Community

Community

Episode 9: Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism

By: Carlos Uribe

Community is a show about a group of friends attending community college.

Spoilers Ahoy!

Foosball is a generally silly sport, one that some people take too seriously. I was personally not to good at it myself, but I knew people who liked to play it in their free time. I could understand why people would take the sport seriously, why they would place such an importance on winning a foosball game. In this episode, both Jeff and Shirley took foosball seriously. Through the sport, they managed to connect further and get closer than they were before. It also revealed another dimension of Shirley's character, further exposing the facade she's set up for herself. She may be religious now, but she has a deep dark side that makes her fit in with the rest of the study group. Jeff has always been a character who pretends to not care, but who really does. He does this because he's damaged.

When Jeff was younger, he played foosball as a way to prove himself. He didn't have a father figure, so the game was a way to prove his masculinity without actually catching or throwing a ball. It was a game that he liked to play, and he believed himself to be decent at the game. When someone crushed him at foosball and mocked him for losing, he lost all interest in the game. He came to see the players as obnoxious and he distanced from himself. He pretended to stop caring about the game and started to build a wall to protect himself from further pain. The loss was so devastating that he even switched schools and clothes, even his personality. Part of the reason Jeff is the way he is can probably be pinned to that moment of childhood pain.

Of course, it's just foosball. How painful could this loss have been? It wasn't just losing the game that caused this pain. It was the bullying that came with it. The person who beat it was a total bully-so much so that she made Jeff wet his pants. That person turns out to be a younger Shirley, who used foosball as a way to express her inner anger. This is such a shocking turn for the character, since for the most part we know that Shirley hasn't always been perfect but we know little else about her past. This suggested that Shirley's childhood was nowhere close to perfect, that she must have had a tough upbringing. I'm not sure if the show has told us this before, but this is the first time I'm learning about it. It instantly grounds Shirley further and probably explains why her religion is so crucial to who she is; to who she has become. The moment she made Jeff wet his pants was a moment she soon reflected on. She started to dislike foosball after that day and it may have signaled a time when she may have started to go on a road of redemption.

There was also the sub-plot of the episode. Annie accidentally crushes Abed's special DVD of The Dark Knight, and rather than come out and admit it she tries to cover it up. This ends up blowing in her face and she has to own up to it in the end. It was a pretty funny sub-plot, and it was deep in it's own way. Sadly, I'm running out of time so I'll just say that I like how the show took a clichéd storyline and managed to make it seem more real and grounded. It took a formulaic storyline and managed to twist it enough so that it didn't feel old and stale. That's a pretty major accomplishment, and it was made even better since the sub-plot provided the best jokes of the episode.

This episode was instantly great. I'm not sure yet if it was a classic, but it was funny and moving at the same time. I also must admit that I was impressed by the anime scene the show managed to throw in there, especially since the show had been building up to that moment. A moment that was instantly deflated as Shirley and Jeff both realized they were perfectly decent human beings, who didn't need a game to prove their worth.