COMMUNITY Recap: ‘Custody Law and Eastern European Diplomacy’

Well, kids, it’s good to be back. COMMUNITY may only have been gone for two weeks, but it was a loooong two weeks on my end.

At least they came back with a bang! Or, if not a bang, a framed kidnapping and some prolonged jokes about nipple play…

But I’m glad they’re back. As guest star Enver Gjokaj (DOLLHOUSE) said in the episode, “I like these guys, they make funny with their mouths!”

The episode opened with a baby-shower Annie was throwing for Shirley and her racially-undecided baby. And even though Shirley herself didn’t seem to be stressing out about what race her unborn fetus would be (all-black if the father was ex-husband Andre, half-Asian if the child had been conceived with Chang), the gifts at the shower were strangely race-related. Shirley insists, however, that despite any possible interference by biological happenstance, the baby will be raised by Andre and her.

In fact, Shirley decides to make this official by asking Jeff to coax Chang into signing an agreement giving up all possible custody of the child. In a moment full of the absence of anything resembling tact, Jeff sets out to get Chang to sign the paper (pretty much with a “Hey dude, you don’t want to be a dad! Sign this!”), which then somehow turns into a new goal for Chang: to stop sleeping on Jeff’s couch and try to be a grownup capable of raising a real-life child. Jeff, of course, jumps at the opportunity to get the crazy off of his couch (Chang apparently has a habit of acquiring saws out of nowhere) and out of his apartment, despite the mission he was set out on by Shirley. As he puts it: “Who am I to stand in the way of somebody trying to get their life together? What am I, daytime television?”

As would be expected, however, Shirley does not take this news well. And it all goes downhill from there. In fact, I’d be lying if I said I understood exactly how this all went down (I think you’d have to really get into Chang’s head to get access to that information). Chang accidentally kidnaps a pair of African-American children (originally thinking they were Shirley’s kids), leading him to frame Jeff for the crime, and then Shirley and Jeff briefly conspire to send Chang to jail for human trafficking and…what? It’s all very entertaining (especially the part about Jeff going jogging with pasties/nipple pads), and wonderfully absurd, so that’s probably all that matters. Still, the entire ordeal couldn’t have established much trust among the three of them.

In the meantime, Britta gets herself into some trouble with Troy, Abed, and this week’s special guest star (Enver Gjokaj, DOLLHOUSE). And no matter how entertaining the Shirley/Jeff/Chang storyline was this week, this was Britta’s chance to shine. Gillian Jacobs really brought it this week, and I have more respect for her as an actress and a comedian than ever before — and I’m someone who’s always liked her. But her Britney Spears/Christina Aguilera/Generic Pop-Star impersonation? Brilliant. It almost beats her strange determination to get whipped by Troy’s grandmother last season. Almost.

Introduced to Troy and Abed’s new friend Lukka (Enver Gjokaj), Britta wants him bad. Unfortunately for her, Troy and Abed very badly want her to stay away from their friends, claiming that she’s a “ruiner” who dates a guy they like, breaks up with him, and then proceeds to tell the group all sorts of bad or squicky things about said guy that irrevocably change how they see him. Troy and Abed would like Lukka to stay pure, manly, and awesome, thank you very much.

Unluckily for them, Britta has some charms up her sleeve, and Lukka asks her out. And by the end of their date, Britta has discovered something quite bad/squicky/appalling about our new friend: he was kinda-sorta involved in the killing part of the genocide in the Balkans. Britta, not wanting to “ruin” yet another friendship for Troy and Abed, decides not to tell them. Instead, she has to stand idly by as Lukka teaches the duo to kill villagers in a video game (“Ugh, girls are so un-desensitized”) and concoct a plan to get Lukka out of their good graces. She commits the ultimate sin in the eyes of Abed: borrowing a DVD without permission! Gasp!

But poor good-intentioned Britta gets caught — apparently Abed’s got security cameras lining his room for a really detailed documentary he’s making on his life. The truth comes out eventually, however, as is hopefully inevitable when one accidentally makes friends with the type of person who likes to slaughter villagers in their free time, and Troy and Abed accept Britta back into their bromantic graces.

It is here that I must applaud the COMMUNITY staff for deciding to center an episode around Britta. In any ensemble show, there’s bound to be a character who gets stuck in the background, wedged in amongst too many other people and unable to show just how great they really are (I’m looking at you writers of GLEE, who refuse to give Jenna Ushkowitz a proper storyline). When these characters are as attractive as Gillian Jacobs they sometimes get trotted out for use in a romantic love-triangle or seven, but when the time for that ends they tend to fade right back into the background. So it’s refreshing to see that not only does Dan Harmon remember Britta, he respects her; he admitted on Tumblr last week that Britta is his favorite character, and this week the show really got to showcase that.

Britta is an interesting character: eternally misguided by her always-good intentions, Gillian Jacobs and the writers have mined a lot of her humor out of the fact that Britta never really knows what’s funny and what’s not. She can banter with the best of ‘em, but she can’t intentionally deliver a joke to save her life, and that’s what makes her great.

Some quotables:

Jeff: “I’m tired of confiscating saws!”

Lukka: “I like these guys, they make funny with their mouths!”

Jeff: “Who am I to stand in the way of somebody trying to get their life together? What am I, daytime television?”

Jeff: “That’s the Greendale effect. Our school motto is ‘Lower Your Standards.’”

Troy: “There’s a difference between telling us a guy likes nipple play and telling us he makes hats out of babies”

Troy: “As long as she promises to stop ruining guys for them, unless that guy has committed genocide.”

Abed: “Lukka’s gonna teach us to break the will of an entire village!”

Troy: “Ugh, girls are so un-desensitized”

Britta: “Pshhaw, White people problems”

What did you all think of the episode? Are you excited for the upcoming PULP FICTION homage???