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Community: Wedding Videography

“Okay, let’s endure this.”

Before sitting down to watch this episode, I heated up a “chicken burger” in the microwave. As I pressed play and bit into the chickenized rubber, I realized that my misbegotten Whole Foods purchase and this last season of Community have a lot in common: they both want to be better than they are, and they both leave a bad taste in my mouth.

“Wedding Videography” is about a callous, self-absorbed group of co-dependent synergistic adults who mock Garrett for talking funny—but really because he has found love while they haven’t. They stage interesting conversations for Abed’s documentary but fail to follow through on Frankie’s brief disclosure about her sister.

They have so much fun having fake fun that they’re late for the wedding. They enter the wedding so obnoxiously that they nearly ruin it. They are always in the spotlight, even Abed, who may not be on-screen but still wants to be the auteur.

“Do you think you guys could take a step back, gain a little perspective, so you don’t wreck the whole night for some really wonderful people?” asks Garrett’s mother. Her question is almost reassuring: Dan Harmon knows his heroes have become antiheroes. Heck, they’ve become villains—are any of us rooting for them to succeed? Their lives mostly consist of slacking off while snarking at anyone but themselves.

Elroy’s false encouragement is the best part of the wedding. He argues that “white people are very discouraged.” And his affirmations are affirmative. So is Annie’s desire to help people, even if she only wants to help her friends (and feel useful while doing so). It’s a desire she shares with Frankie, who wants to help Annie because her “dragon” is helping others, just like Annie, so…I’m sorry, I feel like a dog chasing its own tail.

That’s sort of what this episode does, too. Jeff’s replacement best-man speech reveals that Garrett and Stacey are related. An important truth, I suppose, but one that I’m not sure Garrett and Stacey needed to know. And although Chang manages to fix everything (weird thing to say!), our group still managed to make themselves the center of someone else’s happiness.

Cool Cool Cool:

• Garrett: “Somebody over there laughed at that the wrong way.”

• Britta: “Does that make any sense? No? Well that’s your problem.”

• Jeff: “God, I love myself.”

• According to the tag, first cousins can have babies with no genetic defects. Because that information is exactly the way to end a sitcom episode.

One out of two meemaws.

Josie Kafka is a full-time cat servant and part-time rogue demon hunter. (What's a rogue demon?)

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