My Dinner with Abed: Emotional Truths and the Lies We Tell Ourselves on Community

It's safe to say that Community will never give you exactly what you think you're getting. In this case, this week's brilliant and moving episode of Community ("Critical Film Studies"), written by Sona Panos and directed by Richard Ayoade (of The IT Crowd and The Mighty Boosh), seemed to be a spoof of Pulp Fiction. It looked and sounded--from the promos and the information being sent out by the publicity and marketing teams--like Pulp Fiction, so it had to be a spoof of Quentin Tarantino's landmark film, right? Wrong. While there were elements from Pulp Fiction in play for Abed's PF-themed surprise party at the diner where Britta works, the episode itself was an astute yet emotional homage to Louis Malle's 1981 film My Dinner with Andre, which is essentially a conversation between two men (Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory) about the nature of reality, of fabricated theatre, and of true and honest experiences as opposed to robotic reactions to popular culture. This is not what one might expect to find in an American broadcast network comedy series. But that's precisely, as I've argued so many times in the past, what makes Community the smartest and most astute comedy on television today: its innate ability, built into its very DNA, to be infinitely flexible with its format, its tone, and its reference points. "Critical Film Studies" did that on several levels, giving us a surprise party for Abed that celebrated his love for pop culture and what he deems "cool," which in...

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