I’ve been hearing for months that Community was planning a stop-motion episode, and early reviews of the stop-motion Christmas extravaganza were super-positive. I really enjoyed it, but like the Halloween episode, it caught me by surprise. I was expecting a zany episode, but what we got instead was an honest-to-God Christmas special.
Instead of being ridiculously funny, this episode was kind of sad. The sadness is actually what I loved about this episode: it reminded me of one long Christmas song. All of the best Christmas music has a longing and a sadness to it, and that’s the same feeling that I got when I was watching this episode.
Everyone always tries to figure out the meaning of Christmas, but I liked this one: The meaning of Christmas is simply believing that there is a meaning. When it comes down to it, this is an arbitrary time of year, but regardless of our deeper beliefs, we all just get together and agree that it means something, regardless of what that “thing” may be.
As far as musical episodes go, this one was pretty cool. Other than Yvette Brown completely getting down, none of the castmembers really have Broadway-quality voices. The ordinariness of the voices made the singing seem more organic, and less Glee (which is appropriate, considering how much creator Dan Harmon hates Glee).
I also loved John Oliver‘s return appearance, but we could have used more Chang. I want to hear that guy sing a song! I also loved the gang’s Christmas alter-egos, and I do appreciate how even in stop-motion, Britta still managed to be a total pill.
Last but not least, here are the lyrics to the song they sing at the end:
Christmas time is a time to sing That’s what Christmas is for
Clacked by Kona Gallagher 
on Dec 10, 2010 @ 09:00 EST5EDT
I don’t know what everyone else thinks but I’m hoping there was absolutely no significance behind having Annie and Jeff sing the “I love you” part of that song while glancing sideways at each other. Right?
*POST AUTHOR*
I know! I noticed that the second time around, and I really hope it doesn’t mean anything. I’ve talked about how much I dislike the idea of them getting together, but I can’t imagine that the placement was accidental.
I’m glad I’m not crazy!
And, yes – in light of everything that’s happened since last season, it would be pretty sloppy to have that scene play out like that if it was meaningless…
I noticed the same thing … wrong, wrong, wrong! Although Annie does secretly carry a torch for Jeff, so perhaps it’s just that.
Probably I’m overthinking this, but since the claymation thing is all from Abed’s perspective, maybe it’s just Abed imagining that Jeff and Annie are still likely to get together.
I hope that’s all it is; I really feel like their whole “relationship” thing has run its course.
Troy and Abed in STOP MO-TION!
Was the snowman sneaking around in the background of scenes supposed to be Chang I wonder? Did anyone else see that?
Umm… they made it very very clear that the snowman was Chang. The snowman even said “I’m not a snowman, I’m Chang!”
I did see Chang-Snowman sneaking around. All in all, this episode was fantastic.
I love when Community goes meta and this was uber-meta this week.
Did anyone else think that Abed’s mom is really cruel? That she actually wrote a letter telling her son to get over their relationship because he’s an adult and she’s moved on? My God!
Also, I don’t know if anyone else noticed it, but they brought in Dino Stamatopoulos (the creator of Moral Orel) to do the stop-motion.