Community, "Competitive Ecology": odd Todd out

Quick Take: Community, “Competitive Ecology”
“The way she left, I could tell that somebody – or something – had really put the scare on her. But what? Why? Stapler? Was I crazy, or were they somehow connected?” – Chang’s inner monologue

Review: Community, “Competitive Ecology”
(S0303) Now that they’re halfway through their respective degrees, you’d think that the students at Greendale would start taking on class projects other than dioramas, maybe meet some new people, and confront new challenges. Well, they’re getting there. They’ve moved up to terrariums and one of them needs to pair off with a guy named Todd. I’m halfway convinced that Abed chose to live with Troy precisely because he knew it would introduce a new set of obstacles for them to overcome (he avoided living with Troy at the end of season one because he didn’t want to ruin their status quo). Now that they’re lab partners – on top of already being study group partners and roommates – it’s starting to set in that they might spend too much time with each other. So they, along with everyone else in the group, opt to switch off their pairings.

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The study group – which only has seven people – has proven that they can overcome overwhelming odds and pull through as long as they’re together. Being forced into pairs, however, proves to be too much for them. Annie, Britta, Troy, and Abed all want to choose new partners, and they use Pierce’s exclusion from their original couplings as an excuse to re-pick. Unfortunately, there’s a “Todd problem” to solve, which will ultimately leave one member of the study group with the random misfortunate casualty of their scorn.

Taking everybody’s choice ranking of their fellow group members – and Todd – Abed sorts everyone by stage appeal, putting the most popular with the least. Understandably, no one except Pierce is excited to hear the results. Annie, who was everyone’s first pick because she’d do all the work, is paired with Shirley; Troy is matched with the cynical Britta, Abed with Pierce, and Jeff with Todd. Actually, Todd is technically matched with Jeff, who winds up fifth-most popular. Todd finally snaps and takes offense at all the snide and offhanded remarks made about him over the course of their all-night selection session, and marches off to his wife and child absolutely destroyed by the esteem-eliminating “mean clique.”

Todd isn’t the only one driven to the edge of his sanity, this episode. The unsuspecting head of security – whom I was just warming up to after his apt description of the arm on a security gate last week – realizes that Dean Pelton is just as terrible of a boss as Chang is a security guard. Determined to become a detective – a role entirely out of the question on a campus security team – Chang follows imaginary clues, literally stringing together his own elaborate delusion complete with a film-noire inspired inner monologue, eventually setting his storage closet bedroom on fire. Not wanting the police involved in his already cash-strapped situation, Dean Pelton allows Chang to believe that he’s involved in a dastardly conspiracy, prompting the head of security to quit, opening up the position for his equally incompetent counterpart.

If Professor Kane (guest star Michael K Williams) thought that he’s heard the most ludicrous of conversations that he doesn’t understand, he must not have come into contact with Chang. With his criminal past, and Chang’s delusions of real authority, they’re bound to cross paths more than once during Williams’ guest stint. I really enjoyed his heartfelt pondering over the state of Lego – it was probably the ironically serious music that they played in last season’s trampoline episode that made it, but I appreciated it nonetheless. They use this misleading musical cue again between Troy and Britta – maybe it’s foreshadowing something?  It’s never too farfetched to think you’re reading –or rather, watching – too deeply into Community.