing it to appease his friends who are so sure there is something wrong with him. It's easy to view Abed as pop culture references machine, but episodes like this show that he has some elements of a real person and isn't just a quirky funny sitcom character.
The other plot was an outrageous, but hilarious parody on cliche sports movies. Though Community has shown it has a heart, it is at its funniest when it is as its most absurd. Dan Harmon has created such a crazy environment at Greendale that it seems like any character can reasonably inhabit it; even a senior citizen pool teacher who insists all of his class wears tight gym shorts for increased mobility. However in spite of it's insanity Greendale is still endearing. It makes sense that Jeff would start embracing this Community instead of just making cynical comments at everyone's expense. While I wouldn't want to be there forever Greendale does look like it would be a lot of fun and we can see that Jeff really enjoys the spectacle of the pool game. Similar to the debate episode, I thought it was a really strong choice to attach the ludicrous views of the coach to the game of pool. Pool is always portrayed as a tense, cerebral game and it was delightful to see Community's manic version of strip pool, that led to several hilarious sight gags and crowd reaction shots.
Stray Thoughts
-The original joke and all the callback from Shirley wondering if white people got offended that they remade black movies specifically for white audiences was executed perfectly. Starting with Jeff calling Fat Albert the black after school special and continuing with Brown Joey and White Abed.
- Abed as Don Draper hitting on Annie/Trudy Campbell was fantastic.
Parks and Recreation "Lady of the Year"
Despite The Office having an hour long baby episode tonight, I wasn't that enthused to watch it and after Lady of the Year I have a hypothesis for why that might be the case. The Office has frequently used outsiders as an audience surrogate, they are the minority who realizes how wacky and zany all these characters are so hilarity ensues. The peripheral characters on Parks and Rec are often equally if not more insane than the cast members allowing us to empathize with Leslie Knope for having to deal with militant soccer coaches or feminists who sell out for transient publicity. In bad episodes of The Office I find myself pitying the cast members and empathize with the periphery, over time this has caused me to become resentful of a lot of the characters.
Ron Swanson has a strong sense of humanity and decency that allows us to like him and not just laugh at him. He showed this compassion in the pre-olympic Valentines Day episode and continued to show it in this episode. He has a lot of fun playing with Leslie, but never does anything especially mean spirited just a bunch of harmless pranks that rile Leslie up. While elaborate pranks are often funny, sometimes simple ones are much more effective and I enjoyed watching Ron getting under Leslie's skin so much when the most elaborate thing he did was hiring a photo crew.
Stray Thoughts
- I would go to a club called clubadubdub
-"Andy why are you digging that hole in the backyard?"
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