Quick Thoughts: COMMUNITY, "Competitive Ecology"

After this week's Community, I inched closer to giving up on this show altogether because it did not have many redeemable qualities even if there were a few chuckles sprinkled throughout the entire thing.

It was only a matter of time until Community did a film noir/detective episode, but I was super pissed that they wasted it on Chang. I've never hid my disdain for the character, so the fact that "Competitive Ecology" started on him was the first sign of trouble, and it just snowballed into a massive pile of crap from that point forward. Nothing he said or did was funny in the slightest, and adding Dean Pelton to the mix pushed me over the edge. Such an utter waste of time.

The whole terrarium plot had potential, but haven't we seen this episode before? How many times do we need to see the study group pick each other apart under the guise of "friendship" and show what horrible people they truly are? I would've been OK with this kind of episode if there was a shred of character development, but by the end they were back to being the same self-centered group of assholes.

Now, I don't want to be all negative. "Competitive Geology" had some good moments, but only a few of them actually involved the main characters. Professor Kane stole the show with his bit about Legos and breaking it down for Magnitude, and I'm finally starting to see his worth. I even liked the fact that they used Todd and the security guard as the audience stand-in as they had to sit back and endure the craziness of the main characters; I just wish I could quit like the latter did. The ranking debacle was hard to sit through, but I did appreciate the bit of meta-commentary about how fans view the study group, but any goodwill was smothered by their toxicity. Finally, the biggest laugh of the night was the end tag about Britta seeing nothing but penises in everyone's psych evaluations, but the fact that it wasn't even a part of the episode was not a good sign.

These kind of episodes that highlight the fact that I would not want to spend anytime with any of these people bring the show down in my opinion. I'm all for damaged protagonists who cannot get out of their own ways, but I also have to like them and right now I really don't (except for maybe Troy, Abed, and Annie). Will I come back next week? Probably, but I don't know how many chance I have to give.