re: Community

Troy hasn't been a jock since episode 4 or 5. They jettisoned that part of his character awfully fast, to take advantage of Daniel Glover's nerdiness. And Britta's development has been great -- from a strong lead "heroine" counterpoint to Jeff, she's become a person who is pretty much always stridently wrong. You Britta'd that review.

But I thought the best moment of the episode was Britta and Troy at the fountain. It wasn't forced, it was funny, and it was rooted in the characters. They also didn't oversell at. Even the callback worked.

"Britta introduced a new rule: no rules."
"Cool. we'll talk about it." (Which is to say, there's not a chance in hell Abed is going to go along with no rules).

I think my major problem is that Abed has always been an extremely astute observer of the human condition. He's an outsider, but he's like a separate species who studies us. His pop culture references were always a way to create rules which he needs to function, as the world does not obey these rules which are far more logical. Here, Abed retreats to his "happy place", but his happy place was never BAD TV. He wants a world in which characters can make witty repartee like on Cougar Town, laced with pop culture references, but he doesn't want the traditional three-camera sitcom (though I did like how he went further into the wormhole and went to a Muppet Babies cartoon). The new writers don't quite get Abed right. And if you get Abed wrong, the show is wrong. He's the lynchpin they all rely on (or Troy -- the Darkest Timeline is when Troy gets the pizza and leaves the group).