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Community/Recap/S3/E22 Introduction to Finality


It's the end of the season, and a memorable moment in The Stinger becomes the crux of the Darkest Hour, before the redemption of the Greendale 7.

With Troy having been claimed by the AC Annex, Abed having fallen into a state of severe depression, and Shirley and Pierce divided by legal difficulties, the study group's problems are far from over as they resume classes at Greendale following the downfall of Chang's regime.

Tropes appearing in this episode of Community include:

  • Accidentally Accurate: A joke where Britta is said to have a favourite superhero character called X-Man. Although the joke is that Britta presumably doesn't actually know much about superheroes and simply named something that sounded vaguely familiar, there actually is a character (albeit a fairly obscure one) called 'X-Man' in the Marvel Universe; he's an alternate-universe version of Cyclops’ future son, Cable, for those who are interested.
  • All Prophecies Are True: The prophecy that Troy is the air-conditioning repair messiah
  • All Psychology Is Freudian
  • All There in the Manual: Abed asks Britta about her parents. Her response involves a man in a dinosaur costume and a birthday party would at first glance comes off as a humorous non sequitur. Britta is actually describing her eleventh birthday when she was molested, and her father refused to believe what had happened. This isn't the first time the series has alluded to this part of her backstory, but it is one of the more explicit examples so far.
  • Amoral Attorney: Alan tries to make Shirley come out as a bad person by bringing up a joke she once made that was obviously not true. He also tries to blackmail Jeff into losing on purpose, otherwise he'd never be able to work at his old firm.
  • An Arm and a Leg: Evil!Abed plans to do this to Jeff. Thankfully, he never gets a chance to (because the cord for his bone saw doesn't reach far enough).
  • Bad Liar: Shirley:

Shirley: Hello!

Jeff: Are you here to help me with Biology or get me to help you?

Shirley: [Singsong] Biology.

Jeff: Are you lying? [Shirley looks cornered] Hard to put the word 'yes' into lilting syllables, huh?

Shirley: Ye-es?

  • Badass Boast: Played for Laughs; to challenge Murray, Troy yells out "I am the truest repairman!"... in a slightly silly falsetto voice.
  • Batman Gambit: We get another glimpse of what made Jeff such an effective lawyer. He knew what needed to be done to win over the entire courtroom and how to use Pierce's nature to get there.
  • Beard of Evil: Evil!Abed.
  • Beyond the Impossible: The Chaplain mentions the 5 winds: East, West, North, South, and the one they keep secret.
  • Break the Cutie: Evil!Abed "darkening" Britta. She gets better.
  • Brick Joke: So, what is mitosis?
  • Call Back: Several in this episode.
    • Leonard uploaded another food review to Youtube.
    • Also, Jeff's nemesis, Alan, returns.
    • Evil Abed returns.
      • Also, the simulated hologram of Good Abed while Evil Abed was outside of the Dreamatorium is similar to Abed's persona switching between characters in the Dreamatorium.
    • Subway leaving Greendale. When the wake riot first occurred, they threatened to pull out. And given that Chang rose to power after that, Greendale didn't do a good job in convincing them to stay. This does allow Pierce and Shirley to establish their sandwich shop though.
    • Alan refers to the fact that Shirley was unsure of who Ben's father was while she was pregnant with him.
    • Part of Evil Abed's Hannibal Lecture resembles the Reason You Suck Speech Troy gave to Britta in the season premiere. The difference is Troy said it because he was upset. Evil Abed was doing it simply because he was, well, evil.
  • Character Development: Jeff chooses to fight for his friends over his last shot at returning to his old law firm. Even though Shirley told him that it was okay for him to choose his job over her.
    • Pierce criticizes his lawyer for using the word "gay" as a derogatory word. Also counts as Hypocritical Humor.
      • And after the case is thrown out, he suggests that he and Shirley sign ownership of the sandwich shop over to Jeff...which, as Annie points out, is his first good idea.
    • Also, after years of trying to ignore him, Jeff decides to finally look up his father again.
    • At the end of the episode Troy decides to move out of the Blanket Fort.
    • Abed gains sufficient self-awareness to realize that he has problems and would benefit from therapy.
  • Cool and Unusual Punishment: A more literal use of cool than most examples of this trope. For the murder of Vice Dean Laybourne, Murray is sentenced to The Infinite Labyrinth of Eternal Ice.
  • Courtroom Antics: Jeff pulls several stunts because he was completely unprepared due to focusing on the biology test.
  • Critical Psychoanalysis Failure: Played with; Evil!Abed manages to turn the tables on Britta and start analysing her (nearing driving her to tears in the process), but this time it's less that she's bad at it but more that Evil Abed is just that good. Indeed, Abed at the end credits her with doing what no other therapist has managed to do -- making him realize he needs therapy and providing a therapist he feels comfortable undertaking it with (albeit because she, in his words "has just as little control over my mind as me.")
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Troy's usually The Ditz and has spent the entire series rejecting his natural talents as a repairman. When he finally embraces it in the Sun Chamber, however, he kicks ass at it.
  • Did I Just Say That Out Loud?
  • Dissonant Serenity: Troy spends almost the entire battle in the Sun Chamber calmly standing in his chamber with his arms folded silently glaring at Murray as Murray frantically attempts to fix the malfunctioning AC unit in his chamber. He breaks this serenity only to calmly fix his unit with a few simple moves and to take mercy on his defeated opponent when it becomes clear that he cannot win or yield.
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: The off-screen deaths of the Vice-Dean and Jeff's former boss come out of nowhere.
  • Dumbass Has a Point: Troy is the first one to realize that the Vice-Dean was murdered and immediately deduces who did it.
  • Engineered Public Confession
  • Even Melodramatically Kooky Secret Societies Have Standards: Even by the standards of the Air-Conditioning Repair Annex, the Sun Chamber announcer is absurdly over-the-top.

