Review Roundup: "Herstory of Dance," 4.08

[lapacifidora]

Hey everyone! It’s been a while, but I’m pinch-hitting for JHeaton this week. (Don’t worry: I remember how this goes. I don’t have Changnesia. At least, I don’t think I do.)

Anywho! Onto the review for 4.0X, “Herstory of Dance,” or as we were calling it over in Twitterville, #SophieBHawkinsDance. Feelings about the episode aside, you gotta love a play on words, right? Unless you have a name that invites plays on words, in which case you have my sympathy. But I digress: Let’s start at the top and continue in no particular order, shall we?

• Alan Sepinwall over at HitFix begins by mentioning that we’re now into the second half of the season (sniff), and summarizes his feelings about the episode thusly:
  [the episode] felt pretty typical of what the new creative team is trying to do with the show - and also of the ways in which they're struggling.
  In short, he was underwhelmed by both the A and B plots. (Insert ‘can you ever just be whelmed’ reference here.) He felt the majority of the laughs came from Annie’s choice for Abed’s blind date, Kat (Hereafter known as MPDG because I totally missed that she had a name and, truthfully, she was a stock Manic Pixie Dream Girl.), and was disappointed in the beats of the more emotional elements of the story. As always, he invites you to agree or disagree with him in the comments - an invitation many people appear to have taken, including one person who, rather amusingly, seems to have thought they were commenting on last night’s Parks & Rec episode instead.
• Pilot Veruet at A.V. Club spends the opening paragraph of the review talking about how this episode hasn’t had any stand-out episodes the way previous seasons have, but that this episode was a stand-out among a series of fairly forgettable plots. Pilot posits this because, in rewatching Seasons 1 through 3, Britta’s wild-card status among the study group was too good not to champion. Pilot also enjoyed an aspect of Abed’s B-plot that most other reviewers seemed to overlook, noting, “When they agree to go on a date Abed opts to try it out the normal way, free of any sitcom tropes. Personal growth! “ After all, Abed did say he wanted to try something new. (Note: Pilot is filling in this week for Todd VanDerWerff, who normally reviews the show for A.V. Club.)
• Alexis McLaren at TVOvermind raves about Dean Pelton’s costume last night, which segues into wonderment that there’s been no sort of Community/Drag Race mind meld. (Side note: This idea sent me on a quest to determine if LOGO, VH1 and NBC still share a single corporate parent. Not a wise use of my time.) And - that bit about the Dean’s costume is the most review-y bit of the review, so we’ll move on.
• Shannon at TheTwoCents was disappointed in both the absence of any stand-out punch lines or gags and in the lack of advancement in the Chang/Changnesia/Greendale arc. Shannon was also unsure about the apparent Last Redemption of Pierce aspect of the story. However, she did feel that the flow and tempo worked, which appears to be a rare opinion.
• Jes Taylor at Digibytes hated - HATED - the title. (Quick! Someone find me a gif of David Alan Grier and Damon Wayons doing their “hated it!” from In Living Color! Please? There’s cookies in it for you, maybe.) Jes also seemed to find the “find Abed a girl” storyline to be in opposition to what the writers were shooting for at the start of the season. Jes also articulated a point made in other reviews about the similarity between this and Season 1, saying:

…it’s very fascinating the way so much of this season’s story focuses have gone back to Season 1. This was another episode predominantly about some combination of Jeff, Pierce, and Britta with wacky Abed hijinks. Troy, Annie, and Shirley had so very little to do that it was embarrassing.

• Cory Barker at TV.com receives my personal award for the most articulate and well-rounded review this week, even though the episode failed to impress:

The good news is that now that the writing isn't as strong (and as much as I'd love to just ignore that fact, it's impossible to do so; the writing isn't as good without Harmon's last-minute, drunken re-writes), it's much easier to notice what the actors bring to their roles. While they can't always make up for staid writing (see: Alison Brie's strained showing in "Conventions of Space and Time"), every episode this season has had at least one very nice performance.

But in short, it was, as Cory puts it, “It was Community by-the-numbers, for beginners.” However, Danny Pudi’s performance as Abed, torn between a trope-tastic dating B-plot and a genuine emotional connection with Coat Check Girl Rachel, is singled out for elevating material that doesn’t quite stand up to seasons past. Like Jes Taylor (Uh, actually, exactly like Jes Taylor. Please tell me someone else notices the word choice here?) Cory noted that Abed’s story seemed a 180 from the first half of the season. However, Cory suggests that as painfully trite as this Abed plot might have been, it might be necessary to make Abed happier if the writers can’t grasp how to write the character with same complexity of “Virtual Systems Analysis.”

