Review: Community - ‘VCR Maintenance and Educational Publishing’

Once again, the folks at Community bring us a solid 22 minutes of comedy with the latest episode, ‘VCR Maintenance and Educational Publishing’. While there weren’t too many big gimmicks this time around, the gags were clever and the story entertaining enough to make this a worthy entry into the Community archives.

The story is split into two arenas, as is typical for the show. The first revolves around Jeff, Hickey and Shirley stumbling upon a stash of hidden textbooks. Given the price of textbooks at your typical college, they have hit the jackpot. So the three form an alliance to figure out how to pawn off the textbooks and make a little extra cash. But as more people enter into the equation, things get out of hand. Greed takes over and the group finds themselves at each other’s throats.

The other story involves Abed and Annie on a quest to find a new roommate to replace the vacuum that Troy left when he went away. Annie opts for her oddball brother while Abed is trying to get his new girlfriend to move in. So to settle the competition they decide to play an old VCR game called ‘Pile of Bullets’. Filled with ridiculous and indecipherable rules, the game quickly escalates into madness.

By far the best part of this episode was a very clever Dean appearance at the beginning of the show, when he shows up in a giant peanut outfit to tell people that their checks will be coming late. He loses control and turns into a rap-busting lunatic, later breaking down and wondering what happened to him. It was one of the funniest Dean gimmicks in the history of the show, in my opinion.

The rest of the show follows the same format as most Community episodes, with everyone learning a valuable lesson by the end of the story. The writing was good and the jokes worked and it’s hard to find a flaw with this episode, even if it wasn’t a true masterpiece. It’s in-between episodes like this that make Community such a great series, because you always know that you’ll get something worth watching if not necessarily always be blown away.

Next week, a return to the world of role-playing with ‘Advanced Advanced Dungeons and Dragons’. When Hickey becomes a grandpa, he must mend the rift between him and his son (played by David Cross), and the Community crew decides a role-playing game is the best way to do that. Once again, there’s no trailer, but you can check out some stills from the episode at this site.

Photo Credits -

Community courtesy of flavorwire.com