Community – Recap & Review – Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples

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Community
Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples

Original Air Date: Oct 21, 2010

Meg – Sr. Reviewer
meg@thetwocentscorp.com

In tonight’s installment of “Community”, Shirley’s attempts to make religion “cool” end up with Abed gettin’ his Jesus on! Oh yes, in full wig-wearing, chest-baring style, everyone’s favorite meta-geek channels God (or Charlie Kaufman) to film the story of Jesus. And himself. With God as the camera and Jesus as the film. Or the audience as Jesus and God as the camera. Or, well… it’s a little confusing.

Read on for the full recap and review – and don’t forget to share your own thoughts on the episode!

Our study gang is still sitting through Anthropology with John Oliver. Oliver has finally abandoned the pretense of teaching and is pretty much just screening youtube clips (I was a little disappointed to discover that searches for “car crash camel-toe” came up empty. How dare you entrap me, Dan Harmon! I expect follow-through!).

Always eager to bring light to the heathen masses, Shirley asks for them to search for youtube videos with God. Considering the result is something along the lines of “autotune god fart,” I don’t think that’s quite what she was aiming for… As everyone cracks up, Shirley quietly awaits The Rapture.

In the B story, Pierce has two revelations. First it occurs to Pierce that he is a wrinkly, aged old man. Secondly, he realizes that wrinkly, aged old men who fake dementia and play on people’s discomfort with aging can get away with anything! Pierce joins up with a gaggle of geezers and starts acting out—drinking out of paper bags and sneaking into secret poker dens disguised as bingo nights. Annie asks Jeff to talk to him, since Jeff is “the dad” of the group. Wow, I’m glad they dispensed with the love story angle, otherwise this scene would be so wrong.

Shirley asks Abed to help her church make a video to “bring Jesus to youtube.” He speed-reads the New Testament and decides to make a “Jesus movie for the post-post-modern world.” Suck it, Mel Gibson. He goes a little buckwild, dresses up like an estranged cousin of Fabio, and starts yammering on about how making the movie is the movie and blah blah meta-fishcakes. Seriously, show, we get it – you can be meta. Move on, already!

Clearly the campus disagrees with me as everyone and their grandma goes nuts about the awesomeness o’ Abed.

After Abed quotes scripture, we have (drumroll…) my favorite exchange of the night:
Shirley: Did you just scripture me, muslim?
Annie: You know Jesus was Jewish.
Shirley: Are you ever going to let that go?

Shirley tries her darndest to either make her own film (sticking Troy in a bathrobe and having him rap about “beat-itudes” while Britta “dances”) or shut down Abed’s production. Abed is having his own doubts, having watched his movie and realizing that it, well, sucks. In a Gethsemane-esque moment, he prays for God to destroy his film. Eavesdropping, Shirley is heartened and bashes the film set to smithereens with a baseball bat. Even though everyone shuns Shirley the next day for destroying the project, Abed is thrilled. To thank her, he completed the Troy-as-Jesus rap video (lyrics include: In heaven, dogs love cats. Cats love mice!). Abed and Shirley hold hands (not in that way) and smile.

As you can probably tell, I wasn’t nuts about this episode. It definitely had some fun lines and moments, but it felt like it was trying so hard to Make a Point or to pull off something brilliant. I prefer the show when it gets back to its roots and tells funny stories with good characters. I want to know what you think. Am I being too hard on the show? Did you dig the episode? Leave some comments and let me know your two cents!