Community - "Intro to Felt Surrogacy" - Review

Community has had a rough time this season. Whether it was due to the vagaries that all shows suffer as they get older or the loss of creative talent, many episodes have failed to stick the landing. However, there have been episodes that, though not the best efforts the series has done, showed a way forward. On a conceptual and emotional level they didn’t feel forced. The first of these was in “Cooperative Escapism in Familial Relations” where Jeff met his father and it featured some nice, well-earned emotional moments. The most recent episode “Herstory of Dance” was another episode that though it had problems in the way this whole fourth season had problems didn’t feel like it was going through motions and like the show still had some tricks up its sleeve (I was pleasantly surprised by Abed's story with the girl who's equally obsessed with television tropes, and the Jeff-Britta conflict paid off well).

The third season had some bigger problems than many of us were willing to admit at the time, but I was willing to forgive it because it was still reaching the dizzying heights of “Remedial Chaos Theory”. The fourth season hasn’t yet reached those creative highs once again. “Intro to Felt Surrogacy” doesn’t achieve such heights but it comes within spitting distance. Of course, I can’t quite put my finger on what makes it land just shy of genius, but it doesn’t completely nail what it’s trying to do. But it’s a cool conceptual episode that the show mostly goes broke for like it did in older season rather than half-assing it like it has recently, and it chooses not to lean on campus hijinks but on the crazy concept (the characters as puppets!). In turn, it plays off the absurdity of the concept including a few musical numbers and also finds a way to pull off some solid character moments that the show just hasn’t been successful at recently. 

The series is also funnier during this half-hour than it has been in just about in any other episode, which helps a ton. It’s not all up to snuff with what we’ve come to anticipate from this series but much of this works far better than you’d expect and rises above its gimmickeness. 

Grade: A-

What did everyone else think?