COMMUNITY: Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps

To be a truly Community Halloween, something awkward must occur at Greendale before our group can truly embrace the holiday. This year it starts out with a horribly lame pre-party that Britta is organizing, before it devolves into her trying to figure out who is the most likely to be a homicidal person, based on the results of a psych test she gave them all the week before.

To test the theory, she convinces Jeff that everyone needs to tell ghost stories to understand their minds. What we get in the end is another hodgepodge of stories (much like the alternate realities from last episode).

But before that actually starts, there are Halloween credits, which puts a smile on my face.

In a callback that also made me smile, there was amazing Army taco meat served at Dean Pelton’s party (I’m glad that the group didn’t make it there at all).

First up, there’s a horribly told story from Britta that smacks of every bad horror movie cliche I can think of (Jeff, no one actually leaves the car when the radio warns of a Hookman).

Then we have Abed’s story, which includes more TV tropes than I want to admit, and seems like a story that Spock would approve of (it’s so very logical). I also truly hope that Annie’s line about who dies in this story was a Scream nod.

Annie’s story falls into the lovely trope of vampires, where Jeff the evil vampire uses Britta as a donor before Annie teaches him how to read. But that can’t be the end, because Annie is really a werewolf who feeds on vampires and so he’s forced to watch himself die. Annie’s proud of her plot twist, but it makes me wonder how stable Annie actually is.

By the time Troy gets to his story, I’m well prepared for more ‘shipping moments (Annie’s had some good Jeff and Annie) and what we get in the end is a combined Troy and Abed at the hands of a mad scientist (Pierce). Only the combined awesome powers of TroynAbed leaves the mad scientist with feet for hands, his bottom where his pecs should be, and hands on his legs. How horrible.

The group at this point is getting more and more personal in their stories, so Pierce’s dream focuses on his sex life (again) and Shirley’s focuses on how the rest of the group is going to Hell if the world ends, while she’ll be in Heaven.

All of the stories have been explained, and now Britta’s more concerned about the group. I’m sitting here wondering whether Chang got the chance to take a test, which seems to be the point Jeff wanted to make when he finally tells his story. I can’t tell if I should be proud of my powers of looking into the future of the television episode, or if it’s a clear sign that I’m too invested in the medium.

In the end, it turns out that Britta “Britta’d” the tests and instead of 6 normal with 1 insane result, it’s really 1 normal with 6 insane results. The one who tested as sane? Abed.

Community airs Thursdays at 8/7c on NBC.