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Every early episode of M*A*S*H starts by pushing into Radar’s POV of the helicopters coming. Radar is also often strangely prescient about the arrival of the helicopters, and the needs of his commanding officers. In an early episode he states that he is going to write a book about his experiences, and that is what we are seeing in the whole of M*A*S*H. Radar is recalling and encoding in single serving story form, the emotions and characters of those he met during his time in the war. In episode 7x02, we begin to see Radar get so enveloped in his character’s stories that he loses control of the environment and does not sense the choppers before they come. He will remove himself completely in the eighth season, giving the story over to those around him. In the remaining seasons, the credits start already pushed in on the helicopters, showing that the story can now run without the guide of the teller.

Dexter season 6 has been an awful series of television, of that there is little doubt, but what were they trying to get across? Dexter starts out the season looking for a religion in which to raise his son because he was told it is important, and the season proceeds to have Dexter metaphorically stalk, examine, and destroy his religious side. Dexter sees the new killer as two people at first, God and his servant. Dexter confronts the servant but dismisses him and continues to seek out God. He also enrolls his son in a religious school and feigns belief so that his son may be accepted. Dexter eventually figures out what the audience knew all along, that God does not exist and that which is being called the word of God is coming from within the misguided servant. Dexter battles his religious side, and it manages to escape his grasp. But when God seems to call for a repeat of Abraham and Isaac, Dexter defeats his religious side and refuses to submit to the test of faith. The writers did not do much to disguise the fact that God never existed, perhaps this was to show how foolish religious fanaticism is when left unchecked by reason. Almost 12 full episodes of bad TV just to get that point across does seem excessive though.

What is television, but a meditation on a theme, to which you return every week? Community is gone for now, but hopefully it will be back, and if I may serve as a Community apologist for a moment, I would like to talk about the meditation of Community.

I have talked to and read from many people that dislike Community and describe it as a live action Family Guy, stringing together pop culture references ad nauseum in lieu of a plot. I disagree with this viewpoint, but I understand that it may come from a place of differing mythologies. I posted a screenshot from episode 3x01 because it is exemplary of my point. 2001: A Space Odyssey is a film which I have meditated over many times and have attempted to tease apart the layers of meaning in its final scenes. Having personally worked over the narrative on my own, I have come to various conclusions about the transcendent journey that the character must take to arrive outside of himself and watch himself die, so that he may see his part in the larger whole of humanity and all existence, to be reborn as an enlightened being. By tying Jeff into this story with a few quick scenes, the writers of Community have immediately started speaking to me regarding what their goal for Jeff is in this story and what his journey should be, but I do not know yet if Jeff will follow the same path of the film, they still have something more to say about what the film meant and how it applies in this situation. This economy of language through pop culture mythology allows so much more to be put into a 22 minute show, if I speak the language. Some references, I admit, I do not get on first viewing. I understood that they were referencing Dead Poets Society in episode 1x03, but I had not meditated on that film, and I did not know what the writers wanted me to understand when everyone stands up on their desks and one person falls down. So, I watched Dead Poets Society, and suddenly, after investing an hour and a half, that 3 minute scene in the show reveals several more layers of meaning than the one sight gag I had gotten from it on first viewing. They are not using new archetypes, but then neither are the pieces they are referencing, the point of these metaphors is to talk about larger concepts and to provide a point of entry for your personal exploration of the concept. What Community does so well is say “ok, you know about the death and rebirth and seeing the planet as a whole that the space fetus goes through in 2001, but now look at how that concept also applies to interpersonal relationships and group dynamics here.” Once it evokes the memory of the mythology that you have meditated on and you are in the realm of the indescribable idea that you have worked through personally, then it anchors that to the character and combines it or contrasts it with another idea. If you remember the end of episode 3x01, Jeff emerges from the 2001 reference as the lead character of The Shining. So not only are we taking Jeff who should be an enlightened space fetus now, and having to immediately recast him in the role of a violent Jack Torrance and figure out the implications of that, but we are also reminded that both of these are films of Stanley Kubrick, and so, we are asked to examine the themes of his characters from an auteur standpoint. There is no mention of Eyes Wide Shut, Full Metal Jacket, The Killing, or A Clockwork Orange, but the mention of Kubrick by contrasting two of his films embodied in the same character, brings to mind the ideas of group dynamics in relation to the individual within the group in those 4 films, and that was what we were exploring in this episode to start with, so many more layers were added by that one change, depending on your previous meditation on Kubrick’s work.

