‘Community’ season 6, episode 2 review: Enter Elroy (and Britta’s parents)

Yesterday, “Community” premiered a pair of episodes that really managed to prove one thing above all else: This is a series that may be slightly different now that it is on Yahoo! Screen, but it is roughly still the same show.

With that being said, some episodes should also really be around 22 minutes. The second episode of the season was not as polished as the first, and while there were some laughs, there was also a lot of space that could have been used for something else. Take, for example, the ambitious Portuguese Gremlins end tag. For some reason, this one just didn’t click well with us, even though we could tell that there was a ton of time and money put into it.

Let’s start with what did work here: The Britta story was ridiculous and funny, mostly because it turned out that most of the talk about her parents being horrible was really a manifestation of her own mind. They loved her, but she really did not want to hear it or take their help. This exposes many of her own vulnerabilities and insecurities about herself. One of the reasons why she is so terrible in relationships is because she does not know fully how to love other people. (As much as we love Troy, there’s a part of us that wants to forget that the season 4 romance ever happened.)

Also effective was the introduction of Elroy (Keith David), a man with a rich background in invention. Unfortunately, it never got him anywhere other than producing a virtual-reality product that Dean Pelton became obsessed with. Ultimately, the results of all of this led to some hilarious segments for Jim Rash in particular, who had never had any real sort of power other than running a terrible college. Elroy eventually was coerced into coming to Greendale himself, which means that you will be seeing a whole lot more of him. We love David’s work, so we hope this character will continue to develop over time.

While this episode dragged at times, we did particular enjoy the random gag about Chang and the cat biting him. It was pretty stupid, but at the same time got funnier every time we saw him. Grade: B-.