Ask any Community fan when the beloved NBC sitcom was at its most ambitious, when it
cemented it s identity and legacy, when it cranked out some of the best and most interesting
episodes of broadcast TV in recent memory, and you ll most likely hear the same answer,
repeated again and again: season 3. This is when the show really started swinging for
the fences, consistently. The cast had fully figured out their characters, the writers
had figured out how they all fit together, and Community had become fully committed to
exploring the weirdest, most outr aspects of its identity. But that isn t to say this
season, these episodes are universally beloved. That side of things is what I m interested
in today. Was there a downside to this new, wackiest approach? Did the show pay a price
to enter this imperial period? That s what we re asking in today s episode
of Streets Ahead, the series where we go year by year to look at the season premieres of
Community. This time, we re jumping into season 3 with Biology 101 (clip-
ANNIE: Abed s has a new favourite TV show Jeff! It s called Inspector Spacetime
JEFF: Can it, boobs!) It s a memorable episode, but not everyone
s the biggest fan of it, as it turns out and as such I think it s a telling microcosm of
this season, of the show s most interesting period.
Biology 101 picks up after the two-part season 2 finale, which saw Pierce finally leave the
group, after his villain arc. Now? He s back or so it seems. Everyone but Jeff is ready
to accept him, but since he couldn t get a place in Biology, Jeff manages to keep him
out of the study group proper (clip JEFF: Pierce! We ll see you when we see you). This
is all fine and dandy until Jeff himself gets kicked out of Biology, letting Pierce in,
and the tables are turned. Jeff gets a taste of being the outsider, to a degree he never
had before, and this experience, combined with some unexpected chemical assistance,
leads to a bust-up of legendary proportions (clip- JEFF: I have become agitated. I apologise.
[screaming] I ll kill the one thing you love! I ll kill it!). It seems like that s the nail
in the coffin, that Jeff s finally out for good, only for something truly unexpected
to happen Pierce takes the fall for Jeff s deranged behaviour, takes the prestige hit,
to bring things back to normal, and that s basically it. Along the way, we re introduced
to Inspector Spacetime, as well as Vice-Dean Laybourne and Professor Kane, in my eyes,
two of the show s best guest characters. And speaking of the new, this episode kickstarts
a lot of fresh dynamics the third season would embrace alongside Jim Rash s promotion to
series regular, the Dean s got a meatier role, he s a perspective character here, and the
little story he gets is the prelude to that whole aircon repair school story that s one
of this season s throughlines. Similarly, we see the start of the Chang villain arc,
and Britta s, just, an idiot now. Season 3! But beyond the more obvious stuff, the setup,
the shifts in characterisation, Biology 101 also gives us a look under the hood of season
3, what s driving the show this time around. And we see this from minute one, in the song.
I can t just play you the whole thing, because the studios that own the rights to programs
like this tend not to understand fair use very well, so I ll have to play it you in
chunks, but this is how the episode starts: (clip JEFF: We re gonna fly to school each
moring, we re gonna fly the entire time! BRITTA: We re gonna be more happy, we re gonna finally
be fine!) Now in the episode, this song is Jeff s vision
of the prospect of a year without Pierce. (clip
ANNIE: Jeff JEFF: Oh, sorry, what was the question?
ANNIE: What are we gonna do without Pierce in the study group this year?)
) But the sequence plays another function. In opening the premiere, opening the season,
of a show which d struggled with numbers in a musical sequence pledging conformity, promising
facetiously to dial the weird back, stay normal, stay fun,
(clip DEAN: CHANG:
ALL: We re gonna have more fun and be less weird than the first two years combined!)