When Community combines these mythologies well, it really is a masterful show. The point of meditation to which we are returning every week with Community then is that pop culture is our current mythology and what these meditations on the mythology mean to us.

Community 1x05: “Advanced Criminal Law”

The Dean opens by attempting to convince everyone publicly over the PA system that Greendale is a real college simply because they will have their own song and a statue of prestigious alumnus Luis Guzman by the end of the week. He is projecting a lie that he believes, in an attempt to get others to believe it. Professor Duncan scoffs at his attempt at conveying respectability and meets with Jeff to discuss Britta’s relationship status. Duncan is interested in pursuing Britta, but he is not sure if Jeff is involved with her. Jeff is noncommittal and dismissive in his response, and we are not sure how he currently views his relationship with Britta. We must draw our own conclusions at this point. This episode is about self-deception and its external consequences.

Abed walks into class with Troy and asks if he thinks Luis Guzman will come visit the statue. Troy responds with sarcasm, and we are given visual cues in his facial features to see that he is lying and wants us to know because it is a joke. Abed does not pick up on the visual cues and Troy begins to lie straight faced, bringing Abed into a wildly concocted fantasy. Jeff sits down in front of them and tells Britta that he has discovered that she lied to him about her phone number. She says that she will give him the real number if he promises not to use it in a context other than friendship. He declines the number, and we are led to believe that it is because he does not wish for friendship, but he has still not revealed his intentions yet. Chang confronts the class about a tiny cheat sheet he has found lying on the floor of the classroom after their last test. He threatens punishment for everybody, unless the person who cheated confesses. He is showing how a tiny personal lie can harm others around an individual if it begins to show itself.

In the study group, Shirley complains about Chang’s stereotype of her during class and follows that up with an affirmation of the type. She is lying to herself about what she is living up to, and we can see Annie react knowingly to Shirley’s straight faced inner lie. Blame for cheating is passed around the table between the members of the group, and each offer terse perceptions of the person they think cheated, all of the accused accept their perceived character flaws except Pierce, who lies to himself and mishears the character flaw they gave him as a compliment (he turns the word stupid into genius). Jeff says that whoever cheated “wasn’t a real cheater, just insecure and naive,” and we are left not knowing for sure who has cheated. We can only read the visual cues the character’s give and draw our own conclusions. Annie changes the subject to her work on the school song, and Pierce tells her that he is a great songwriter and will work on it for free. He tells her this with confident visual cues. Troy reveals to Abed that the things he said earlier were lies, and Abed attempts to explore the foreign concept of lying by questioning the nature of concrete objects (“This isn’t a table, haha”).

Annie tells Pierce he is allowed to write the song and he now looks visibly worried, implying that his earlier brag was a lie. In class, Chang offers the cheater one last chance to confess. Everyone looks tense and Britta stands up to confess saying that it is not fair for Chang to punish the whole class. At this point, from her visual cues and speech, it would appear that she is lying to everyone to seem like a hero. Outside the classroom Jeff confronts Britta about being a cheat. At this point, we do not know what Jeff believes, but he is reaching out to Britta even though her lie has been revealed. She asks if he really wants to be her friend or is just hitting on her again, and he says he can neither confirm nor deny. His motive is hidden, and we are again left to draw our own conclusions.

Abed meets Troy and attempts to lie by questioning the nature of accepted reality again. He says “All dogs are blue now, every single dog in the world is blue.” Troy tells Abed that his visual cues give away his lies “you are not good at this, because you are not believable in your face, ok? Your face, it’s bad.” Abed begins writing in a notebook using a foreign language, and he says “it’s probably Arabic” when Troy questions him about it. Abed runs away making warbling spaceship noises. Abed is all the time giving us slight tells that he does not believe the lie he is acting out. He is pretending that he is alien and not of this world, which is a criticism many others have of him, and in pretending to be foreign he is embodying the way he saw lying earlier as a foreign concept. He has begun to act out how he thinks Troy wants him to act to be his friend, but he does not yet fully believe the lie judging by his cues.