Announcer: Weeeell, boys and girls, I hope you brought your popsicles, because it's about to get SCALDING HOT in the Sun Chamber! You already know the rules... BECAUSE THERE AREN'T ANY!!!

[One of the other students storms down and snatches the microphone off him]

Replacement Announcer: Geez, Dennis, are you on coke? Take that crap off and sit down! [The original announcer dejectedly slinks away] Sorry about that. Of course there are rules.

  • Evil Counterpart: Evil Abed of course.
  • Evil Is Cool/Good Is Boring: In-universe; Evil!Abed refers to 'good' Abed and Jeff as 'Lame!Abed' and 'Lame!Jeff' respectively.
  • Evil Is Petty: Evil Abed wears Sinister Shades and smokes in the hall, hangs up a pay phone while somebody's using it, pops a kid's balloon with his cigarette, and puts the butt out in someone's beverage. The timeline darkness meter then ticks up 1%.

Evil Abed: Cruel. Cruelcruelcruel.

  • Evil Twin
  • Faking the Dead: Star-Burns faked his death and changed his hair.
  • Fandom Nod: The episode-end montage ends with "#sixseasonsandamovie" appearing on-screen.
  • For the Evulz: Evil Abed's original intention in his debut episode was to destroy the prime versions of themselves and replace them. Now he just seems determined to ruin their lives.
    • May count as Fridge Brilliance though. While it seems that he's just trying to ruin their lives, it may actually be him trying to replace them with their evil counterparts. He breaks Britta's spirit, making her ponder dyeing her hair. His plot to cut off Jeff's arm makes sense when you remember that Jeff lost an arm in the dark timeline.
    • Or Fridge Horror when you remember just how dark the darkest timeline really is.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: There's actually a list of Greendale Court rules behind the witness stand on the wall.
    • Also in the AC Repair class the blackboard has the "This is my rifle" mantra from Full Metal Jacket written on it--except with "limpken wrench" in place of "rifle."
  • Good Is Dumb: Or as Evil Abed puts it: "When the world gets bad enough, Abed, the good go crazy. But the smart… they go bad."
  • Hannibal Lecture: Evil Abed gives Britta one, raising the timeline darkness to 10%. He adds a "The Reason You Suck" Speech for another 2%.
    • Evil Abed seems to be fond of these in general. He also uses one to convince regular Abed to allow him to take over.
  • Heel Face Turn: Having acted as a sinister, threatening presence throughout the entire season in almost all his appearances, in what little we see of him in this episode Laybourne seems to have mellowed considerably; he seems genuinely interested in mentoring Troy and helping him embrace what Laybourne views as his destiny.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Shirley tells Jeff it's okay for her to lose as long as it lets him avoid trouble at his former law firm.
    • Jeff also makes one by choosing Shirley over his former law career.
  • Hypocritical Humor: Pierce being outraged by Jeff calling him paranoid and crazy ... after jumping out between two cardboard pieces, painted to look like a bookcase. For further crazy, he was apparently there the whole time Jeff was studying just to see if he would do anything about the legal dispute between him and Shirley. For added paranoia value, his over-the-top reaction of betrayal was completely unnecessary, as Jeff was explicitly advising Shirley to just let things drop until Pierce calmed down a little.
  • Insistent Terminology:

Annie: He won't even play in the Dreamatorium. Sorry, not play -- "render imaginated dreamscapes."

Allen: Ted got too old. Couldn't swim with the sharks and got eaten.
Jeff: That makes no sense. He started the firm; you can't lose your own firm.
Allen: You can if you're dead. That shark thing was not a metaphor.