the episode gestures toward the audience, towards the show s reception and consumption,
and from the way Biology 101 pushes back against this pressure to be normal, lambasts it you
can sort of detect how keenly this pressure was being felt. Whether that pressure, those
expectations, came from the network, the audience, or the minds of the writers themselves, the
message here is clear: Community s not giving in. Toward the end of the episode, this is
all made rather explicit (clip- DEAN: I just came by to tell everyone this year s not going
to be that different). The Dean s story this episode functions as a sort of continuation
of that opening song his new prim, proper and economically-minded persona utterly defeated
by a series of increasingly odd, increasingly expensive, increasingly invincible obstacles
(clip - LAYBOURNE: You bring your head down to my appendage tomorrow and I ll show you
wassup ). To see it all come crashing down is cathartic, and sets the tone for the year
to follow. You want Greendale to get normal? To chill out and be happy? Yeah, no. Here
s an episode about monkey gas hallucinogenics, axe rampages, and secret AC repair schools
and it only gets weirder and darker after this.
In the episodes to follow, that original slice-of-life collegiate flavour was replaced, increasingly,
with high-concept rigamarole dice-roll-determined parallel timelines, Christmas-themed bodysnatchers
singalongs, wartime documentary spoofs, 8-bit adventures, and so much more, like a whole
bunch more including a very self-conscious, self-congratulatory obsession with telling
you that this is the darkest year yet (clip- ABED: this semester s been so long and dark
and angry ). Anyway on that weirdness. This whole thing is a trend, not a total shift,
it is still the same show, but as trends go, it s a fairly clear one. Much digital ink
has been spilled on the weirdness, the absurdity, the experimental nature of season 3, so I
don t want to spend too long arguing for something most of you watching are already well aware
of but if you want a pithy summation of this shift, how s this: Community suspended its
disbelief in itself. Community started to commit to wild ideas without worrying so much
about keeping those ideas grounded, or about having its characters react realistically
to those ideas. Classic episodes like Virtual Systems Analysis or Regional Holiday Music,
for instance, only work if we play along. It isn t just that wacky events occur - to
a degree we d not seen before, even in the paintball episodes, in the Claymation special,
characters do not react to those wacky occurrences in realistic ways. And we see that here, in
Biology 101. Despite featuring some classic moments, despite
kicking off this beloved period, a good deal of fans don t love this one. Posts, comments,
takes, like this one aren t uncommon online when Bio 101 comes up the major complaint
being the way the group reacts to Jeff s desperate antics. After all, Pierce is welcomed back
with open arms after having done way worse things, way more and so the harshness of moments
like this feels abrupt and unearned (clip- ANNIE: what did you did, it s hard to get
past that. I know you re already out of the study group, but I m going to have to ask
that you stop being my friend). Similarly being kicked out of Biology for an annoyingly
loud phone does seem pretty manufactured. But I don t think this is some unique failure
in this episode s writing. No, to me? It s simply an instance of that season 3 dynamic.
The episode has an idea creating and exploring this Jeff/Pierce equivalence and devotes itself
to exploring that idea. Maybe Jeff and Pierce s fraught relationship is due not to an extreme
difference, but to an extreme similarity maybe we can see that, take it to some drama-rich
places if we swap their positions within the group. It may well be that in the story we
got, this is a false equivalence what Jeff did probably isn t Pierce levels of bad, it
is strange it sees him instantly, totally ostracised but that s the conceit, and fully
exploring the conceit is more important than the conceit being a perfect fit especially
since let s be honest it would be near enough impossible to really sink Jeff to Pierce levels
of villainy in a single episode; at least in such a way that he could reasonably be
forgiven afterward. I think this impulse, writ large of placing the idea above the need
for a perfectly naturalistic ramp-up to that idea is visible all throughout this third
year. It s the kernel at the centre of all those more surreal, more obviously conceptual
episodes, but it s here too, from the start. And one result is.. character weirdness, maybe
some degree of Flanderisation. So maybe moments like the above are the corollary of season
3 s wildness - are the price we pay for this willingness and ability to go anywhere. For
some people, some fans that cost is simply too great.
