‘Community’ season 6, episode 9 review: Grifting the grifter

“Community” did an homage of sorts to “The Sting” for its latest episode Tuesday, and it was an episode about grifting that you probably did not know that you really needed.

There were at times throughout this half-hour where we started to wonder if we were really getting a story here that met some of the show’s own hype. Despite some shenanigans in Grifting 101 and its bizarre Professor DeSalvo, which included a full class all about passing briefcases back and forth, it was surprisingly easy to telegraph what the arc of this episode was going to be: Jeff Winger would become jealous of the man’s ability, and would be therefore behind a large-scale plot to grift the grifter, and prove that he is the supreme commander of all things grifting at the school. In the end, this is the end to a story you mostly-likely saw coming a mile away.

However, at the same time we found so much of the rest of the episode funny that we didn’t really care that much. Watching Britta actually seduce DeSalvo proved to be somewhat funny, as did the inclusion of Leonard at one point, watching Frankie suddenly become obsessed with hot dogs, and seeing just how far Elroy has come as a character. This group has really started to find their groove, which is why it is somewhat sad that this is almost surely going to be the final season given how many people are looking for jobs elsewhere.

For some reason, our favorite part of the entire episode may be near the very end, where Chang joyously proclaimed that he could not “be trusted” when Annie reminded him why he was not included in the plan. Also, the end tag regarding Ryan Ridley a.k.a. the Guy from Jeff’s Gym was hysterical. You never get that sort of backstory for people who randomly appear in an episode!

While we’re not going to say that this was the season’s strongest-episode story-wise (that part was somewhat flimsy), the performances by the actors and some really strong jokes at the end still have this somewhere near the top of episodes we’ll be remembering by the time we make it to the finale. Grade: B+.