'Community' Season 3, Episode 8 Recap - 'Documentary Filmmaking: Redux'

Showrunner Dan Harmon prefaced last night's episode by Tweeting, "Tonight, celebrate Community's unschedulization with the least accessible, least marketable episode in its alienating history!" So you know it just had to be good.

Sure enough, it was pretty inaccessible, and I don't remember seeing any promos for it, so I guess it was unmarketable too. But whatever man, you can't sell genius! Yeah! #SaveCommunity! #sixseasonsandamovie! #OccupyNBC!

Okay seriously though, this was really good. It's hard to not attempt to ascribe a deeper meaning to it under the current circumstances, even though clearly the writers, cast and crew didn't know that the show was going to be benched when they made it. Then again, Dan Harmon has a knack for letting his special brand of self loathing show through in "Community," so there's always a bit of an undertone of "we might be cancelled any moment" (see: this season's opening musical number).

But you could feel his pain even more in "Documentary Filmmaking: Redux" than usual, through the Dean:

Dean Pelton (whose first name has been determined to be Craig, especially on weekends) is in charge of making a new commercial for Greendale, considering the last one looks to have been made in or around 1991. He has a nice budget of $2,000 and the help of his "friends"... Annie is on as script supervisor while the others play various roles. Jeff, of course, plays the Dean.

But when Dean Pelton learns that Greendale's most famous alumnus, Luis Guzman, wants to be in the commercial, everything must be overhauled. Nothing is good enough anymore, and the Dean begins a quest for perfection, as Abed notes.

Oh, also Abed is recording everything, so the episode is in a documentary style, like last season's awesome episode. That ends up helping the Dean in the end, who goes completely nuts trying to make the commercial, which goes way over schedule and over budget.

The reference here (which is stated twice in the episode) is to "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse," a documentary that details all the troubles that befell the production of "Apocalypse Now." The finishing touch is the Dean, covered in the ash from his burnt degree, whispering "I'm horrible."

The film nerd in me is freaking out. The "Community" fan in me is freaking out. The teenage girl in me is freaking out because of Troy and Britta's hug (I mean, AWW, right?). Basically, this was just one more reminder of why "Community" should never, ever be canceled... and also why it's in danger of being canceled.

Let's just put it this way: this episode was a documentary of the filming of a commercial for a college that exists only in a TV show, all as an homage to a documentary about the filming of a movie. We need a new word. "Meta" doesn't cover it.

Other notes and awesome stuff:

-"Feelings are stupid"

- "1. Luis Guzman is in it

   2. (pause)

   3. (pause)"

-Annie's Stockholm Syndrome

-Is it me, or does Annie get hotter when she's crazy and disheveled? Yeah, you're right, I probably just have issues.

-Jeff's actor transformation. Eat your heart out, Robert Downey Jr. in "Tropic Thunder."

-"Understudy!"

-"Will your story acknowledge the very nature of stories and embrace the fact that sharing the sad ones can sometimes make them happy?" That, friends, is exactly what "Community" does every week.