The tribunal that will judge Britta convenes with a $6,000 table next to the pool area. The entire tribunal setup is a self-deception about its place and importance. Professor Duncan argues with Señor Chang over whether or not Chang is allowed to call himself Professor. Chang is lying to himself about his status, and Professor Duncan is lying to himself about his status mattering here (recall the opening scene in which he discounts the dean’s proclamation that Greendale is a real college). The dean makes a double entendre when he says that he “goes both ways” in his partiality in the case, but he asks to have that stricken from the record and clarifies that he is impartial. Regarding the tribunal, we know there is one side that likes Britta and wants to believe her (remember Duncan’s discussion with Jeff earlier), and an opposing side that does not like her and does not believe her (Chang believes she is a cheat). At present, we still do not know the truth and must also choose a side and draw our own conclusions.

Pierce is still lying to Annie and himself about being able to write a song, and she is starting not to believe the lie. He gets defensive when she picks the lie apart and dismisses her. In the commentary, Harmon reveals that “Pierce is a sort of mockery of me. My writing workflow is to shut myself in procrastinate and yell at everyone who comes near me. Tell them I’m a genius even though I’m not.”

Chang lies in his testimony to the tribunal. Britta is brought to the stand and says that she did not make the cheat sheet and that when she said so earlier, she was lying. The dean calls her a hero and she admits that she has just lied and she actually did cheat. The tribunal can be seen as Britta’s psyche choosing what to do about the revealed lie. She can either renew the old lie that she cheated or adopt the new lie that she is a hero. She rejects the new lie, and begins to renew the old lie of being a cheat.

Troy finds Abed talking to himself as if he is an alien again and Abed is now using visual cues about his lying to actually endorse the lie, by having his face lie about the fact that he is lying in pretending to be an alien. One school of thought says that self-deception has emerged as a survival mechanism because deceiving others while not believing in your lie costs more mental energy than conveying a lie that you believe. If Abed knows that he is not an alien, he recalls that first and then must act contrary to that to convey that he is an alien, but if he begins to believe that he is an alien, he can go right to that facade he has built within and project it outward with ease.

Jeff confronts Britta about her flip flopping testimony. She says “you know I have a problem with dishonesty” and Jeff reminds her that she is on trial for cheating. Jeff proposes that he will present her as a good person and she remonstrates him, saying “You don’t know that! You’re just doing all of this ‘cus you wanna sleep with me. I mean, you said it yourself, you don’t even want to be my friend.” Jeff never said that. Jeff did not reveal his motivations and left us and Britta to draw our own conclusions, and we now see the lie that Britta has projected onto Jeff which further enforces the lie she believes about herself. He tells her that her lie about him is wrong and that he does still want to be her friend, even as the lie she has been presenting to everyone is crumbling. Britta says she believes him and reveals the foundation of the lie she has built in herself “I have more experience being worthless, I think I left that crib sheet on the floor because I wanted to get caught. Im so used to screwing everything up i just wanted to get it over with.” The fact that she cheated is not the lie. Cheating is lying about personal ability and knowledge, and Britta has just revealed that that is her actual insecurity. The cheating is how it manifested. Having presented her rationalization for believing and acting on her lie about herself to Jeff, he deems her insane. He presents to the tribunal that they are all insane and the the whole school is insane. Everyone lies to themselves and rationalizes things beneath the surface (we have seen almost every character prove this so far). Britta is not anomalous.

Troy finds Abed talking to a pre-filmed version of himself. Abed is still acting out the lie, but now he is telling the lie to himself. The static paradox of self-deception says that at some point if you are deceiving yourself, there is a transitionary moment where you have to both believe and deny the lie. Abed on the screen is wholly into the lie because he does not exist outside of the lie, Abed talking to the screen is at that transitional moment, but Troy stops him before he crosses the threshold. Abed confesses that it was a lie and he was concocting the lie for Troy, because Troy told him that is what friends do. Troy tells him that it would be creepy if the lie were true and that “from now on, Abed friends don’t mess with each other.” Just as Jeff saw Britta’s lie crumble and revealed his desire for friendship, Troy wants to be Abed’s friend outside of the lie, and is there for Abed before he can begin to believe the lie himself.

