'Community' Season 3, Episode 13 Recap - 'Digital Exploration of Interior Design'

An interesting question: do you still get payment for product placement when the company in question is treated as the evil enemy and referred to as Orwellian?

An even more interesting question: since corporations are now people, does that mean that people can be corporations as well?

In the world of "Community," the answers are yes, and yes.

This episode sees the new Subway restaurant opening up in the cafeteria, which Shirley and Pierce are still bitter about. Britta is shocked about it as well, but she's even more appalled when Greendale's newest student introduces himself: his name is Subway, because he is the human representation of the Subway corporation and had his name legally changed as such.

Of course Britta is horrified at the idea, but when she brings up Orwell's "1984" in the lunch line to Subway, he responds by telling her that it's one of his favorite books. A romance is clearly blossoming, but Subway can't do much about it since, as a corporation, he can't engage in romantic entanglements or sexual activity (or practice religion, or do anything else that could be offensive to anyone).

Eventually the two have a tryst, but Pierce records the whole thing and the jig is up. Subway is taken away from Britta and replaced with another Subway, who creepily acts like he's the same Subway. The whole thing is very strange, but pretty brilliant and a great commentary on how Congress treats corporations.

Jeff has much less going on this week. Throwing a bit of a bone to Jeff+Annie fans, the episode sees Jeff getting an old hate letter in his locker, and it bothers him immensely to find that the girl who wrote it, Kym, is now dead, and he can never convince her that he's not a self-absorbed jerk.

With some egging on from Annie, Jeff goes to apologize to Kym's locker in order to get closure for himself, when he learns that Kym was actually a guy, he's very much alive, and he wrote the note because Jeff kept forgetting who he was, and Kym has enough problems being a guy with a girl's name. Side note: if you have a girl's name and you're concerned about it, don't use purple stationery.

But this episode ends up a two-parter, because one storyline is too epic to fit into just one: Troy and Abed are at odds, continuing on from the downer ending from the previous episode, which had Abed communing with Evil Abed. This time, the boys start building a pillow fort, but Troy is convinced by the Dean (and returning guest John Goodman, whose vice dean still wants Troy to join the AC repair program) to build a blanket fort instead that could potentially break the Guinness world record.

Abed, however (again with some whispering from the vice dean) doesn't want to compromise his pillow fort, so the two clash, with their respective armies of blanket/pillow-wielding students, over territory. A small scuffle breaks out, but something tells me that it's nothing compared to the battle that will take place next week.

All in all a pretty solid episode. It looks like the writers have found some fun stuff to do with John Goodman, who was on fire in this one, and though some of the jokes were fairly lowbrow (such as the Subway exec's request for his jacket to cover his erection), they were also well executed.

Maybe I'm missing something, but why "digital" exploration in the title? Is this all an imaginarium dream? Is the digital part coming into play next week? We'll see. Or maybe I'm just dumb and I missed it.

Notes & Quotes:

- I laughed at every single "Eat Fresh." I couldn't help myself.

- "Britta unfiltered. I get it."

- Pierce's extra senility in this episode was pretty entertaining, as were the subtle "uh ohs" that we got from the other characters.

- Magnitude sighting! "Pop-pop, captain."