  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It is ambiguous as to whether Evil Abed is merely an aspect of regular Abed's personality taking over, or whether he has actually found a way to cross over from another timeline. For what it's worth, Abed seems to believe the former, and describes it as having "gone crazy" once he recovers.
  • Messiah Creep: Troy is the prohesied Chosen One of the Air Conditioning repair school. He challenges their social norms and even prevents a public execution. Sounds like someone else...
  • Montage Out: A combination of tying up loose ends and setting up plot hooks for the next season.
  • Morality Chain: Troy leaving the group causes Abed to fall to the darkside. Jeff's rousing speech manages to help him recover though.
  • Noodle Incident: Apparently Jeff's former boss got killed...because he was swimming with sharks.
  • Not So Above It All: Although he's mostly bemused at the excessive insanity of the AC Repair School, Troy ultimately isn't above playing by their rules and challenging Murray to a duel in the Sun Chamber.

Troy: I am the Truest Repairman! And this man is a dishonour to making air-conditioners work good.

  • Odd Couple: It's a split-second hint at the end of the tag, but considering Leonard apparently roommates with Sexy Dreadlocks Guy from "Contemporary American Poultry" (or at least someone who looks quite like him), it can safely be assumed that this is going on.
  • Only Sane Man: Troy, to the rest of the Air-Conditioning Repair School.

Air Conditioning Repair Chaplain: Take this man to the Infinite Labyrinth of Eternal Ice.
Air Conditioning Repair Students: [brandishing their wrenches] YEAH!
Troy: No! No. Take him to the police. He murdered someone. Take him to jail. You guys are weird.

Pierce: An Irish and a Jew walk into a Chinese laundry. With a gay duck.
Three jokes later ...

Pierce: So you're telling me they're not good at basketball?

(crowd boos and throws paper balls at Pierce)

Pierce: Why didn't you just give an inspiring speech about friendship?

  • Purely Aesthetic Glasses: Britta's psychiatrist glasses.
  • Robo Cam: Evil!Abed sees the world this way, including a meter for how close things are to the darkest timeline.
  • Sequel Hook: A lot of loose ends are tied up, but now Chang is hiding in the air vents in City College. That can't end well.
  • Running Gag: Jeff spends the entire episode trying to learn what mitosis is.
  • Series Fauxnale: Definitely had a series finale vibe, complete with Last Episode Theme Reprise. This, to some degree, is Real Life Writes the Plot, as it was uncertain at the time of writing and filming whether this would be the last episode of the series or not. Ultimately a form of Double Subversion, in that while the series was ultimately renewed, this in fact turned out to be the last episode of Dan Harmon's tenure as showrunner, so ultimately works as his swansong.
  • Serious Business: Dueling to the death in the Sun Chamber.
  • Ship Tease: As many as the writers could cram into an episode.
    • Shirley telling Jeff his law career is more important than her sandwich shop is another tease for Jerley shippers.
    • Anbed shippers got their piece of cake; when Evil Abed reverts into Normal Abed and sits down in the court room, the first thing he does is take Annie's hand. And she smiles.
    • Britta/Troy was also teased very hard. Britta gave Troy a lock of her hair before he went off in the last episode, and here she wanted to be the first to hug him after he returned from the repair school. After Abed took that chance away from her, she tapped Troy on the shoulder for her hug. She's also clearly and vocally unhappy about Troy no longer being around:

Jeff: Okay, so what is mitosis?
Britta: I miss Troy.
Jeff: Wrong, and stop guessing that.

Britta: So you say you're Evil Abed, which does not throw me because I'm a therapist.

Britta: What's the worst that could happen?

Leonard: Classic tee-up.

Britta: Shut up, Leonard; I know about your crooked wang.

Leonard: [Unmoved] No such thing as bad press.

  • Time Skip: The episode takes place during the summer, between their third and fourth years, just before they are set to take the Biology final for the class they had to make up during the summer.
  • Thou Shalt Not Kill: The rules for the Sun Chamber state that the opponent either yields or dies. When it becomes clear that his opponent is vanquished yet incapable of yielding, Troy takes pity on him and fixes his AC unit rather than let him suffer a lethal case of heatstroke.
  • There Are No Rules: Subverted for the Sun Room Challenge.
  • Tragic Villain: Evil Abed is one when you remember he turned into this because his timeline was so dark.
  • Twitter: #sixseasonsandamovie
  • Wham! Episode: Among other things, Starburns faked his death
    • Evil Abed returns.
    • Jeff fights for Shirley and in the process, kills any chance he has of working at his former law firm.
  • What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: Troy lampshades how ridiculous the prophecy is by pointing out it was just an air-conditioning repair school.

Troy: It's a trade school. It's a 2-year degree, in boxes, that make rooms cold.

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