tvdinner&amovie

Previously on Community: Pillows and Blankets

If the only value of Community was delivering over-the-top, incredibly hilarious episodes every week, this show would have burned out very quickly. Fortunately, we’re offered a balance and for every pillow fight and paintball battle, we have episodes like this one that underplay everything and still end up amazing in the end. With an episode title that includes the word ‘vampire’ and the prospect of carnival folk running through the halls of Greendale, this could have played out as something entirely different.

Troy and Abed wanted nothing more than to enjoy an evening with Blade, and Britta wanted nothing more than to be with Blade (her ex-boyfriend), while Annie managed to keep all of this from happening (Britta purposely, Troy and Abed accidentally). Jeff needed to know the secret behind the man they called Blade, so he headed to the carnival with Shirley. Pierce and Chang were on a bro-mantic date, trying out their potential BFF title. Dean Pelton took a break from playing with trains to honors Vice Dean Laybourne’s wishes demands that he get Troy to enroll in the AC Repair program. The Pierce/Chang storyline never quite meshed with everything else that was happening, but the lack of fitting in with the study group is part of what makes the two guys perfect for each other.

Origins of Vampire Mythology didn’t have a ton of intricacies and as previously mentioned, it wasn’t one of the funnier episodes. However, it will still end up being one of my favorite episodes of the season if only for Jeff’s touching speech and the realization that the Troy/Britta and Jeff/Annie romances just may play out before this season comes to a close. Here are my favorite parts and quotes of this week’s episode:

• “Best friends, best friends making a cake.” Never have I been happier to see two men slap their hands together.

• On an unrelated note, the Dean is now into trains, but more importantly, he’s the only man, outside of Barney that can pull off overalls.

• “I’m sorry Britta, some things are funny because they make no sense and that is not one of them.” -Annie, who has really gotten better at the Winger-esque zingers this season

• While I wholeheartedly disagree, Troy and Abed’s obsession with Blade being a fantastic movie was très adorable.

• “Well, nerd alert.” –Britta
  “Well, ex-boyfriend named Blade alert.” –Pierce

• “Her pain unifies us. She has the King Arthur of bad taste in men.” –Pierce with the medieval history burn!

• “Sometimes a woman meets a man that she just can’t shake from her system no matter how much she knows better.” -Shirley (THIS.)

• About Annie appealing to Jeff’s vanity just to see him without his shirt on: the female (and select male) members of the audience thanks whoever decided this would happen and I’m sure the male (and select female) audience members would have appreciated Jeff somehow pulling the same maneuver on Annie.

• I didn’t notice this before, but Vice Dean’s goatee in this episode made me realize that I now equate goatees with evil. I’m also going to start considering scotch and soda as the official drink of ‘how to do things’.

• “Annie, subdue your guest.” My initial reaction was that Abed is rude, but upon further consideration it only made me appreciate Abed’s thought process that much more. The reality is, neither he nor Troy invited Britta over. While others might have considered Britta a guest by default since she was in their collective home, Abed saw that logically, he didn’t invite her over. Ergo, she wasn’t his guest.

• The “you are a lying junkie” banana trick. Gets ’em every time.

• “But we are not defined by our limitations. We are defined by our potentials.” -Annie
  “I have the potential to watch Blade!” -Abed

• “You’re monsters. You’re Hitlers. You’re racist pedophiles. You’re the opposites of Batman.” -Britta
  “You don’t know what that means!” -Troy

• “I need help reacting to something.” Abed

• The last time I saw Kirk Fox (Blade) he was sending out dick pics over on Parks and Recreation. While it wasn’t so much about Blade himself, but what he ended up representing, I still would have appreciated a little Britta/Blade reunion (and subsequently more Kirk Fox).

• “Boy, this guy doesn’t give vampires a square inch of leeway.” -Dean

• I’m not the only one that had to know what was on Dean’s pajamas, right? And those were definitely jellyfish, right?!

• “You could change it.” -Shirley/Jeff
  “To what? Templeton Ferrari the Third? Won’t change how mustard tastes.” -Blade

• I’m not the only one that wondered if Chang and Pierce’s “song” was an actual song, right? And that’s definitely not a real song, right?!

• “She was born in the ’80s, she still uses a phone as a phone.” -Troy

• “She’s whipped by an imaginary douche.” –Annie
  “Hey, don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.” -Dean

• “Why do you want to know the secret to making a woman psycho?” -Shirley
  “Why do we want to know how to blow up the Earth or grow a human ear on a mouse? In case we have to Shirley. In case we have to!” -Jeff

• “Aaaw” to whatever Troy said to Britta. I’d like to think we’ll learn the exact words in that text message, but I’m doubting that happens.

• Blade’s secret is that he’s “brain damaged” and is missing the part of the brain that feels shame. How awesome would that be?! To lose the thing that keeps most of us from doing a lot of things we would love to do. I’d bet money drinking would become just a little less popular.

• “We can’t keep going to each other until we learn to go to ourselves. Stop making our hatred of ourselves someone else’s job and just stop hating ourselves.” -Jeff, disproving all of the BS from breath mint commercials and those Bullock movies. Abed wasn’t paying attention to this mini-speech because he was enthralled in the movie, but honestly, it’s not like he needed to hear it anyway.

• I could have watched Abed as a stand-up comic for a full half-hour. Unlike Jeff, I wouldn’t have cared that his jokes were specific to the apartment. Like Troy, I would have gleefully shouted “toaster oven”, clearly knowing that it was from the album.

Nicole is a TV junkie and TVDM helps her feed a lifelong addiction. She can be found here, providing biased commentary (sprinkled with a few Pop Up Video-esque insights) on her favorite shows, every week.