Community, Season 3, Episode 6 “Advanced Gay”
Airs Thursdays, 8pm EST on NBC
After two very similar but still great episodes, Community returns to a much more conventional plot. Pierce is approached by two gay men who want him to autograph his Hawthorne Wipes. He signs them, not realising that the men are gay until Britta points it out to him. Abed then discovers a viral video of a transvestite man singing a song called “Pocket Full of Hawthorne’s” which makes Pierce angry, but not for long.
Once he realises that the publicity can make the company more money than before he embraces it. Abed seems to think that “Pierce’s positrons have been negatized, creating anti-Pierce” because that happens all the time in Inspector Spacetime. On a side-note, I love how much they are using this spoof of Doctor Who this season. So anyway as Pierce decides to use the gay community to his advantage he creates a mock up of new Rainbow Wipes which are “more expensive but also much gayer”. He also plans to release them at a launch party.
Meanwhile Troy, after being seen by the janitor once again to be someone with a great talent in repairing things, is recruited by Vice Dean Laybourne to join his air conditioning repair school. He gives Troy 24 hours to think make his decision. Unfortunately he has to make the decision himself as he was sworn to secrecy. Besides who would believe a story in which there was an astronaut making paninis and a black Hitler. These surreal moments are what makes Community so great. At the same time the janitor wants him to become a plumber which is a recurring theme from last season and so it’s nice that they have continued it.
While Pierce is preparing the party his shows up and we see exactly where all of his racist and homophobic behaviour comes from. He is essentially the Abed of racism as is later pointed out as he manages to find exactly where each person is descended from purely based on a quick glance of their facial features. He orders Pierce to end the party and so he agrees and calls the party off.
When Jeff finds out about this he flips, let’s not forget that he also has huge father issues that need to be dealt with. He un-cancels the party much to the worry of Pierce who says that his father will disown him. Pierce soon loosens up and embraces it, at that moment however, his father shows up causing him to fake a heart attack. While at the hospital, Jeff confronts Pierce’s father in a way that seems similar to how he would confront his own father if he had the chance. This leads to what seems like another fake heart attack but actually turns out to be real as Pierce’s father dies.
This moment while played for laughs is still symbolic because Pierce’s father was the one thing holding him back from growing as a person. His death means that now Pierce is free to make his own mind up about things and from this episode it seems that he is a lot more tolerant than he makes out.
Troy also asks Abed indirectly what to do to which he says to go with whatever makes him the happiest. Troy decides that neither would make him happy. With air conditioning he would lose all of his friends and with plumbing he would have to clean up poop. This is essentially Troy growing as a person. While air conditioning would set him up for a comfortable life, he would never be happy. While job security seems like a great thing, they are saying that happiness is much more important at the end of everything. I agree with this belief and so I’m glad to see he chose this. Although Vice Dean Laybourne said that this wasn’t over so we shall see where they take this.
I feel like they are maturing each of the characters now in the worry that this is their last season. Maybe they are going to end season three in a way that would tie up all loose ends and leave the fans happy just in case it’s not brought back next year. To be honest I’ll be happy if they are given one final season after this to show them graduate from Greendale, but with falling ratings every episode, it’s not likely.
Yiannis Cove