The second episode of Community season 6 was a step down from the great premiere. It had some solid laughs, but the story was pretty disappointing.
The episode focused on the reveal that Britta’s parents have been secretly helping her by re-paying all her debts to her friends. It took this show six damn seasons to really get into Britta’s family backstory and when it finally did, it’s pretty disappointing. She was able to move in with Annie and Abed because they supplemented her rent. Britta is upset that all her friends have been talking to her parents in secret and no one else can understand why she doesn’t like them. All of this is hard for me to buy.
The trope where someone hates their family and their friend group insists they’re being ridiculous is always my least favorite. And I especially don’t believe that Jeff and Annie of all people would have trouble believing that her parents can present themselves as perfectly nice people when there’s actually more to the story. Furthermore, I don’t believe that Britta has been borrowing money and leaching off of all her friends all this time. I buy that she’s barely getting by, but there’s no way she’s been unapologetically asking friends who also have part-time service industry jobs to help her that much.
The ending with Frankie telling Britta to accept that her parents are human and her embracing this felt a little too clean and very typical of TV. That said, Britta was adorably excited about the fact that we’re all going to die.
The b-plot of the episode had the Dean becoming addicted to old school virtual reality technology. It’s a fun idea but it repeated the same note a lot. The plot did give us Keith David as Elroy Patashnik, which was enjoyable.
