“Advanced Criminal Law” originally aired on NBC Thursday night, October 15, 2009
Jeff Winger is a lawyer. It is his defining character trait, and the yardstick by which he measures his own success and worth as a person. The entire reason he’s at Greendale in the first place is to retain that status and restore himself to his former glory, all while doing the least amount of work humanly possible. And what’s so great about this character choice is exactly how little interest Jeff has in practicing law for its own sake. He wants to spin his bullshit and impress people, and law just happens to be the perfect profession for him to indulge those desires. Lawyer-as-amoral-con-man might be a bit of a tried-and-true archetype, but rarely has it been so clearly in service of one man’s ego. Joel McHale’s performance infuses the character with a depth of insecurity and self-doubt that makes his veneer as flimsy as it can be — he operates more as a magician than as any kind of legal counsel, always weaving some shiny deception to distract from the absurdity of the conclusion he is leading you towards.
In “Advanced Criminal Law” Jeff gets his first chance to act out the ace attorney side of his personality since arriving at Greendale, and the plot unfortunately has to fabricate some narrative contrivance to get us there1. As a result, this is the first episode of Community as a whole that doesn’t quite work for me. Every season of the show has at least a couple of those, as is common with network sitcoms that run in the neighborhood of 25-episode-long seasons. And yet i can’t quite come right out and call it “skippable”, as it actually establishes several important characters and story points that the show would return to and continue exploring throughout its run. Unless i’m mistaken, it’s the first appearance of Leonard (Richard Erdman), Greendale’s nigh-immortal octogenarian, getting busted for going commando in the pool. It also features the unveiling of the Luis Guzman2 statue, an unceremonious planting that would pay off in grandiose fashion with the appearance of Mr. Guzman himself in season three’s “Documentary Filmmaking Redux”. Even the seemingly throwaway nature of Pierce’s “Taking air-conditioning repair” lyric turns out to bode ill for the characters well into the show’s future.
But by far the most significant long-term development that occurs within the episode is the introduction of our very first proper Troy and Abed storyline. Mixing and matching its character combinations was a hallmark of the show from the start, and the two of them had already proven themselves as a superlative comedic duo in short bursts, with their crack timing and expertly-precise delivery. Still, considering how much their intensely silly-yet-heartwarming friendship threatened to take over the show at times, it’s strange to think it took this long to pair them up. It’s also weird that the story itself feels so tossed-off and undercooked for the most part (Troy introduces Abed to the concept of lying-as-humor, Abed takes it way too far as he tends to do3, the two grow closer as a result), but it at least stands out from many of their other interactions by giving both of them an arc that results in a character change. Abed is the character most resistant to change, so stories involving him tend to be more about the other characters experiencing some kind of growth in response to his stubbornly bizarre behavior. In this one, the change works both ways — Troy learns to be more careful and considerate about the way he approaches his friendships, and Abed learns he doesn’t have to try so hard to ingratiate himself to those around him. Slap-slap4.
Jockeying for B-plot/C-plot position is Annie and Pierce’s “Greendale fight song” story. Aside from Jeff, Annie is probably the character whose dynamic with Pierce is the most unique and complicated — she is, after all, his favorite5. In spite of his erratic, sometimes hostile actions and outright delusional worldview, they sense a certain kinship in each other that has parallels with that of him and Jeff. Sure, he lashes out at her the same way he would with any other character, but there is a measure of genuine affection between them that Pierce never really experiences with the rest of the study group. Rather than simply playing off a mutual animosity, or a generational divide, their conflicts are driven by a strange mixture of generosity, warmth, resentment, and pity6. You get the sense that if every member of the study group was as kind, forgiving, or empathetic as Annie, maybe Pierce wouldn’t always clash would the others quite so much.
