‘Community’ season 6, episode 7 review: A Honda and a heartache

“Community” in many ways figured out this past week how to make the best of a not-ideal situation. Here is the issue: They’ve had a ton of money and resources this year as a part of the Yahoo Screen deal, and of these said resources is the opportunity to actually do outdoor scenes again for the first time in a while. However, one of the reasons for that is the show’s sponsorship deal Honda. They get airtime on the show, and then “Community” has more staying power.

The difficult move here is that this is about as anti-corporate of a show as it gets. Hence, the need to have an extremely meta episode in which Rick, the former Subway salesman from season 3, comes back as a gorilla marketer for Honda, has a bizarre romance for Britta, but then bungles it / Brittas it when he decides that he desperately needs “one last score,” meaning that he needs to con “level 7 susceptible” Dean Pelton into buying more cars. While there were positive features of Honda vehicles thrown in here throughout, there was enough irony to make it fairly funny. Plus, Billy Zane randomly playing a Honda boss who thought he could disappear in a metaphorical cloud of smoke was hilarious.

So while at times we wanted to roll our eyes at all the Honda talk, this may be as funny of an episode as one can be that featured the TV version of native advertising.

Anyhow, elsewhere most of the comedy came from Jeff’s attempts to befriend Elroy after no such luck, and going so far as to hiring his “favorite band” for a party, only to later learn that their lead singer Julia was an old flame he’d never been able to move on from. Chang’s bit at the beginning was hysterical, which is helping us more and more to realize that Chang and Dean Pelton may actually be two of the brightest stars this season. Abed’s commentary about being a little off since Troy left was somewhat spot-on (it hasn’t quite been the same), and he and Annie (who has lacked a great story for a while) were probably the weakest parts of the episode.

Still, bonus points for Frankie playing the steel drums. That gag was almost a throwaway, and we still managed to laugh. Grade: B-.

Let us know what you thought about this episode in the comments!