Written by Marley Ghizzone
Law of Robotics & Party Rights
Greendale allows convicts to attend classes via telerobot and one prisoner gets under Jeff’s (Joel McHale) skin. Meanwhile, Britta (Gillian Jacobs) tries to subvert Annie’s (Alison Brie) “no more than 8 people in the apartment” rule.
“Are you trying to murder me?” asks Jeff Winger (McHale) of self confessed murderer Willy (Brian Van Colt), as he attempts to push Jeff down a flight of stairs. Willy, however, is stuck using a telerobot as he is attending Greendale from prisoner.
I absolutely love Brian Van Colt. He is probably my favorite character on TBS hang out comedy Cougar Town. Instead of being goofy and well meaning like Bobby Cobb, Willy is charming and conniving. Van Colt did an excellent job and provided most of the laughs of this weeks episode.
However, I did not find this episode of Community to be as enjoyable as last weeks. It might have been the flat storylines that ended the episodes the same way it began. Greendale started with no convicts as students. Through a series of predictable events the Dean (Jim Rash) goes overboard and Jeff gets ostracized. Convicts no longer attend Greendale.
Similarly, Annie (Brie) is a rule maker and follower. Britta (Jacobs) breaks rules and defies authority. Annie says no to a party so Britta finds a way, by manipulating Abed (Dani Pudi), into having a party anyway. It turns out bad and Annie is called in to save the day.
The rote plot was boring. The jokes didn’t save it because there didn’t seem to be many jokes. Besides, of course, the few over-the-line race jokes and the one rape joke. A quick shoutout to the world- rape jokes are never funny.
Chang is the biggest problem. He is not as funny a character as he once was. He was adequate in last week’s episode because he was more a prop to be berated than anything else. However, any other time he is put into the script his lines are unfunny and contrived which is what really shined this episode.
With all of that said, I didn’t hate ‘Law of Robotics and Party Rights.’ Community is one of my favorite shows so any episode is going to be fantastic. But this one would definitely be ranked near the bottom.
Rating: 5 out of 10
===========================================================================
