Review Roundup for 3x20, Digital Estate Planning
Hello, Communies! I've got four of these to cobble together today, so let's skip the chit-chat and get down to it. This roundup covers those reviews that are exclusively about episode 3x20, Digital Estate Planning. Other reviews touching on this episode can be found in the roundup devoted to reviews covering all three episodes in one article.
- The Head Geek at Geek Furious gave the episode a 97 out of 100-his third highest rating of the season, after "Remedial Chaos Theory" (98) and "Pillows and Blankets" (97.4443). He called it "Creatively epic. Hysterical at times. And with the perfect amount of heart. An episode I will happily watch several hundred more times before I die (unless I die today)." In his list of favorite moments, he calls Annie and Shirley's misadventures at the blacksmith's shop "one of the funniest moments of the season." I agree! Funniest murder-arson scene I've seen all year.
- Bill Wyman of Slate thinks he missed many of the allusions, but nevertheless he thought it "a mind-blowing concoction, so dense with plot twists, fast dialog, background jokes in the game landscape, and teeming metaphors that it makes your head hurt." He also makes the case that the episode illustrated pair of Jean-Luc Godard's observations about film (and by extension TV and arguably even video games): "cinema is truth" and "all you need for a movie is a girl and a gun."
- Matt Landesman of The Faster Times thought it was a good idea to "break up the tension in the main ongoing story" by starting the Night of Three Communitys with a light story with "relatively little plot." He didn't think the "amusing" animation style served the narrative as well as the stop-motion animation did in "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas," and while he thought the concept was "great … and one [he's] glad they tackled," he doesn't feel that there was much to the episode beyond the concept. And he said "Giancarlo Esposito stole every scene he was in."
- Leigh Raines of TV Fanatic liked seeing the video game versions of the study group, and enjoyed seeing how each member reacted to the video game world. She's one of the few reviewers to acknowledge, even by implication, that there was anyway odd or unseemly in laughing at watching Annie and Shirley murder two people and burn down their house. But she missed the Dean. She gave it 4½ stars out of 5.
- Britt Hayes of ScreenCrush considered the episode "a work of art." She liked the various gags about video games and how they're played, but what she really like was that they went beyond that: "It’s not just about using the aesthetic as a gimmick or a theme - it’s about the way we use different mediums to tell stories." She makes an interesting observation about nostalgia that can't really be summarized, so you'll have to read it for yourself.
- Luke Gelineau of TV Equals is someone who counts both video games and Breaking Bad among his favorite things, so he thought the episode seemed like it had been made just for him. He though Esposito was great, but that the game-related aspects were even better. "This is where the episode really shined. Everything here was pitch perfect." He also thought the episode was very funny, leaving him "laughing from beginning to end," which he had found not to be the case with many of Community's other high-concept episodes.
- Brian Collins of Badass Digest says the weirdest thing about "Digital Estate Planning" isn't that most of it is set inside an SNES-era video game-"This is Community, after all, and such a peculiarity is almost to be expected at this point"-but that it aired last night instead of last week. He argues, and it's a really good point, that it would have made a lot more sense and played better if it had set before the the group resolved to rescue the Dean and depose Chang. He admits that he probably wouldn't have been bothered by this if he'd thought the episode was funnier, but he thinks "in terms of laugh out loud moments this might be the season's low point." He also had a problem with the gameplay; he thought that it would have raised the stakes if characters were out of the game completely once they died. And he didn't like the tag, which he says "doesn't even make sense in the context of the storyline because it takes place on Greendale, where they are no longer welcome." Another good point!
- Matt Dougherty of The Filtered Lens also was not a fan, calling it one of the few "experimental episodes" to not work. He thought the episode "worked to give closure on Pierce’s father, but other than that it was a pretty weak entry in this otherwise great season." He was bored by the style of the video game. "I feel like they could have included so many more video game cliches or had far more outrageous animations." He awarded the episode a numeric rating of 6 out of 10.
- Robert Canning of IGN TV, on the other hand, found the episode "delightful if imperfect." He thought the look and feel of the game was the episode's greatest strength, and he particularly enjoyed the early parts of the episode, where the characters were getting used to the gameplay and making there initial explorations of the world. But he thought the in-game adventure flagged a bit once Abed left the group, and that the episode was further hurt by a weak real-world story. He ended up given the episode a rating of 8 out of 10, which according to sign's metric means it was "great."
- Jennifer Marie of A Still and Quiet Conscience devotes much of her review to Pierce and Britta. She points out two "fundamental" moments for Pierce: when he sticks up for Britta, despite the two of them having having had a particularly close relationship; and when the group rallies around Pierce to help him win his inheritance, which she contrasts with the time they played D&D (and, I might add, the season 2 paintball game). With regard to Britta, she points to the way she comforts Pierce after he tries to suffocate himself as demonstrating that "when it comes to genuine emotions, Britta is the heart of the group and knows and relates to people better than she gives herself credit for."
- Shannon of the Two Cents Corp. loved the episode. "Was it gimmicky and nerdy? Sure, but I don’t even care because, frankly, this show can do no wrong for me."
Don't forget to check out the three other review roundups, and thanks for reading!