'Community' Season 3, Episode 9 Recap - 'Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism'

Showrunner Dan Harmon noted before the episode began that it was one that both he and the studio loved. After watching it, it's easy to see why. This was a lovely piece that managed to be just strange enough while still maintaining a sense of reality and--dare I say it--watchability for the masses.

As Harmon put it on Twitter: "Pudi-Glover-Brie do a timeless soft shoe while Joel and Yvette stab your guts. Simple, sweet, #sixseasonsandamovie."

That "soft shoe" refers to an adorable storyline in which Annie accidentally steps on Abed's special collector's edition DVD of "The Dark Knight," signed by Christian Bale with the personal message "Abed is Batman now." Abed takes that calling very literally when Annie tries to pass off the blame on a break-in, and Abed breaks out the old Batman costume from season one (YES!) and hunts down his prime suspect: the landlord.

The landlord ends up just being a creepy guy who keeps a lot of shoes, but everything turns out okay in the end. I guess. But along the way, Troy meets Annie's compulsive liar side that we saw a little bit of back in "Mixology Certification." Between that and the variety of noises that Troy and Annie make while covering their asses, this was one entertaining storyline.

But even that paled in comparison to the triumph that was Jeff and Shirley's team-up storyline. Jeff's foosball-playing past comes to light when a bunch of annoying Germans (led by the awesome Nick Kroll, who can apparently do any accent in an extra hilarious way) loudly play every afternoon in the commons.

Jeff decides to take them out, but falls to their superior skills. But Jeff finds a mentor in Shirley, who reluctantly decides to take Jeff under her wing... turns out she's a foosball phenom. But in their training, they discover that Shirley, who bullied other kids through foosball when she was 12, ruined Jeff's life when he was a kid by humiliating him in foosball and making him pee his pants.

That leads to an epic foosball showdown between the two, which turns into an anime segment in an homage to "Dragonball Z." Yep, they went there. Mid foosball match, the show actually goes animated, and anime Jeff and Shirley grunt and yell at each other. It's frickin' beautiful. This probably wasn't on purpose, but the fact that the anime segment ends completely anti-climactically is a perfect homage to DBZ, which did the same thing. Rarely did a fight actually take place on that show. It was mostly a lot of yelling.

And delightfully, though all of this, the show gently and not-so-gently ribbed itself. "The stakes have never been higher," Leonard sarcastically groans at Shirley's foosball worries. "They were literally walking around with it like it was a prop," Jeff complains of the Germans' human foosball gag, noting that it wasn't even that good a bit.

I'm not sure what the "Community" shooting schedule is like, but I have to assume that this episode was made before they knew about "The Hiatus," as it's being called. But you can expect that, once we get to those episodes, the self-mockery will likely only increase. That's not necessarily a bad thing, either.

Other notes:

-Jeff's "Clarence Thaddeus Foos" bit. Awesome.

-Leonard reviewing frozen pizza. Of course he does!

-"Let's not leap to thing-doing."

-"Oh it is so on that things have now become very much like donkey kong!"

-The "since when are those two so close?" was very cute. The fun thing about this show is that at any point, any two characters can be put together to make a whole new dynamic. That's good writing.