• Matthew Guerruckey at ScreenSpy starts with a bit about Roger Ebert’s death and segues into relief that, while the episode wasn’t perfect, it made him “smile more than any other this season, primarily because it reminded us that Abed is indeed human.”  Moreover, he felt Abed’s B-plot wasn’t plucked from thin air, but rather grew out of Abed’s previously established interest in acting-out tropes in real life, regardless of consequences. Similarly, he notes that the “Find Abed a girl” competition for Annie and Shirley wasn’t out of left-field, given that they’ve both demonstrated competitive tendencies before, both with each other and independently. (The Adventures of Psycho and Christian Housewife, anyone?) He was also pleased that Abed was able to grasp Coat Check Rachel’s value without her having to remove her glasses.

Matthew wasn’t as sold on the Britta-Pierce-Jeff story, as he didn’t find her initial mix-up of Sophie B. Hawkins and Susan B. Anthony altogether funny.He also liked Troy’s attempts to find hijinks, though not perhaps for the reasons other reviewers hated it, and he sounds as though he were genuinely impressed with Pierce’s story in this episode. (Side note: Matthew’s review receives my personal award for second best review this week. It’s as well-written and thoughtful as the one at TV.com.)

• Brian Collins at BadassDigest seems intrigued by the fact that none of the regular Greendale students attended either the Sadie Hawkins or Sophie B. Hawkins dances. Brian also pays attention to Pierce’s story, and more importantly, how much more this episode actually chose to use Pierce in either the A- or B-plots. He also makes an interesting observation about the episode’s writer:

Thus it's not too surprising that tonight's is credited to a first-timer: Jack Kukoda. Being new, I guess he didn't know the "rule" that Chevy is supposed to be given some dumb bit to do and shuttled off for the rest of the episode whenever possible. Even in the solid "", you can see the seeds of their meta-approach to writing for him in his plotline, which involved, well, keeping him out of the way so the more important things could get done.

Brian was less impressed with Abed’s  B-Plot, and wonders if the new producers do not yet understand that not every character needs to have equal screentime. And he has an excellent line in closing: “Ultimately, it's a solid episode for those who come for the characters more than the laughs, as no one seems like the pod person replacement they've occasionally felt like in this shaky season.”

• Jeremy Sollie at GeekBinge suggests we can either be disappointed with the show for becoming more like a standard sitcom or stick with it for being a standard sitcom with a great cast and occasional sparks of cleverness - and he counts himself among the latter after this week’s episode. Jeremy was pleased that the show didn’t stick Abed with either MPDG or Shirley’s Church Friend, but gave him a “normal” but idiosyncratic girl. He was less impressed with Britta’s storyline, but wishes it had been better, especially given the opportunity it gave Pierce to be “competent and generous.”
• Brianna at The Diligent Couch Potato notes her main takeaway as surprise that Pierce is rather suddenly showing signs of being a sympathetic character, but also felt it was reminiscent of Season 1 episodes.
• Ben Umstead at twitch makes an interesting observation about the tone of the show as it’s developed this season:

What started out as a doppelganger with two left feet has turned into a keen footed cousin to the Dan Harmon years of the show. If anything Community is feeling a lot like the feel good times at Greendale that we got in Season 1 with sprinklings of some of the zanier elements that had pollinated by season 2.

Ben doesn’t feel  there was anything particularly groundbreaking about this episode, he felt things were firing on all cylinders, even if it was at perhaps a different speed than we’ve seen in previous seasons. And, interestingly, Ben wasn’t the only reviewer to mention that he had no idea who Sophie B. Hawkins was until he heard her start singing. I wonder how true that was for those of us watching at home?

• Laura Aguirre at ScreenCrave helpfully sums up her review thusly:

Overall: “Herstory of Dance” put a nice spin on an old sitcom trope. We enjoyed watching Abed bounce between women, but what threw us over the moon was him finding a special someone in the process. He deserves it. Along with Britta, who proved that her name could also be synonymous with success.

• The review at CarterMatt found the episode charming, stating:

What made this half-hour so entertaining, and also endearing, is that for the first time really in almost the entire season, the writers were willing to stretch the characters beyond where they have been in the past.

They liked that the writers had Abed actually find a girl he likes. They liked that the writers let Britta finally have a win.  And this was the most entertained they’ve been all season.

Community finished at a 1.0/3, which works out to about 2.32 million viewers. (Fingers crossed for the +7, I guess.) Big Bang won the time slot again, while Parks & Rec, The Office and Go On all did better, though none won their time slots. We also were trending both nationally and worldwide. Finally, if you watched live and got the preview for next week rather than the tag, you can check it out on Hulu (Sorry, Foreign Friends!): http://www.hulu.com/watch/475318. If anyone has a link that works overseas, let me know in the comments, and I can edit the post.

Thanks for your time, and sorry for the lateness. (I’ve spent most of the day slightly drugged.) If I missed anything, let me know in the comments.