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The death of fellow classmate “Sideburns” in a tragic meth lab explosion has dramatic consequences for Greendale Community College.  Chang uses Sideburn’s (Alex’s!) death to leverage power with the Dean and, when a riot breaks out at Sideburn’s (come on, it’s Alex!) wake, he uses this leverage to stage a coup, taking over the school by force with his “Changlorious Basterds.”

Probably one of my favorite decisions the writers made was to kill off Sideburns.  Not that I didn’t like the character, I actually enjoyed how he always had to remind people of his name, but I think killing him was an unexpected move that has consequences within the story.

In one of the only parts of this episode that I completely enjoyed, Chang uses information on Sideburn’s death to leverage the Dean into signing a new agreement with security, involving the ability for Chang to use martial law.  I thought this was brilliant and bringing back the “Changlorious Basterds” was definitely cool, unfortunately other parts of the episode fell apart pretty heavily.

Recently, the conversations the gang has around their study table have been agonizingly bad.  I get what they are doing with the characters, and the choices make sense considering each character, but I feel the reactions are completely wrong, and don’t get me started on Pierce’s character work.  I don’t know where the change in the show happened, but in the last few episodes every time the gang is sitting around the study table I feel as if I’m watching someone sarcastically recreate the characters that originally got me interested in the show.  As if the writers are abusing character tropes to try and get a laugh.  This is completely off base from what they should be doing.   I didn’t get interested in this show because seven characters tried to make me laugh.  I started watching Community because the characters were hilarious being themselves, not pretending to be a character of themselves with a wink toward the camera.

Along with the study room scene, the riot scene and the aftermath felt false, almost like they were just an excuse to give Chang control of the school.  (ahem).  I don’t think the characters were really driven to this bold action and instead were placed there and caused a riot because the writers needed to happen.  Then, in the aftermath while they are being patched up, the Dean visits the gang in the hospital, which is empty except for them which I don’t understand, and because Jeff instigated the trouble and they didn’t want the audience rooting against him, he apologizes for causing a riot, without having to come to an epiphany, without having to grow.  He just causes a riot, and then feels some sort of remorse, which he doesn’t show at all, and apologizes like he spilt the last carton of milk.  I didn’t really believe that he wanted to start the riot in the first place, and I didn’t believe that once he did it he wanted to apologize.  I sense Deus Ex Machina.

After those weak scenes the show picks back up as the gang gets expelled from school because Chang has the school board in his back pocket, and then they sit around Troy and Abed’s table discussing whether their timeline (referencing an earlier episode when Abed theorizes that every time they rolled the dice to see who would go get pizza would make a new different timeline) is the darkest and if they made the right decision that night, which, I guess, is an interesting thought.  They then eat pizza and the episode ends.

This wasn’t a horrible episode, I still laughed and I still enjoyed a good portion of it, but I’m starting to see the cracks in Community.  Hopefully they can stop the leak and get back to making consistently fantastic episodes.