NBC’s ‘Community’ season 5, episode 12 review: When Subway turns evil

“Community” tonight was weird … but did you really expect anything else? Abed’s storyline may be one of the strangest things that we have ever seen on this show, and that’s saying something when you remember some of the stuff that the show has put on the air over the years.

Sometimes, being strange is great, and sometimes being strange is just … strange. For the first 15 minutes of this episode, we had a hard time really understanding what we were watching some of the time, save for the fact that Greendale realized that a community college was a bad use of money. Who would’ve thought that a community college was going to cost so much of the education budget? Major facepalm.

The one thing that we did find hilarious about all of this is that Subway ended up being a villain in all this. Remember when they saved “Chuck”? Well, they’re out to destroy Greendale! Luckily, “Community” fans are smart enough to know how tongue-in-cheek this story is.

What we know that the internet will probably spend a little more time talking about now, though, is the Jeff – Britta “proposal” that happened near the end, now the two have this sudden nothing-to-lose state of mind with Greendale in jeopardy (maybe, given that there was “buried treasure”). Everyone has their favorite romance on the show, and Dan Harmon typically shies away from these sort of things. We still think that there is something coming here that will shake up this structure somewhat.

It’s hard to give “Basic Story” a full endorsement, given that the story was at times so odd, and it’s almost an incomplete episode. It’s still “Community” and we love it for that alone, but the writers are really going to need to sell us on the second half for this to make sense. Grade: B-.

What did you think about this “Community” episode? Be sure to share your thoughts below, and click here to read some more great news related to the show. Also, sign up to get further updates from our CarterMatt Newsletter.

Photo: NBC