'Community' Season 2, Episode 2 Recap

['Community' - 'Accounting for Lawyers']

When you go to college, you get to leave your past behind. It's a new place, with new faces, and no one to remember all the indignities and insults of grade school. At college, you can decide who you are, and no one can contradict you. But what happens if your past shows up on campus, and you find you're happy to meet it?

Jeff Winger isn't some teenager just off the bus from high school. He was once a successful lawyer at a prestigious (or at least profitable) law firm. So when he bumped into an old colleague at Greendale, he had to remember who he used to be, and decide if the old days are worth revisiting.

This episode brought in Rob Corddry ('The Daily Show', 'Children's Hospital') as Alan, a former co-worker of Jeff's who was hanging around campus for Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Alan drew Jeff back into old habits, like using advanced arguing techniques to bend others to his will, wearing suit coats, and testing his bonds with the study group. And wouldn't you know it, it was just the worst time for that sort of thing, because Greendale was celebrating Oktoberfest, and it wouldn't be Oktoberfest without the annual Pop-And-Lock-A-Thon. It wasn't just a dance competition. It was a dance competition where the fate of Poland is at stake. (Or maybe it's just an iPod.)

The "old friend from the past" is a familiar sitcom plot, as is the dance competition, but that's not a surprise. 'Community' uses the language of television clichés, transcending the formulae while staying true to their spirit. Which is why Jeff's plot with Alan played out as you'd expect, and why the dance competition ended with group-hugging and a disqualification. (Sitcoms are hardly ever about winners. Plus, the disqualification undercut the sentiment of the group-hug.) Usually the show adds an extra layer or twist to the familiar plot-lines, but not in 'Lawyers.' The episode's ending was too rote to be really inspired, but the jokes were strong enough that it's hard to complain too much.

For instance, Jeff's dalliance with the Dark Side was something we've seen before: The character has always struggled with his cynical past and his new, emotionally open friends, so watching him go slick and evil for a while doesn't have as much charm as it once did. But the trip to the law firm party paid off wonderfully, with a cute guest turn by Drew Carey (who has a hole in his hand), and a dramatic mini-monologue for Jeff that explained why he was so enamored of the law. (He decided to be a lawyer when his parents divorced as the only person who came out of it cleanly was the lawyer, because he didn't have to care about anything.) His change of heart at the end was too preordained to have much impact, but that monologue was well-done, and made up for an otherwise entertaining but on-the-rails story.

As for the rest of the group, Troy, Abed and Annie got the episode's funniest scene, when they broke into Alan's office to find proof that he ratted Jeff out. When a custodian found Troy and Abed, Annie chloroformed him, and when they panicked, Abed's solution was for everybody to be chloroformed. It was a beat of unexpected, surreal silliness. Community does a great job of balancing traditional structure with moments of pure insanity, using each to reinforce the other, so while this was weird, it wasn't so weird that it stopped "Lawyers" cold.

This wasn't quite as strong as the premiere, but it might just have been funnier. There were some perfect gags, the characters were as charming and consistent as ever, and Chang suffered. Some shows use the second season as a chance to redefine themselves, but this is a series with no real need for reinvention.

And another thing ...

-- It's not really quotable, but Annie's attempt at charades? Beautiful.

-- "DA used to call us The Litterbugs, we put so much trash back on the street."

-- Britta quoting Jon Stewart quoting Johnny Carson? Good joke, and a meta moment for the show's whole approach to humor.

-- "Our concern is that Alan is to Jeff what Rob Lowe was to James Spader in the 1990 film,' Bad Influence'."

-- "If they gave awards for mind games, the statue'd be Jeff Winger doing it to a brain."

-- "Did you know that go-gurt is just yogurt?"

-- "Because if someone comes up here, Kanye and Kumar get taken to jail. You get taken to dinner."

-- "She's a stripper. Life sued her and she lost."

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'Community' airs Thurs., 8PM ET on NBC.