But then again, maybe Pierce just gonna Pierce, as even when he tries to do a nice favor for her by offering to write the school song, it still results in him aggressively playing her out of the room. When he finally resorts to unknowingly plagiarizing the melody from a Bruce Hornsby song, it’s a resolution without a conclusion — sort of the inverse of the Troy-Abed plot here. Aside from knowing not to rely on Pierce for anything going forward, Annie’s no better off than she was when the episode started. Meanwhile, Pierce gets to go on believing he’s a genius, having rebuilt the confidence he lost during his bout with writer’s block. The show wouldn’t normally leave its characters this static after devoting so much screentime to their story, which contributes further to this episode feeling distinctly like a show still working out its bugs and figuring out how to make the best use of its greatest strengths.
But the main factor contributing to this feeling for me is probably the legal proceedings of Britta’s trial. The whole “cheating scandal” setup of the plot all feels little perfunctory to me, as there’s never any real threat that everyone will flunk or that Britta will get expelled. Perhaps it’s just too early in the series to raise the stakes this high7. Or maybe it just doesn’t fully exploit the potential of its premise. Overall, the function of the plot doesn’t serve the characters so much as it fleshes out the world of the show, and creates opportunities for its supporting players to define themselves more independently. Which is fine, but it would’ve been nice for it to do both.
While this may not be a great episode for any individual character in particular, this episode does succeed in creating new narrative possibilities through its exploration of Greendale Community College as a setting. You might say that Greendale itself is a main character. This is where it becomes clear that Greendale is not merely a school — it is also an idea, a state of mind, or perhaps even a mood. Not coincidentally, this is also the first episode where Dean “Craig” Pelton (Jim Rash) plays a major role, and if there was ever a headmaster whose personality directly shaped the culture of their school, it’s the Dean. It has always been a fascinating experience to track the evolution of both the school and the well-meaning but hapless man who runs it, as both grow more and more ludicrous seemingly in concert with each other. This episode marks his first Tobias Fünke-esque Freudian slip, barely even hinting at his…. well, whatever his thing is, I get the feeling that we still only ever see the tip of its iceberg. But what really makes the Dean such an endearing and hilarious presence is that he is a character defined by want. Whether he craves power, respect, a reputation for having the most tolerant and inclusive school on the planet, or even the company of Jeff Winger himself, the Dean’s continual failure to achieve any semblance of these things and the astronomical distance by which he falls short are an evergreen source of delight. In these discussions, we’ve talked about characters embodying the spirit of the school — perhaps the Dean hasn’t come up in them because he simply IS the school. Undeterred, they bumble blithely ahead toward whatever avenue to basic dignity still remains open, in the face of nothing less than total, decisive defeat. There would be a tragic quality to it if it weren’t so divinely absurd.
Other than that, the trial plays out like a run-up to the Winger speech that spells these themes out in black and white, never really justifying its cartoonish visual gag of a courtroom by the pool or drawing any new insights from the ongoing Jeff-and-Britta will they/yeah, they probably will. i guess it’s nice that he finally admits he does actually value her friendship, on top of wanting to have sex with her, but it all feels a little incremental and slight. Mostly the episode seems to exist to visually connect Jeff’s quasi-glamorous lawyering past to the bargain basement college student present he finds himself in, and reconciling these two realities will become the primary mission of the show. I like a lot of things that get set up here and enjoy most of the jokes, but it never quite congeals into that special Community broth that I’ve grown so fond of. Episodes like this one present us with a show that is obviously capable of great episodes, but little indication of just HOW great those episodes will be.
NOTES AND QUOTES:
Since i was pretty harsh on the Troy-Abed plotline, i will say that the comedic high point comes when Abed does his flying leap over the park bench and runs away. Danny Pudi didn’t get very many chances to show off his athleticism and dancing skills, and it’s always nice when he does
Falling somewhere between D and Z-plot territory is the little mini-conflict between Chang and Duncan, which mostly seems to exist simply to bounce a couple of extra characters off each other and see how it goes. They’re both great performers, and if this was a show focused more on the faculty than on students, they might be able to work wonders, but ultimately they may be too similar to each other to really amount to much
ABED: M*A*S*H
DUNCAN: Fawlty Towers. Game over, have a nice day
STARBURNS: My name’s Alex, dude
CHANG: Well maybe you should spend five hours carving THAT in your face