Quick Take: Community, “Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps”
“Devil here! Just popping by with a little damnation-orientation.” – Devil-Dean Pelton
Review: Community, “Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps”
(S0305) If you’ve been put off by the first few episodes of Community this season, then fear not! Halloween is upon us, and Greendale is ready and more than able to defend its reputation with another amazing concept episode. “But Mark,” I hear you ask, “How can they possibly top Pierce’s drug-induced mortality crisis and an infectious zombie outbreak?” How about an old trope with a few twists?
Taking her recent declaration of her psychology major in earnest, Britta has taken it upon herself to use her Halloween pre-party to discretely expose the one study-mate whose anonymous profile test has revealed them to have homicidal tendencies. Using the spirit of the occasion, she gets the rest of the study-group to tell their own scary stories, a plan which ultimately backfires when it turns into a cathartic competition to try and one-up each other.
The stories themselves are nothing new: escaped serial killers, vampires and werewolves, mad scientists, preachy moral tales about good versus evil, Chang... all verifiably scary elements. Britta’s attempted investigation gets her nowhere, though it finally gives the writers a chance to try their hand at the cliché sitcom joke where one of the characters’ names is used as a verb. Before everyone is given a chance to turn on each other with the nearest weapon at-hand, Jeff reveals that he answered his page at random, which prompts Annie to discover that Britta “Britta’d” the test results, and put them in the machine upside-down.
The fixed results are no-less worrisome for the study-group; the revised tests have revealed that only one person is actually sane, while everyone else displays their own flavour of psychopathic behaviour. Even though everyone decides to maintain anonymity and take comfort in the possibility that any one of them could be sane, we are granted the insight they forewent.
If it wasn’t already obvious from the way the stories were told, Abed is the decisive rock of mental stability within the group. He’s the only one with a rationally constructed horror story, complete with believable characters and motivations. I mean, sort of. Community opts for a style of storytelling that, while displaying a dynamic of themes and techniques, remains fairly consistent in its character development and interaction. While everyone else’s stories reveal what they each think of each other – and themselves – through the characters they’re represented as, Abed simply – and literally – edits and improves Britta’s story to best suit his idea of what is realistic.
Even though Shirley doesn’t get to make everyone uncomfortable with another racially-ambiguous costume – she has to settle with one appearance in an angel costume – there is still a wide range of wardrobe changes for everyone to keep us amused. Jeff’s lack of effort and/or interest in dressing up pervades most of the stories he’s in, though he gets to show off his version of a “sexy Dracula” in the same story where Annie garbs herself with a generously-cut dress. Troy and Abed are both equipped as fighter pilots, and a couple of hood-rat gangsters, who cross paths with Doctor Piercenstein and Magnum P.I.erce respectively. And Britta gets to be a blood-covered weed junkie, Jeff’s fang-ridden, almost-corpse-bride, and the pillow-case-masked killer in some of the stories she appears in.
The recent "six different timelines" episode was one of my all-time faves and dramatically altered my view that Community has been falling off for a little while now. Look forward to catching up on this one !