Pierce has begin lying to himself in the quest to write the song. He steals “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” but rejects it once he realizes the lie. Annie comes to him as he  realized this lie, and he admits to Annie that he is a fraud. She asks about his past success with the Hawthorne Wipes jingle and he reveals that it was stolen as well (from “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain”). Annie, having seen through Pierce’s lie, offers a personal story for him to relate to and says that she believes in him. Whether or not this is a lie on Annie’s part is unknown, but Pierce takes her parting words of inspiration and completes the song with them.

The statue is unveiled, and Pierce is allowed to play his song. We hear that Pierce’s song is a stolen Bruce Hornsby song, rewritten around Annie’s words, but Pierce does not know that and feels good about himself for completing his assignment and internalizing Annie’s (possible lie of) encouragement. He has believed the lie Annie gave him, but it was a lie that helped him succeed. While self-deception can be used to hinder yourself, Pierce demonstrates that you can believe a lie to help yourself overcome something, now whether or not this is good is brought into question when Abed asks if they can be sued for Pierce’s song and Jeff says that they can be.

Episode 1 Analysis

Episode 2 Analysis

Episode 3 Analysis

Episode 4 Analysis

Community 1x04: “Social Psychology”

Chang is in the classroom leading the class in Spanish recitation. He has them say “we speak” and “to speak” in Spanish, while he writes the words on the board unintelligibly. Everyone hears what he is saying, but they are unable to read it or make further sense of it. In the scene, Chang never reveals the translations of these words. Everyone is parroting what he says, but we are not sure if anyone knows what anyone else is actually saying.

Outside, Shirley attempts to connect with Jeff, but Jeff dodges her and joins Britta. Jeff says he can not bear to hear her say “ooh, that’s nice” while they walk across campus. Jeff has shown that he has been hearing what she says, but he has not been listening, engaging, or understanding. Jeff walks and talks with Britta across campus, and they talk about friendship. Jeff says that the sign of a true friend is talking with no awkward pauses and that he and Britta have just done so for 100 yards. She points out that it is great he is not hitting on her anymore, and an awkward pause emerges as they part ways. But before they parted, the two encounter Vaughan, whom Britta is in a relationship with for this episode. Jeff follows his first impulse to make fun of Vaughan and thus begins to push Britta away from himself. Vaughan represents the super ego and Shirley represents the id in this episode. At present, Jeff is taking in information from both of them but not consciously listening to either, and Britta is gravitating toward the super ego. This will be expanded on by other characters later.

Annie begs Professor Duncan to allow her to be in his Duncan Principle experiment before she is ready, and he agrees (it is usually open to second year students only). Pierce arrives with a package containing “ear-noculars” which he wears along with his bluetooth so that he can hear things other people are not supposed to hear, however he is overextending his hearing and begins to misunderstand which conversations are public and which are private, and begins to interpret everything on a higher level of revealing secrets in others. Annie approaches the group about being in the Duncan Principle experiment. Troy talks himself into it, while Abed declines because he wants to watch the Indiana Jones trilogy. Annie tells him that they are really good friends and he accepts both this statement and the request to be in the experiment. Jeff sees that Vaughan is talking to Britta and connecting with her, so he interrupts their conversation, hears what Vaughan says about coffee versus green tea, and contradicts what he says openly.