But here s the thing. Sure, it s a little divisive. Sure, we lose a little something
in the realism department. Sure, at times, our characters inch toward caricature, and
cartoonishness. All this is true but it slaps. I m sorry, it does. And all that applies to
both Biology 101 and season 3 as a whole. Maybe at times there s a lot you have to swallow
for the episode, for the season to come together, but it does come together, even at its most
zany. And to really just hammer this home, I ll stop waxing poetic in the abstract, and
come back to the specifics of Biology 101 because the other way this episode sums up
season 3 is that even when divorced from these metanarratives, the show s golden age, its
greatness, its slide toward absurdity, blah blah blah, it is just good, impressive and
impressively executed. Biology 101 is about biology kind of. (clip
PIERCE: I stand before you a more highly evolved Pierce Hawthorne.
JEFF: I think we ve evolved beyond reliance on a group at all. Aren t we just actual friends
now, no matter where we are? KANE: I stared at a crack in the ground of
my cell for years, and one day something grew from it. A single blade of grass.
) Kane s presence here isn t just to provide narrative impetus for the downfall of Jeff
Winger it gives us the episode s theme. See, this is the third season these characters
have now known each other for years, and they re still falling into the same traps, the
same misunderstandings and blow-ups they had been all along. Three years in, what do they
have to show for it? For much of this episode, it seems like not much. It seems like for
all the bottle episodes, villain arcs, paintball, there s been no real progression, no evolution.
But then, at the end, that shifts. Pierce lies to the group, sacrifices his own standing,
to throw Jeff a lifeline, which is taken, and cemented with another little surprising
gesture to close things out (clip- KANE: Sorry starface you just lost your seat
in my class. ). We return to the status quo, but we only
get back there through real, unexpected change. The result is one of the most interesting
episodes for that Jeff/Pierce relationship I ve touched on before. The result is an episode
in which the sprout breaks through. Maybe something of the show s earlier naturalism
is sacrificed for this story, but it s replaced with something equally real.
And, hey, it s a shame the rest of season 3 rarely gives us this layered a Pierce. That
is, maybe, the one respect in which this episode isn t totally reflective of its wider season.
But aside from that, I think this episode succeeds, and succeeds in the same way the
third season at large does. I don t want to suggest this is everyone s
favourite era of the show on balance, I m probably more of a season 2 man myself but
it s inarguable that this is the greatest, the grandest, the most flashy, most confident
period of Community s run, and that it holds a special place in a lot of hearts. Maybe
in the show s urge to differentiate itself, to get wild, to kick back against the pressure
to normalise, to place the idea above all else, resulted in some rough edges. Maybe
that even contributed to the backstage shakiness that plagued this season s reception a surprise
hiatus occurred midway through this season s airing, and showrunner Dan Harmon was, of
course, given the boot between this year and the next. If this premiere did have more fun
and be less weird than the first two years combined maybe ratings would have better,
and none of that would have happened. But from my vantage point in 2023? I think Biology
101 shows us that while there might have been a cost of sorts, a price to pay for this era,
this period of peak creativity it is one that s well worth paying.
Thanks for watching today s video. If you re new here, feel free to let me know below
what you thought, smash that MF like button, and subscribe to get notified whenever I end
up making the next episode of Streets Ahead. Seasons 4, 5, and 6 are considered by many
to be a weaker second half to the show s run, and to a point I agree, but honestly I always
was more excited to get into those premieres than any of the ones I ve done up until now.
This video took a weirdly long time to write, like, twice as long as something this long
normally takes me, so sorry for the wait and there s probably gonna be a little wait for
the next upload, too. I m super busy this month, and the rest of the videos I have planned
for April are on the longer side but if you re too impatient, if you want the Content
Pipe to vomit forth more Video Essay slurry on the double, consider joining my Patreon
there s a bunch of exclusive videos already out there, and another one coming this month.
It s going to be a really cool video, I ve been looking forward to making it for a while.
Until then? I ll just thank all my current Patreon supporters onscreen now, especially
Daniel Goldhorn, Heather Long, Ryan Emerle, and WeirdyBeardy, and get out of your hair.
Cheerio!