Community/Recap/S2/E07 Aerodynamics of Gender

Current Synopsis: Troy and Jeff discover a hidden trampoline of tranquility and Pierce will stop at nothing to learn their secret. Meanwhile the ladies enroll in a Women Studies course and Abed tags along. When the ladies are humiliated by a clique, they use Abed's ability to analyze humans to get revenge. This may be too much of a good thing in both situations.

The Community episode "Aerodynamics of Gender" provides examples of:

• Alpha Bitch: Megan (Hilary Duff) and her Girl Posse. Subverted when Britta, Annie and Shirley turn Abed into one to counter them. Re-verted when Britta, Annie and Shirley become Alpha Bitches themselves, which leads to Abed insulting them, then getting out of control and insulting everyone at Greendale.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Joshua turns out to be a neo-nazi.
• Casting Gag: Casting Hilary Duff (Lindsay Lohan's historical rival) in the episode parodying Mean Girls.
• Chekhov's Gun: Pierce's dragonflier.
• Does Anyone Else Know: When the groundskeeper finds that Jeff and Troy have discovered his secret illegal trampoline...

Groundskeeper: Who else saw you come in?
Troy: If we say "nobody", are you going to stab us with your bush scissors?

• Enhance Button: Subverted. Pierce has Leonard zoom in on... instructions for how to extract photos from a spy cam.
• Failed a Spot Check / Selective Obliviousness: Upon discovering Joshua's racism, Troy and Jeff muse that it seemed to come out of nowhere, before wondering whether it did. Among the incredibly subtle hints they failed to spot? A rather large Swastika tattoo on his chest.
• Flipping the Table: Chang loves insults. At the end, he gets so excited he flips a table. (Note that the tables are bolted down...)
• Foreshadowing:
  • Many Freeze-Frame Bonus of Abed's Robo Cam.
  • Pierce subtly mentions that there's a 'little man' controlling the remote-control helicopter. This would later turn into part of hallucinations caused by his drug addiction.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: After Pierce's interference causes Jeff to throw the basketball onto the girls' table, they pack up and leave.

Jeff: "Where are you guys going?"
Britta: "Away from your symbolically invasive balls to a women's studies class."

• Hannibal Lecture: The burn that ends up destroying Abed's "targeting computer" amounts to this.
• Happy Place: The secret trampoline on campus discovered by Jeff and Troy.
• He Who Fights Monsters: See Alpha Bitch.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: Abed (who has incidentally been viewing the world through a very Terminator-esque Robo Cam all episode) gives Megan his "destruct codes".
• Laser-Guided Karma: Pierce is ruining the trampoline, making Troy cry. He gets his double bounce and lands in a dumpster, breaking both his legs.
• Lampshade Hanging: Jeff and Troy are struck by the fact that the administration feels the need to not just take the trampoline away, but carve it up with chainsaws.

Jeff: Hmm. That seems a little excessive.

• Logic Bomb: Abed tells Megan how to sabotage his runaway bitchiness by calling him out as an unemotional robot who's only doing it to try to fit in. Targeting System: Offline.
• Magical Negro: Inverted and defied to hell and back, where the kindly old groundskeeper with a magical secret isn't only not black, he's a WHITE SUPREMACIST.
• Meditation Powerup: Jeff and Troy after discovering the secret trampoline.
• Moral Myopia: Britta, Annie and Shirley all get a case of this when they start acting like the Alpha Bitches they had Abed dispose of.

Shirley: Bad isn't that bad when you're doing it to bad girls.

• Murder Is the Best Solution: An aborted attempt. Jeff looks longingly at some hedge clippers when Pierce learns of the secret trampoline, and starts to go for them when Troy stops him.
  • Between this and Annie's affinity for chloroform, Troy is the only one stopping this group from turning to violence for problem solving.
• My Friends and Zoidberg: Girls. Abed.
• Pure Is Not Good: The lesson Troy and Jeff learn? Purity that demands exclusion isn't real purity.
• Robo Cam: Abed sees everything through this in "Aerodynamics of Gender" when he gets turned into a "mean girl", insulting people. His POV has a computer readout instantly detailing his target's flaws. He also has a "current synopsis" for the episode so far (including Troy and Jeff's storyline, which he has no non-meta way of knowing) and memos to record Cougar Town, book Starburns for 'Troy and Abed in the Morning' (which happens in The Tag) and to remember that Troy's birthday is in 14 days.
  • Some of these are revealed to be minor spoilers with the left hand side of the screen revealing what Abed has been charting in his notebook, and the notes offering plot points for future episodes (e.g. Build blanket fort with Troy, confirm Mom for Christmas, sell group on paintball sequel).
  • He also has a readout predicting the girls' "cycles"... best not to think about that too much.
• Start of Darkness: Pierce getting his legs broken, beginning his drug addiction and increasingly erratic behavior.
• We Want Our Jerk Back: Inverted. The girls get Abed to start insulting mean girls, then he starts insulting everyone, and they want their nice kook back. So does Abed.