Community Report Season 5 Episode 9 “VCR Maintenance and Educational Publishing”

BANG! Did I win?
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Hooray! Brie Larson is back on Community as Rachel the coat check girl, and she and Abed have already been dating for a month at the beginning of this week’s episode. Character growth! This week was another character-centric episode, so here’s what happened.

The Save Greendale Committee splits the group into two again, and most of them end up with storage room cleaning duty, because Annie decided to break her patterns and be unpredictable.

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Then, the Dean raps about a lack of a payday on campus while dressed as a Payday, so money’s pretty tight.

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Annie and Abed throw a small dinner party, and both of them have the goal of convincing the other that someone should move in to replace Troy, because the universe is a cold, unfeeling wasteland. Abed wants Rachel to move in even though they’ve only been together for a month, but Annie would prefer her brother, who is… easy to handle.

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It doesn’t go so well, but hey, at least Abed learned to smile.

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But, the awkwardness continues…

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So, Annie and Abed decide to settle the question over a round of 90s VCR game Pile of Bullets, and they shake on it. The handshake is a pretty decent metaphor for how their living dynamic is going without Troy.

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Meanwhile, the others find a pile of brand new text books while cleaning the storage room, and if you have no idea how expensive college text books are (lucky), you might have trouble understanding why everyone reacts like they’re drugs. They all get a little crazy, but no crazier than usual.

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Jeff and Pierce Hickey are still pretty surprised by Shirley’s initiative when they decide to sell the books to get some cash.

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Back at Abed and Annie’s place, the game of Pile of Bullets is in full swing, and, well, it goes kind of like this:

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No, I don’t think any context would help explain it better. What you see is pretty much what you get.

Rachel and Anthony don’t react well to being fought over in a confusing VCR game, which probably has to do with how creepily intense Annie and Abed were about playing it.

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So, neither of them wants to move in, and Abed stages an elaborate movie trope apology to Rachel, who accepts, because it’s adorable.

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The rest of the group goes pretty nuts over the textbooks, but when it turns out they’re all misprints and aren’t worth anything, they all learn the important lesson that they’ve learned absolutely nothing.

Everything pretty much goes back to normal, and no one’s really worse off for it, except for the Dean, who has lost his freestyle rapping moment.

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(images via Community)

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Dan Van Winkle
Dan Van Winkle (he) is an editor and manager who has been working in digital media since 2013, first at now-defunct Geekosystem (RIP), and then at The Mary Sue starting in 2014, specializing in gaming, science, and technology. Outside of his professional experience, he has been active in video game modding and development as a hobby for many years. He lives in North Carolina with Lisa Brown (his wife) and Liz Lemon (their dog), both of whom are the best, and you will regret challenging him at Smash Bros.