Change is all around us.
Whether it’s Kendrick’s transformation in his new album or the LSU basketball team finally going further than the NIT, large shifts from the norm happen all the time. Murmurs still revolved, however, over what Yahoo! Screen might produce in its first season showing Community.
The response was a demonstrative and meta statement from the season’s first two episodes, released early Tuesday morning. Community is in a new place, but it is still as self-aware as ever.
Episode 1: “Ladders” 
Belushi references, nonsensical montages and a blood oath against society. To open season six, “Community” was nostalgic.
The season opener was written by Joe and Anthony Russo, a pair integral to the show since its inception. Perhaps this is why the episode carries so many similarities from the first two seasons, whether its the show’s zany atmosphere or the never-slowing-down plot.
The quickly show handles the loss of Shirley, played by Yvette Nicole Brown, with Chang questioning the loss of minorities in the group. It wastes no time in introducing Frankie Dart, played by Paget Brewster, an administrator who has arrived to assist in keeping Greendale in tact.
Greendale itself is anything but intact, as the show opens on the crumbling of the roof after too many frisbees are thrown on top. Leonard’s brief flashback to the ‘70s made the entire sequence worthwhile.
Frankie gets to work on not only the school but establishing her character to an eager audience. She resembles Annie through her work ethic, but her most defining trait is her choice to be bland. She chooses to be the to do the lame work, an ideal Abed finds is the “most interesting take on not being interesting.”
The bluntness causes Jeff, Britta and Annie to panic and form a counter group, one still focused on helping Greendale but also on creating a speakeasy in the back of a sandwich shop. The group is not afraid of change, but rather scared of losing the school’s identity.
No dull authoritative figure leads to drunken debauchery and a collapse in structure and rules. And as the characters learn, every school needs its rules, and every class involving ladders needs its sobriety.
Those fears the old study group have about Frankie are, of course, the same fears many fans carried going into the show’s all-digital move and the loss of Brown. The episode serves as a message from creator Dan Harmon: “It’s ok guys, we’ll stay goofy, but we’ll stay make you learn.”
As mentioned before, the episode repeatedly gives off a “season two” vibe. The speakeasy reminds one of the saloon in the second paintball episode, and the “apology montage” is truly a scene to treasure.
Maybe the digital move was for the best. Maybe the network which finally let go of this show was the only one holding it back.
Grade: A-
Episode 2: “Lawnmower Maintenance and Postnatal Care” 
After the first episode established a base, the second went straight for a character’s introspective. A character in desperately in need of a night off as the punching bag.
Britta Perry has always been a curious character to me. Her angsty and independent side gave way for her buzzkill persona in later seasons, and many forgot this was a real character possessing real emotions.
Somewhere there was still the Britta who dropped out of high school to impress Radiohead and got tear-gassed at a World Trade rally. When it’s revealed Perry’s parents have been bribing her friends when they can’t reach their daughter, interdependent Britta returns in full force.
The major conflicts don’t always have the perfect reasoning throughout the episode, but an encounter Britta has with Frankie in her car hits viewers exactly where it should.
“We want to see them as Gods or Demons to make us heroes,” Dart says, bringing home the belief any teenager has of a parent not on his or her wavelength.
In the B plot, Dean Pelton buys a virtual reality system that makes outstanding physical comedy and an introduction to a new character, Elroy Patashnik (Keith David). Patashnik is the inventor of the system and after admitting its defectiveness, begins to ponder enrolling at the school.
The episode was written by Oscar-winners Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (who also plays the Dean), two writers known to touch on emotion. Doing it this early is a sign Harmon and his writers still aren’t scared of breaking norms.
“Community” has had a world of changes in six seasons, but as Pelton says in the second episode, “If you change everything that’s different, sometimes you find out everything’s still the same.”