Community Season 5, Episode 4 “Cooperative Polygraphy”
Written by Alex Rubens
Directed by Tristram Shapeero
Airs Thursday nights at 8pm ET on NBC
The first piece I ever wrote for Sound on Sight was about Chevy Chase’s imminent departure from Community, and how his exit denied the show the opportunity to reconcile its main conflict: Jeff Winger’s conflict with his father (and by proxy, himself). When season four actually tried to bring Jeff’s father into the fold, it ignored the fact he already had a father, an old man with a lot of money and daddy issues of his own – and thanks to Chase’s limited availability, left the writers no option but to push an increasingly senile character to the background. It appeared Community had forgotten about Pierce – but Dan Harmon didn’t, even with the knowledge Chevy Chase wouldn’t return (save for his cameo in the season premiere, of course). After three episodes of dancing around what happened to the heir to the Hawthorne throne, “Cooperative Polygraphy” (the spiritual sequel to “Cooperative Calligraphy”, trading in a pen for Pierce) serves a lot of important narrative purposes, giving Pierce a memorable send-off while reminding us all why we love these characters so much (a lovely little palette cleanser after the ugliness of last season).
In “Cooperative Calligraphy”, a missing pen is used as a catalyst to dig into the show’s deeper themes: unfortunately, “Polgygraphy” is a much more somber, cynical reflection of the show’s values, thanks to Pierce’s death as its framing device. After the last few weeks of normal hijinks, it’s almost a shock: I’ve already gotten used to seeing Buzz or Chang takes Pierce’s spot on the table, and pulling the timeline back to the hours after his funeral introduce the theme of the episode in a powerful way. “Calligraphy” was about the study group becoming a family; “Polygraphy” is a reminder to them all of what made them a family, the character traits that inspired the deep friendships we’ve watched over the past five seasons – and what happens when a vital member of that family is gone forever (except for the parts of him that Troy inhaled).
It makes for a very emotional conclusion, drawing parallels to “Calligraphy” around every corner (like mentions of Britta and Jeff’s gross sex life) and reminding us all that for his flaws, Pierce was in the study group for a reason. He inspired Jeff to reconcile his hate for his father, and he’s the one who helped Shirley start her business – things he did because he believed in the people he spent so much time with (or in Jeff’s case, just felt bad because he was gay, which he insists on from beyond the grave). He may have berated them, insulted them, and often treated them like he was better than all of them – but with a father and upbringing like his, it’s easy to understand who he became (just look at Jeff Winger to see the proof).
Before Jeff and Pierce could both become their own men, they had to take on their fathers – a reconciliation that is the cornerstone of a lot of Western literature, the stories repairing his relationship with the man who raised him. These stories are not only about guy hugs, they’re about children coming out of the shadows of the identities their fathers (or their father’s legacies) have helped create for them. In the end, Pierce Hawthorne’s story was no different: after bequeathing a lot of sperm and gifts to everyone else (except Abed, since Pierce never understood anything he said), he gives Troy the greatest gift of all: the opportunity to define himself as a man, as an individual outside of his “family”. Pierce tells Troy he has a “hero’s heart” – but Pierce also realized that he would never know what to do with those skills, if he never understood who he was, and what he wanted from life. Ultimately, he sends Troy on the journey he was supposed to go on when he was 23, rectifying the biggest regret of his adult life, and finally completing Pierce’s journey from petulant rich old man, to dirty old man who finally knows what the love of friends feels like.
More so, he reminds everyone what makes them great people in his eyes: something they’ve all struggled with in their various failures in between season four and five, as their professional and personal lives have fallen apart, yet again. He speaks to each of his best friends (through the surrogate voice of Walton Goggins, of course), the most poignant exit Pierce Hawthorne could give: when he was at his best on Community, his simplistic ways of thinking were able to solve problems where the more complex, complicated relationships of the other characters couldn’t. Watch as “Polygraphy” slowly deteriorates from a peaceful remembrance to an all-out screaming match, and how Pierce’s final written words cut right through that tension – Pierce was the father of the Greendale Seven, and losing a parental figure is always tough.
It would be easy to just write off Chevy Chase and Donald Glover with gimmicky resolutions: “Cooperative Polygraphy” actively rejects this idea, turning two huge departures for the show into a celebratory moment of character redemption – and in the case of Troy, reinvention. By returning to the trusty bottle episode (one could consider “Remedial Chaos Theory” a bottle episode, in its own way – the theme and style of the episode certainly fits), “Polygraphy” tightens the walls around its characters, forcing them to interact in meaningful ways, and making their resolutions that much more resonant when they’re teased out by Pierce. He might’ve been the one everyone hated, but Pierce played an important role in the Greendale Seven: one “Polygraphy” honors, by completing Pierce’s journey to reconcile with his father through Troy, while giving the other characters of the show an important reminder of their indviduality, and why it’s so important to the group (and the show) as a whole.
Other thoughts/observations:
– Level 16 Laser Lotuses can see the color blurple.
– Shirley donates money to prenatal-patriots.org, an anti-abortion clinic.
– Jeff says that church is where Jesus gets mail. For some reason, I laughed harder at that then anything I’ve heard in awhile.
– “We complained about him… when he was alive.”
– the best bequeathals: Britta’ iPod Nano (a callback to “The Art of Discourse” and its homage to the end of college films: Britta’s read “Britta Perry: Proud owner, used Ipod Nano, 2014), and Annie’s tiara (the same tiara he bequeathed to her in “Advanced Documentary Filmmaking” when he was ‘dying’).
– Chang: “I didn’t masturbate in the study room…. I masturbated everywhere. EVERYWHEEEEEEEERE!”
– one weird touch: Abed catfishing Annie is a bit weird, even “in the name of breakfast.”