COMMUNITY “Documentary Filmmaking: Redux” Season 3 Episode 8 – After the shocking announcement from NBC this week that Community will be benched at midseason and taken off the schedule, “Documentary Filmmaking: Redux” has a lot to prove. It needs to prove that Community deserves this spot, and that it indeed deserves to be renewed at the end of the season.
From the very beginning of the episode, however, I knew I’d be having some problems with it. I wasn’t a big fan of Abed doing the whole documentary schtick last season on “Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking”, and I definitely wasn’t a fan of it now.
As a quick recap, Greendale’s school commercial was very old so the dean wanted to make a new one. He recruited the study group to star in it, but his quest for perfection made him slowly slip into madness and dragged most of the cast down with him. There were a few standouts in this story, with Jeff’s interpretation of the dean being inspired and Luis Guzman’s cameo being pretty funny, but just about everything else about this episode was just…lame.
Ever since they turned Pierce into the villain last season, they just don’t seem to know what to do with him. Between last week’s scenes of painting the floor, and this week’s totally unfunny scenes of complaining about his trailer, I didn’t even crack a grin at Chevy Chase all episode. You add to that the fact that the rest of the crew really didn’t have much to do, and the whole effort just came off very uninspired and rather depressing.
The idea to have the whole thing be a documentary really didn’t help either. I never thought at one point how good of an idea it was for Abed to be filming it, since him being behind the camera added so little to the story. I guess he was able to cut in a few of his scenes, as well as notice Britta and Troy hugging at the end, but it didn’t make up for the fact that his character just came off as annoying the rest of the time.
With NBC announcing that Community will soon be taking an unexpected hiatus, it makes each episode of this show feel that much more precious. So when an episode fails to deliver as completely as this one, it really is disappointing. I’m hoping we can right the ship next time we see them, as you never know how much more of this show we’re going to get!
Random Thoughts:
- I loved Dean Pelton criticizing Shirley’s voice. I’m glad I’m not the only person who hates that syrupy tone she always has.
- Loved the quick “Pop pop” they threw into the commercial.
- Donald Glover released his latest album on Tuesday under his alter ego, Childish Gambino. It’s called “Camp”, and it is so freaking good. I recommend you all spring the 8 bucks to buy it off iTunes. One of the best rap albums I’ve ever heard.
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