Community is going away for awhile and is taking shots at its favorite target on the way out the door. Glee has long been hated by the characters in Community especially by Jeff. There have been little potshots taken here and there but "Regional Holiday Music" was a full-out frontal assault.
When Jeff destroys Greendale's glee club by placing an annymous tip to ASCAP and they receive a cease and desist letter, Mr. Rad (Saturday NIght Live's Taran Killam) comes to our study group to fill in again (briefly mentioned in the clip show episode, "Paradigms of Human Memory") so the club can make it to the mysterious goal of regionals. They refuse but one by one, starting with Abed, they gets recruited into joining the cause.
While I loved the concept of the episode, the execution left much to be desired. I appreciated that the songs that pulled each member into the glee cult appealed to their personalities but the quality of the songs varied from okay to bad. The standouts were "Teach Me How To Understand Christmas" by Annie (because of Allison Brie's funny baby doll voice and my personal weakness for Brie) and "Happy Birthday Jesus" by the choir and Shirley (because it was a perfect way to weaken Shirley and Yvette Nicole Brown has an amazing voice). On the other side of the coin, Chevy Chase should never ever sing again and "Jahovah's Secret Witness" didn't do Childish Gambino's record sales any favors.
My favorite part was Abed thwarting Mr. Rad's plan to trap the group in glee club forever by tapping into Britta's supernatural power to ruin everything (Dean Pelton's reaction to Britta's appearance said it all: "Oh, Britta's in this?"). In the end, the group joins Abed in watching the Inspector Spacetime Holiday Special and end the dark winter semester in a loving note. Who knows when the spring semester will begin?
Crib Sheet:
- I want to see the Inspector Spacetime Holiday Special. it
- "I'll be at the movies with my Bubbie.""You're not taking both of them?" "Well...one's dead." "WHAT?!" - Annie and Troy
- "What the hell are regionals?" - Pierce
- "It was almost like being on ecstasy only instead of having pointless conversations and dancing like idiots...wait, it was EXACTLY like being on ecstasy." - Britta
- "Who hates glee? Listen to how that sounds. "Glee" literally means glee." - A brainwashed Troy
- So now what? Community is on hiatus until something on NBC gets cancelled (Please let it be Whitney). I'll leave you with the cast's appearance on this week's episode of The Soup