We join Annie with Professor Duncan and the other observers, watching the subjects in the Duncan Principle experiment. Professor Duncan explains the Duncan Principle as “The more control lost by the ego, the more gained by the id, resulting in a surprisingly predictable emotional eruption or breaking point.” In the classic Looney Tunes model of psychoanalysis, the devil on Daffy Duck’s shoulder represents the id and the angel on Daffy Duck’s other shoulder represents the super ego, while Daffy in the middle represents the ego, deciding which to listen to or to weigh their inputs equally and follow a median path. What Professor Duncan has not accounted for in his principle is the super ego. Here Annie and the observers are the id and the room full of subjects is the ego, but lying in the subconscious is the super ego played by Abed. The id may overtake the ego and drive it to a tantrum, but the super ego still remains present. Addressing our pop culture reference, Abed is Indy and we join him mid adventure (mid experiment) as in the beginning of all the films. Indy is always betrayed by someone he trusted or chose to work with in the films, here Indy is betrayed by his friend Annie when she misrepresents the experiment and their friendship. When Troy leaves, Abed is the only one left and the observes now become the ego, consumed by id examining but not listening to or engaging the super ego and eventually being driven mad as a result of this communication imbalance.

Jeff rejoins Shirley, but is trying to accept Vaughan and disengages her when she beings to make fun of Vaughan. He says that he is “trying to be a good friend to Britta…. I’m gonna show her that I am not the jerk she thinks I am and friend the hell out of that green tea drinking drum circler.” He is attempting to force himself to befriend Vaughan and disengage Shirley as a result. He is also trying to use friendship as an action rather than actually listening to Vaughan and letting a relationship grow.

The new ego of the observers consumed by id begins to attack itself and disbands in an emotional break. Annie allows Abed to leave the experiment finally, when she is told by Professor Duncan that she has ruined the Duncan Principle (she has exposed that the super ego exists).

Jeff thinks that he is truly trying to connect with and examine the super ego in Vaughan, but he is not listening still, only hearing the talk. Shirley shows up and attempts to incite Jeff to make fun of and dismiss Vaughan again, she succeeds to an extent and Jeff proclaims “you’re the devil,” naming her as the id that she represents.

Jeff practices Spanish with Britta, they are talking but they are not communicating because one is not understanding the other. Britta asks Jeff to examine Vaughan further and reveals that she has become intimate with him, but that she worries he is over thinking things more than she is (her super ego is outweighing her id, manifesting here as sexual desire). She reveals Vaughan’s poetry and Jeff copies it to make fun of it with Shirley in private. They tear apart his words without looking at the underlying sentiment. Pierce hears them with his augmented hearing and misinterprets what they are talking about.

Troy apologizes to Annie for ruining the experiment, and Annie reveals that the waiting was the experiment. She confronts Abed about ruining the experiment, and he reveals in a dead pan manner that he was livid for the 26 hours he sat in the room. She asks why he did not just leave and complete the experiment (super ego surrendering to the id), and he says it was because she asked him to stay and had said that they are friends (because they need to be in balance, not one over the other, but they are not communicating properly). This defeats Annie’s rage. Jeff and Shirley enter, still making fun of Vaughan. Pierce reveals to the group his misconceptions about Jeff and Shirley’s subject, he extrapolates their mockery of the super ego onto the group (he takes personally Jeff’s inner struggle). Shirley mocks Vaughan’s speech patterns and then passes his poem around for everyone to mock. They mock Vaughan openly as he enters and drive Vaughan away. Outside, Shirley reveals herself to Jeff as the id “I have a gossip problem, I stir the pot, Jeff, I’m a pot stirrer.” Jeff tells Shirley that they can not make fun of people anymore, but that they can still hang out. Jeff is starting to seek a balance in his subconscious. Shirley brings up dream analysis, mentioning that Britta has had a sex dream about Jeff. Britta after engaging with her super ego is attempting to reconnect with her id, but still only subconsciously.

Annie comes to Abed and apologizes by giving him the Indiana Jones trilogy, she is saying she understands what he is about and is giving him what he represents so that they may be in balance. Jeff finds out Britta is no longer with Vaughan and asks if he can remain her friend but not need to hear about her id (guys she dates) anymore. He mentions the sexy dream though and Britta expresses a frustration with Shirley (the id).

Outside, we see Vaughan who is now out of sync and tells the rest of the hacky sack group that there are “some worries, man, some worries” as we see Shirley and Britta giggling together, Britta is now falling out of sync and following her id closer than her super ego, she has no balance once again.

