Review: Community ‘G.I. Jeff’

Spoilers Below:

If you didn’t already hear the word on the street, Community decided to do another animated episode, and this time it was a spoof of the old G.I. Joe cartoon. This would be a good time to warn you, the reader, that I was a huge G.I. Joe fan. Not just the animated kids program, but the action figures as well. I owned almost every single one. In fact, before Kenner’s re-release of Star Wars figures in 1995, G.I. Joes were my number one go-to toy. Before I geeked out with my nerd self.

To illustrate my enthusiasm, when this episode began, I literally blurted out, “I’m so fucking excited!” to my girlfriend, or whoever would listen.

“Babe. Babe!” I said, tapping her during the opening sequence. “Did you see that vehicle? I had that one!”

Her only response, uttered in a quite apathetic way: “Can they even do this?”

Well, legally speaking, they can, because obvious copyright infringements get thrown out the window when the creator of G.I. Joe, Hasbro, gets directly involved in the episode’s production. In addition, they also used some of the series’ actual, original voices.

The show began with an introduction of the cast as their respective faux Joe characters. Joel McHale was “G.I. Jeff,” Gillian Jacobs was “Buzzkill,”  Danny Pudi was “Fourth Wall,” Yvette Nicole Brown was “Three Kids,” Alison Brie was “Tight Ship,” Jim Rash was “Vice Cobra Assistant Commander,” Ken Jeong was “Overkill,” and Jonathan Banks played a dude named “Major Dick.” John Oliver also played someone, but I didn’t catch his name, nor did I desire to go back and check it.

In the episode, the study group performed their G.I. Joe duty by pursuing Destro. But when Jeff shot holes in the villain’s parachute and caused him to plunge to his death, he suddenly found himself on trial. As the episode continued, so did Jeff’s random flashbacks acting as peeks into his past, and hints that he came from a Cobra site called Greendale.

When G.I. Jeff returned to Greendale, he found out that it was actually a school where he was a student-turned-teacher named Jeff Winger. He also realized that this whole cartoon was just a dream, because the real Jeff had passed out after downing a fifth of scotch and numerous “youth pills” on his birthday.

As the episode skipped between three different realities (live action, cartoon, and children’s toy commercials) Jeff initially decided he wanted to stay in the fake cartoon world and joined Cobra, before using it as an opportunity to take the terrorist group down from the inside.

When he came to in the hospital, surrounded by his friends, Jeff revealed that he had been lying about his age, and was actually 40. In classic sitcom fashion, Jeff quickly learned that it didn’t matter, and his friends accepted him for who he was, and he should do for himself.

In Case You Missed It:

1) Jeff/G.I. Jeff referred to Abed/Fourth Wall’s outfit as “three layers racist.”

2) Cobra’s eulogy began with: “When I first met Destro, he asked me if he should have his entire head coated in chrome. I said no. How would you do that? How would that even work?!”

3) The Shawskank-like tunnel used to escape from the base’s prison was hidden behind a Smash Mouth poster.

4) Another use of the Wilhelm Scream. This time when the fuel truck exploded.

5) Anyone else think of Archer’s Cyril whenever someone said “suppress[ing] fire”?

6) When Winger took control of his dream as creator, he likened himself to “Neo in the third act of The Matrix, as well as Neo in the first act of the second Matrix.” He didn’t see the third.

7) Jeff really racked up the funny lines in this one. He said the Duke-based character looked “like some Aryan foosball player.”

8) For some reason, Cobra’s “For realsies?!” absolutely slayed me.

The young boy inside me (one of the only ways I can use that statement, amiright?) wanted me to simply slap a ‘10’ on this and call it a night. I mean, they killed it with this episode. It had just the right amount of parody and tribute, while still being decidedly unique to Community. The character assignments and creations were brilliant, and the cast did a tremendous job in voicing their characters. I was surprised at some of the performances by a few of the actors, especially Joel McHale and a shockingly-expressive Jonathan Banks.

The animation, like G.I. Joe and other 80’s cartoons, was cheap, choppy, and grainy, with frequent blips, spots, and scratches appearing on screen. The toy commercials were so realistically vintage, overacted, and cliché that I initially thought they may have been the real thing – until seeing the Winger action figure.

I’m almost at a loss for words, because to describe the success of this episode would be to describe the multitude of advantageous qualities that I enjoyed so much about the original show. Plain and simple, it was just entertaining. I’m not sure I particularly cared for the moment where things “got real” at the end, but I suppose they had to bring it all back to reality somehow.

Besides, in the extra ending of the episode, they even had the infamous G.I. Joe “and now you know” ending, this one involving a couple misled youths vandalizing property with spray paint. As much as I enjoyed the homage, with Britta/Buzzkill droning on about America being “a fascist police state disguised as democracy,” I especially loved how you could see, in addition to the boys’ graffiti names, a pentagram, and the words, “Harmon sucks.”

To cap it off, the moral message wasn’t even an anti-graffiti one. The lesson was that “getting heavy-handed or preachy could turn an entire generation into jaded, sarcastic, babies.” Ha!

…Hey, wait a sec; what’s he trying to say?

Also, as a p.s., I happened to recently pass my two-year mark with BubbleBlabber, and my very first review just happened to be a Community episode, so I kind of have an extra soft spot for this one. As if I needed any extra incentive.

Yo Joe!