photo: nbc
Mixology Certification
Original Air Date: Dec 2, 2010
Meg – Sr. Reviewer
meg@thetwocentscorp.com
It is a truth universally acknowledged that sometimes, growing up sucks. In a fun, bittersweet episode, Troy turns 21 and realizes some hard truths about life: Jeff and Britta aren’t as wise and all knowing as he thought (I could have told him that) and that alcohol is “like the Lifetime movies of beverages.”
Since Troy is a Jehovah’s Witness, instead of throwing a birthday party for him, the gang respectfully assembles to merely note a random numeric day that happens to coincide with his “expulsion from the uterus.” Awww, doesn’t that just give you the warm and fuzzies?
Troy is so touched that he starts to tear up, sniffling “you guys, I never cry, but…” and he’s right (except for all those times that he’s cried). When the gang realizes that Troy is turning 21 and not 20 (apparently Troy’s mother told him that “everyone is ten for two years”), they resolve to take him to a bar.
Jeff and Britta argue over the correct venue for the outing—Britta wants to go to some bar that’s so underground that hipsters haven’t even discovered it yet, while Jeff wants to go somewhere trendy and pretentious (shocker!). They settle on somewhere called Flanagan’s Hole, which, sounds slightly obscene, to tell the truth. The hole is closed (I feel dirty typing that), so they opt for the equally unsubtle “Ball Room” for their shindig.
Since Annie is too young to get into a bar, Britta procures a fake ID for her. As Annie sat in the back of the car quizzing herself on the details of her fake ID—Miss Caroline Decker from Corpus Christi—was anyone having any personal flashbacks? Annie gets really into her alternate identity, deciding that Caroline has “bad credit and unfinished mermaid tattoo.” She chats with the bartender about how she grew up on a trout farm, punched her probation officer in the face, and got “too busy living life to be learning five-dollar words.” She talks trash about her “friend Annie” who has every second of her life mapped out and isn’t any fun. Awww…
Shirley does not want to go to the bar. Of course we think it’s because she’s prim and judgy, but no—apparently she’s a regular! I love that! Shirley tells the bouncer to pretend he doesn’t know her and then spends the rest of the episode running around and pulling polaroids of her drunken self off the wall.
In possibly my favorite side-plot of the episode, Abed meets a fellow sci-fi fan and gets so adorably excited by the opportunity to talk about Farcsape and wormholes and John Crichton. The guy tries hard to parlay their sci-fi bonding into… another kind of bonding (“let’s use a wormhole to teleport this conversation to somewhere more private!”). Then we arrive at the exchange of the night:
Guy: Would you like to have gay sex with me?
Abed: No thank you.
Guy: How could you sit here and not pick up that I was hitting on you?
Abed: I actually did pick it up after a while, I just really like talking about Farcsape.
As midnight approaches, Troy goes to order himself his first legal drink. While he’s waiting, he looks around and sees all his friends, drunk or drinking, and completely miserable. Because he’s awesome, Troy ditches his first drink and leaves to help take his friends home.
When drunken Britta and Jeff realize the bars they are arguing over are actually the same place, Troy has a revelation: I spent 2 years thinking you knew more about life than me– I just found out you guys are just as dumb as I am.” To his credit, he takes it pretty well.
Troy walks Annie to her door (and misses the sight of Jeff and Britta making out in the car). Annie is still down on herself and tells Troy that they went to school together for four years, but he doesn’t really know her. In yet another aww moment (seriously, this episode had an “Aww!” factor of, like, eleventy billion), Troy tells her that he knows her now and talks about how great she is. On a lesser show, this would have turned into A Moment. I’m really glad they didn’t go there – I love these characters when they’re supporting each other as friends. Troy was such a champ this episode. This show is so good when it stops trying to be meta and self-referentially clever. What did you think? Leave some comments and let me know your two cents
TheTwoCents 
I really like when the show gets meta and self-referentially clever, but I feel like they have to earn those moments with episodes like this one – straight up good character interaction. The “aw” factor doesn’t hurt, either!
I loved Troy in this episode. He had his standard silly moments (“How many lies have I been living, mom?”), but he was also just so grown up and such a good friend.
I actually like your approach–it’s a sort of compromise. The meta moments need to be earned. I also think they need to be spaced out.
I agree that Troy was amazing this episode – he managed to have some important growth, but didn’t alter his the essentials of his character. He’s still lovable, adorable, silly Troy.
The 157-shirt end scene did redeem Troy’s former self.