Jeff asks Pierce for his ear-noculars so that he may spy on Britta and her id, but Pierce says that he has gotten rid of it and explains “see, Jeff, there’s certain things man was not meant to hear. We were designed by whatever entity you choose, to hear whatever’s in this range, and really this range alone. ‘Cus you know who’s talking to us in this range? The people we love.” Pierce explains that the id/super ego balance in the ego is the responsibility of the individual and that we need to talk on the surface level with and listen to the people we love. Pierce has become Jeff’s super ego and his former actions of spying on and misinterpreting everything had been showing Jeff’s actions of attempting to analyze Britta’s super ego rather than his own. The way to link the seemingly subconscious ephemera to the conscious is through speech, this is the goal of the talking treatment and word association of Freud and his school of psychoanalysis. Britta brings up Jeff’s silver tongue at the beginning and Jeff says “I’m at my best during high speed bursts of wit,” he also talked about filling all of the silences with talk. He is leaving no room for introspection or listening and is not taking the time to weigh the id and the super ego’s input before speaking, he is out of balance. But he hears Pierce’s words and contemplates them before dismissing them with a quip to no one but himself.

Episode 1 Analysis

Episode 2 Analysis

Episode 3 Analysis

Episode 5 Analysis

Community 1x02: “Spanish 101”

“I am your dean with a few corrections to the fall class catalog. Cosmology should be cosmetology, astrology should be astronomy, and the students on the cover should be smiling, but I suppose that’s a matter of opinion.”

Modern cosmology is the study of the origins and fate of the universe. Not only how we got here, but also how everything got here, its progression, and what its ultimate demise will be. This big picture view is being completely replaced by the superficiality of looking good through donning facades (cosmetology). Astrology is a manufactured belief system placed on top of the stars and planets and other actual heavenly bodies. By turning astrology into astronomy, we are ripping the framework of lies off and studying only the actuality of what is there. This opening voice over by the dean explains the flow of the episode.

When Jeff arrives at school, he dons his first guise to get what he wants. He takes the faculty parking permit from someone else and puts it on his own car so that he may keep the close parking space that he wants. Inside, Pierce is presenting a facade to the group, making more of his relationship with Jeff (he likens him to a brother) than there is, to connect with the group more. Britta attempts to rebuke the idea that Jeff is important to the group: “Will you guys have some self respect, you are obsessing over someone who does not give you a second thought, meanwhile in Guatemala journalists are being killed by their own government…. Believe me, every day in that country, people are being killed for speaking out and the worst part of it is when it’s all over [Abed announces that spoilers follow] it’s gonna be as if it never even happened.” Britta tell shim that there are no such things as spoilers in real life and that TV is different from real life. Jeff enters like The Fonz from Happy Days and every one except Britta is happy to see him. He greets every one in a superficially friendly way and uses sympathy to get Spanish notes from Annie without doing any work. He sits back and asks “So what’s a guy gotta do to get a C around here?” Jeff’s goal is the middle of the road and a maintaining of the status quo.

Jeff offers an apology card featuring mixed metaphors to try to get Britta to forgive his first impression given in the last episode. She rebuffs him and rejects the card. Pierce tells him “You can’t pursue people so obsessively, it starts to creep them out.” Pierce then proceeds to do just that to Jeff, comedically showing himself to be a mirror for Jeff in this episode. Britta encounters her own mirror outside in Annie and Shirley. Annie says that Britta would “rather keep it real than be likable” and they both wish to follow suit. They ask for more information on the Guatemala situation that Britta told them to care about earlier. She somewhat grudgingly gives them a path to follow and casts derision on their chosen course of action once they leave.

We enter our first Spanish class. In this episode, Spanish is a metaphor for the language of friendship which the group is still learning how to use between one another. Chang presents their assignment to partner up in pairs to have conversations using phrases they learned in unit (episode) 1. The assignment is to maintain the status quo. Do not go further with one another than the superficial surface of first meetings. Jeff again dons a guise to get to Britta, by switching assignment cards with Abed. Abed will only switch if Jeff wears his shirt and lets Abed take away Jeff’s shirt. Jeff agrees, but his guise ultimately does not work because Britta has traded cards with Pierce for reasons unknown at this time.

