Community – Recap & Review – Spanish 101

photo: nbc

Community
Spanish 101

Original Air Date: Sept 24, 2009

Brittany D. – Staff Writer
brittany@thetwocentscorp.com

Welcome back to study group! Did you hear that Community was very well received and debuted to respectable numbers? Score points to Joel and the rest of the cast! Let’s see what they’re up to this week.

Jeff is consistently late to study group, and even though everyone complains about it behind his back, they all let it go because they love him and he charms them – except for Britta. When Jeff finally manages to make it in, Shirley and Annie have learned all about the crisis in Guatemala, and decide to stage a protest. Over in the class room, we’re introduced to Senor Chang whose entire speech about why he’s a Spanish teacher would have been more hilarious had I not already seen it fifty times on NBC. It was still pretty entertaining though, I’m not even gonna lie. “IT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!” he concludes before explaining the assignment for class: Everyone has a card taped on their desk. Some people have a picture, some have a word. Britta gets a picture of a house and Abed gets the corresponding ‘casa’. This should mean they’re partners, but Jeff trades Abed his shirt for the chance to work with Britta. Little does Jeff know, Britta traded her card with Pierce.

The project is simple: Five sentences in Spanish; a small conversation with your partner in front of the class. Pierce first breaks out the booze, then proceeds to write a play that is heavy handed on his feelings about Israel and pretty much not at all about Spanish. As that has been going on, Shirley and Annie have been handing out brownies and having a ‘party protest’ to speak out against the crime in Guatemala. Britta is outraged that they’ve seemingly made everything such a mockery, but when the women challenge her by saying she only wants to do things her way, Britta can’t honestly think of anything she’s ever done in the past that would support she’s an avid protester.

Abed and Troy make their way into the library and demonstrate how easy the Spanish assignment is by getting through their sentences in about ten seconds. They tell Pierce and Jeff that there’s a silent protest going on that Britta is a part of, and Jeff blows Pierce off to pretend he likes something that Britta also cares about. Down at the protest, mouths are taped shut and people either hold candles or signs. Britta is mildly impressed that Jeff even showed, until Pierce stumbles out of the library, drunk as a skunk, and slurs that Jeff doesn’t really care about Guatemala. And then Pierce proceeds to catch his arm on fire, and he runs around like a crazy person instead of stopping, dropping, and rolling.

The next day in class, Pierce explains to Senor Chang what his presentation is, and Chang offers to give Jeff a C to let Pierce do his presentation alone. Meanwhile, Britta has told Jeff that Pierce traded cards with her for a hundred bucks, just for the chance to be able to work with Jeff. The man is just so lonely that he wanted a feeling of belonging – a sausage fest as he put it, but Britta’s way was sweeter. This makes Jeff buck up and do the right thing. He stands and does the presentation which is long and involves costume changes, a robot sequence, and Annie as an Indian, bound and gagged. The conclusion has each man holding sparklers and Pierce and Jeff get an F and F- respectively.

In the end, Britta is somewhat impressed with Jeff’s commitment to go down like a sinking ship with Pierce, and she walks off, but not before giving a tell-tale look over her shoulder back at Jeff. The tail of the episode has Abed and Troy rapping together in Spanish while they each alternate beat boxing.

Funniest lines of the night:

This is legit
Shirley [on a news article about the protest]: This isn’t the school paper either; this is a real damn paper. There’s Marmaduke in there.

El loco
Troy [on Pierce]: That dude is crazy. He told me girls have two pee holes once.

What did you think? Was this a strong second episode and is it improving with age? I have found that I love this show, and once the SNL Weekend Update specials are over, it will be a perfect fit with 30 Rock. I want to know what your favorite lines were, so leave me your Two Cents in the comments!