COMMUNITY “Horror Fiction” Touches on Familiar Ground

Right off the bat, “Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps” has two things working against it. While this was a very funny half-hour of Community, it lives in the shadow of the previous episode, “Remedial Chaos Theory”, and last year’s “Epidemology”. Both were better episodes, but for different reasons. “Epidemology” may go on to be Community’s best Halloween episode, and every subsequent attempt will fail in comparison. How do you top strange army meat that turns you in to a zombie? You just can’t. And “Chaos” was so similarly structured; it’s a shame these two episodes were aired so close together. If “Chaos” and “Horror Fiction” had been given more time in between airings, it might not have stuck out so much, but there you have it. I’m sure “Horror Fiction” would look a lot better when just randomly watched on its own.

The episode is very inspired by anthology type specials such as The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror series. The basic set up sees Britta having made the group fill out psychological evaluations and discovering one of them is a sociopath. She has everyone tell scary stories in order to determine which of the group is off the rails. It’s a pretty thin plot device, and while it gets a few laughs toward the end once the group realizes what’s going on the meat comes from each persons horror story.

As I mentioned before, the episode shares a similar structure to “Remedial Chaos Theory” in the way it has seven separate mini stories. While “Chaos” set out to show how each person affects the group, “Horror Fiction” examines how they all see each other. Annie, for example, sees Britta as somewhat of a sexual threat in her quest to win Jeff’s heart. Pierce sees himself as a character simply named Magnum and has all the women as playthings. This is where the best moments in the episode are. Whether it’s understanding Shirley views everyone as a bunch of sinners (with the Dean as the devil. Simply marvelous) or chuckling at what Abed thinks being married to Britta would be like, it’s a great insight to these misfit characters’ minds.

If only the ending had been as satisfying. While I laughed at the site of the entire group turning against each other and brandishing different weapons (Troy’s pencil fingers!), the realization that Britta simply messed up the psych exams felt pretty uninspired.  I did chuckle at the idea that they all may be insane (except Abed, and possibly Jeff), but it was just a weak way to end the episode.

On the bright side, I truly believe this would be a more enjoyable episode the second time around, once you’ve gotten past the obvious comparisons to what has come before. The jokes were well placed and the laughs were big. It’s inevitable for a sitcom to retread familiar ground, but that doesn’t mean they can’t still do a wonderful job at creating great television. Community, even on its worst day, still puts out its best product.