The Hunger Games Take Greendale: Community's History 101 Recap

Has everybody got their pumpkins picked out? Becuase after all--it's October 19, and that means it's almost Halloween week! Sooner or later, All Saint's Day month will be over and the lights in the library will stop flickering. If any of that made sense to you, it's because you're here for Community, which finally returned to television tonight after a long absence. Abed will be glad to know that Cougar Town has made it through its ratings struggles at ABC to land a spot on TBS's schedule, and has actually been airing for a month or so prior to Community even being allowed to return. But without Dan Harmon, and with longtime staff writer Megan Ganz leaving soon, will Greendale ever be the same? The road to #SixSeasonsAndAMovie begins, or begins to fall apart...now.

The show acknowledges those challenges immediately; Troy and Abed enter the study room to a laugh track and the show plunges almost immediately into Just Shoot Me-style sitcom tropes that viewers of a show like Community would probably be glad to never see again. It's a clever way of dealing with the post-Harmon era head-on, but it's hard not to notice Scrubs, which has executive producer Neil Goldman in common with Community,  already did the same joke. It's forgivable, though; in Scrubs, it was the premise of an episode; here, it's simply part of the story. That's Abed's "happy place," where he goes in his mind during therapy sessions with Britta, one of which we see at the tail end of the cold open. It's also forgivable because Fred Willard is brought in to play Chevy Chase's character, Pierce Hawthorne, in the show in Abed's head. If NBC and Sony can wrangle a season five, this is a casting choice I fully endorse (Chase exited the show during production, but reportedly is in all of the episodes but one). That Abed is in therapy doesn't stop them from going meta almost immediately: "Are you ready for our last, first day of school?" She asks, and we're back in the sitcom for a very special opening credits. We're back out again soon, though, as the group (including Chevy as Pierce) has a big group hug in the hallway, where Britta proposes a class on the history of ice cream to the group and Annie announces that she's decided to embrace "senioritis." In a discussion about Troy and Abed's first-day-of-school tradition of making a wish at the fountain. When Troy reminds Abed that this will be their last first day of school together, Abed gets frantic and goes to his happy place, but the viewer stays with the rest of the group, who are realizing (due to a mob outside the classroom) that the History of Ice Cream class is overbooked and it's now first come, first-served, "just like real ice cream."

Jeff has arrived early, though, and is camped out holding seats for the group, having read a "Crisis Alert" about it on Garrett's Twitter feed. Annie is impressed by the way Jeff has grown, giving them their shipper moment, followed immediately by Jeff calling Britta out as she has one with Troy.  All the effort is for nothing, though, as Dean Pelton shows up and summons all of the prospective students to the cafeteria, where he's set up 35 tests of strengths and agility--"The Hunger Deans"--and students have to compete for the spots. Jeff, as it turns out, needs the credit more than he wants it; he's taken extra classes during the summer and now is one history credit short of graduation; this bombshell creates discontent in the group, who feel left out of his decision to do so. "I want us to take the class together," he tells them. "I just want it to be the last class we take together." When the rest of the group elects to go elsewhere, Abed decides to stay back and watch Jeff. When Jeff decides that he's going to win seven events, taking home enough wins to get the whole study group enrolled in the class, Abed's TV show kicks on again, as he pictures similar events unfolding, but in the study room and with the dean telling them that they all have to repeat the last three years due to lost student records. Abed decides, with a smile, that he's going to stay at Greendale forever. The first event is a rope climb, which Jeff wins by punching out Leonard and stealing Annie Kim's (remember her from the Model UN episode?) glasses. As their senior prank, Annie and Shirley head to the Dean's office where, after discussing some prank options, they decide to fill his car with popcorn. Jeff runs by to show them the second ball he's won, telling them he's a "new Jeff." In the quad, Troy and Britta are holding hands and holding a jar of pennies for the fountain. When a disagreement over the rules of fountain wishes gets physical, the pale, rail-thin girl manages to overpower the former star quarterback...but it's okay, he likes it. At the Dean's car, Annie begins to have a crisis, contemplating her own bleak prospects for the future and her mortality after realizing that Jeff is leaving the group early and she's not happy with her current career path. They've wrapped the Dean's seats and other parts of his car in foil and are using that to pop the popcorn.

Back in the cafeteria, Jeff quickly earns his third and fourth balls, much to Abed's distress. Pierce is still trying to figure out a joke that can be made about Jeff's ball-chasing. The Dean enters the center of the room, flanked by his two man-unicorns, and tells the students that the next competition will be a tango contest, for which he'll be the judge. Seeing her opportunity, Annie Kim asks Jeff to dance with her, but he elects to dance with Dean Pelton instead. "The fountain works!" Pelton gasps. In the world in Abed's head, Annie arrives with a safe, shaped like the red rubber balls that Jeff has been collecting as "impossible to counterfeit" class registration macguffins. Inside the safe, she says, is the backup copy of their missing student records and everyone's ticket out of Greendale. Back in the real world, Jeff accuses Dean Pelton of overbooking the class and removing others from the course catalog to prevent him from graduating. Pelton admits it, but awards Winger the victory ball anyway. When Jeff brings it back to Pierce, Abed is still in his happy place. There, he's trying to keep Annie from opening the safe, and is counseled by Britta to go to his happy place. The TV show within Abed's TV show is a bizarre, Greendale-themed take on the Muppet Babies--an animated series in which the study group are all infants "forever." He goes "all the way out," straight from the Greendale Babies to the real world, where the rest of the study group finally arrives to see that Abed is near catatonic next to the distracted Pierce.  They excuse Jeff to go win the last ball, while the rest of the group joins hands and Troy attempts to join Abed in his fantasy world but it doesn't work. When Jeff sees that it isn't working, he abandons his quest for the final ball in order to go help Abed, delivering a Winger Speech that begins in Greendale Babies and works its way out, making a stop at the sitcom world along the way. When the speech finishes there, it cuts to the real world, where Jeff hasn't yet made his Winger speech, but Abed, having done it mentally, takes away the lesson anyway and shares it with the group. That night, having gone home after school, Jeff is met in the hallway outside of his condo by Dean Pelton, who apologizes for his underhandedness and assures Jeff they'll be adding a second history class this semester so that Jeff can still graduate early (and because if they don't have a real history class, they'll lose a massive amount of grant money). When Jeff tells him that he didn't need to come all the way there just to tell him that, Dean Pelton tells him that it's alright--it's on his way home--and opens up the door to the condo next to Jeff's. Outside, a postman is emptying a corner mailbox when Chang, wet and naked, approaches him with a piece of Greendale stationery that says, "Hello. My name is Kevin. I have Changnesia."