Community ‘Conventions of Space & Time’ review: Bow before Thoraxis

It pains me to give this grade, but “Conventions of Space and Time” merit it. And it’s not even what the episode didn’t address (more on that later), but rather what it did do. The main plot of the episode was focused on Trobed, and it’s the one story line that was handled correctly. As Troy and Britta tried to hide the fact that they were sleeping together from Abed, Abed decided to try to distance himself from Troy, as he felt Troy was distancing himself from Abed. We’ve gotten this plot from a couple of Troy/Abed episodes, but this felt appropriate because of Britta – a new addition to Troy’s life.
With Shirley and Pierce, it felt as though the script writers were just trying to fit them into the convention, when really, it would’ve been better if the characters weren’t forced there at all. It seemed as though that who subplot was leading up to the admittedly stellar end tag, but other than that, there wasn’t really any comical payoff. It’s obvious that the writers were referring to Community when they had Shirley talk about how Inspector Spacetime was smart and didn’t talk down to their audience, but was I the only one that felt that saying that so blatantly was kind of talking down to the audience? I don’t know, it wasn’t like the normal audience references that make my heart swell up in appreciation for the show, or at least crack a smile (a la the opening song for last season’s premiere. I’m about to watch that, actually.)
And then you have the Jeff/Annie storyline, while I also have sort of a problem with. It seems like the show is gearing up for the potential-series finale at the end of this season, bringing together Troy & Britta and Jeff & Annie. And yeah, personally, I don’t mind Jeff and Annie. But this storyline felt all wrong. It felt like Annie was regressing back and ignoring all this character development she’s made in the past few seasons. And I don’t know, when I was watching it I felt that uncomfortable feeling you get when a character makes such a fool of themselves. I JUST FELT SO UNCOMFORTABLE FOR ANNIE. Though I read somewhere that they appreciated this Annie storyline, as it reminded them of the stellar “Mixology Certification” episode. Sigh. I miss that. And that last scene was nice between Jeff and Annie; combined with the awesome Allison Brie throwing drinks in Jeff’s face, it might’ve redeemed the whole storyline for me.
Speaking of Annie’s character regression, there’s been this nagging little opinion on my mind since the second episode. I know we’re not that far into the fourth season, but it feels like they’re starting to do things for the character that’s convenient for one episode. For example, I was lead to believe that Annie would be “chill” and carefree this semester from the first episode where she claimed she had senioritis. There was no follow up to that, but this could be because we literally have not had one school scene yet. I remember when this show used to be about community college.

Tidbits
Best Britta line of the night (soon to become a weekly thing): I don’t care about Inspector Spacetime. Yeah, neither do I really.
CAN WE GET A DAMN STUDY ROOM SCENE ALREADY?!
Again, that endtag was the bestest. Duhdoy!
PS WHAT IF I ACTUALLY KEPT PROMISES I MADE ABOUT TIMELINESS AND LONG REVIEWS?
It just wasn’t that funny of an episode. It only had a few payoff moments, not a solidly and genuinely funny feel to it.