Season Finale: Community-"A Few Paintballs More"

This would have posted last night, except Blogger didn't want to cooperate (which means this was typed in Word and some formatting is messed up, Sorry!). Now, my thoughts on last night's season finale of Community are after the jump.

I’m going to begin by addressing that the episode’s strongest aspect was not the action movie homage. This is what Modern Warfare was when it aired and this is what this episode tried to do. I’m not sure if it did the homage as well as Modern Warfare did, but that would be Herculean if it did that. However, when I’m not comparing it to Modern Warfare, it’s actually a very good Star Wars homage. We had City College hire storm troopers to destroy the school and Dean Spreck playing the role of Darth Vader. We also had Abed doing his Abed-meta-thing as he pretended to be Hans Solo. It was a fun homage, but that’s really all I have to say about the homage specifically. Star Wars wasn’t the only action movie referenced but it was the most prevalent and the only one that I (with my knowledge of pop culture) got.

With Modern Warfare, the action movie homage was what worked best for me, but this time around, it was all of the little character moments (especially with the supporting cast) that worked best for me. We got probably the best “Pop-Pop” of the series from Magnitude. That moment with Troy screaming “Pop WHAT?!” was hysterical. We got many awesome moments with Leonard as well, including all of the Denny’s product placement and his “death”. We got another set of Starburns jokes as well that were very funny. And that poor Dean, how many paintballs have to be shot at him? It was funny, but it did seem to go a little too far at times.

This episode also had a lot of very strong material for the main cast as well. I guess I should finally mention the Annie and Abed kiss. I don’t know if this will spawn a relationship or if this was a part of the elaborate Star Wars parody, but I do have to say that the shots paint raining down on them while they were kissing were masterful. I hope that this doesn’t start another round of shipping for another set of characters, but it was a very cool in-the-moment thing. Troy’s reactions tonight were brilliant as well. Donald Glover played being shot very well and his reaction to the paint falling from the sky was masterful and hysterical. I also loved Jeff, in another Community-meta moment, having the role of leader “forced upon him”. That speech he gave in the classroom was very funny.

In last week’s review, I questioned whether Pierce could be redeemed for everything this season, and I think this episode found a way to do that. It didn’t redeem him as a person but it found a way to redeem his role on the show. It didn’t say that Pierce is a completely changed person and that everyone would be friends again. Instead, we get a really well done moment where Pierce chooses to be the one to walk away from the study group. They didn’t have to think about whether he could be redeemed, he just walked away. That was a very well performed speech by Chevy Chase. I don’t know what role Pierce will play next year, Chevy Chase isn’t going anywhere. I hope that they’ll find something interesting for him to do.

Some other thoughts:

•          That was another damn fine opening credits sequence. Loved the way it fit into the episode.
•           Busy Phillips and Dan Byrd are in the background of the episode, continuing the love that Cougar Town and Community have been sharing over the course of the season.
•          Although the-everyone-coming-together moment may have been very predictable, it still had the uplifting affect it went for.
•          In the tag, we get to meet the person who has to clean up Greendale over the summer. Very funny moment.

That’s a wrap on this season of Community. I haven’t seen a network comedy that has tried so many risks, and reaped the benefits so well. It wasn’t always perfect, but the ups were so good that they made up for the disappointing downs. I’m glad that we’re getting another season of this show and we’ll get to spend more time with the Greendale gang.

What did everyone else think?