Pierce and Jeff meet in the group’s normal study room. Pierce immediately opens up to Jeff saying that he has never had kids, and that it is only because he is super virile. He implies that whereas before he likened himself and Jeff to brothers, now he is longing for a son. Pierce is grasping for any connection with Jeff. When Jeff attempts to bring Pierce into the assignment and simply maintain the status quo by using 5 already learned phrases. Pierce erupts, asking “what am I, a piece of garbage to you?” by which Jeff is taken aback and denies the accusation with guarded empathy. Pierce acts as if he were joking and proceeds to try to connect with Jeff further.

Pierce wants to dig into the assignment by writing a story for the two of them as a team. He then says a better idea is to backtrack and discuss the origins of story itself. He is forcing a grand cosmology of story to take the place of the cosmetological simplicity of the assignment. Jeff resigns himself to such an exercise for now.

Meanwhile, Britta reencounters Annie and Shirley, actively doing something about the Guatemalan cause which Britta brought up earlier. Britta calls them “tacky and lame”, to which Annie replies that she sounds like Guatemala. Looking into her mirror, Britta realizes that she is hypocritical and that her status quo is not actually doing anything about the causes she espouses.

Jeff, looking into his mirror Pierce, reacts with frustration. Troy and Abed enter (Abed still wearing the guise he took from Jeff earlier). Troy and Abed perform their assignment, which is simply the 5 known statements from lesson 1. Jeff sees his usual self reflected in Abed’s clothes (which is Jeff’s shirt) and Abed’s status quo holding assignment. Jeff holds up the stack of yellow paper containing the cosmology of Pierce and himself and rejects it for the cosmetology of his old self, saying “we are going to take this and put it in a museum for crazy people” then ripping a page from the pre-defined text to use as his assignment.

Outside, Jeff once again dons a disguise to impress Britta by putting protest tape over his mouth and buying a sign off of another protestor. Having seen her own hypocrisy in her mirror, Britta extends an olive branch to Jeff, and he responds in his old pompous way (temporarily removing his guise to do so). Pierce comes out and completely destroys Jeff’s facade by blatantly stating truths about Jeff.

The day of the assignment, Jeff again presents Britta with an apology card full of mixed metaphors, but this time he seems a little more sincere because he is apologizing for Pierce (Jeff’s mirror). She takes the card, and everyone then proceeds to bad mouth Pierce (in turn bad mouthing Jeff). Britta finally spells out the truth: “He offered me a hundred dollars to switch cards with him just so he could be partners with Jeff. I think he thought getting closer to Jeff would bring him respect in the group. I think he spent his whole life looking out for himself and he would trade it all for a shot at some kind of family.” Jeff finally has his framework of lies torn down and he sees the mirror image he was supposed to see for what it is. Unlike Britta said to Abed earlier, real life does have spoilers, because Pierce is the spoiler for what Jeff will become if he maintains his status quo as he has been wanting to do all along. Chang offers Jeff a C in the class if he does nothing and watches Pierce act out their story alone. A C is what Jeff stated he wanted in the beginning, but now he cannot go through with it. He decides to do the assignment with Pierce.

Throughout the assignment, both Jeff and Pierce don many guises, but they are always the same or very similar guises, making each of them mirror images of one another, putting on a spectacle of themselves before the class. In the commentary for this episode, Dan Harmon states “if the audience isn’t just sitting there watching, then they’re participating, and we need them out there like just judging these guys because the triumph needs to be that Joel is willing to do something stupid, not something that uplifted anybody.” In the end, Jeff gets an F- and Pierce gets an F, remember if Jeff had done nothing he would have gotten his C. Britta calls what he did selfless, but that does not mean he mastered the language of friendship (Spanish), and Abed told us earlier that the spoiler for this episode was “when it’s all over it’s gonna be as if it never even happened.” Jeff will still use guises and facades in the future. Chang is not the best person to be judging the language of friendship. He does say he knows the language well, but then goes on to say that 90% of Spanish is hands and he uses his hands to stroke a student’s cheek inappropriately in that first screen cap.

Episode 1 Analysis

Episode 3 Analysis

Episode 4 Analysis

Episode 5 Analysis