Something that season four of Community didn't quite grasp was how the show's "weirdness" works. The show gives as many nods and winks to popular culture as Abed does, but it doesn't do them gratuitously, or without reason. Similarly, the stranger the premise of the episode - from "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" to "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" - the more grounded it has to be in reality. That was the case for two of this season's stand-out episodes, "App Development and Condiments" and "GI Jeff". The latter was like a follow-up to the stop-motion Christmas episode, only this time we were delving into the subconscious of the character who seems to be the most "together" of the group (at least he likes to think so). Along with being a pitch-perfect parody of GI Joe cartoons and commercials, the "GI Jeff" episode also delved further into Jeff Winger as a character and his place in the group. "App Development and Condiments", meanwhile, went further maybe even than previous season's paintball episodes as it transformed the Greendale campus into a dystopian future, complete social unrest and Starburns in a Zardoz costume. It was a messy episode, but it also examined the group's relationships more closely, along with being a decent critique on social networked modern life. With Logan's Run references.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
