Alison Brie as Annie on "Community."

Credit: NBC

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We are exactly one week away from the return of "Community" to NBC's primetime lineup, as the show starts all over again in its old Thursday at 8 timeslot on March 15. (Earlier that day, Hulu should be posting the archived stream of the "Community" PaleyFest panel I moderated, though I've already seen excerpts floating around on YouTube.) But since the show remains not on the air this week, it's time for one final installment in my weekly series on why I've missed the show during its absence.

I had a big backlog of clips to choose from, and was on the verge of going with Abed as Don Draper, just so the series could somehow feature every plotline from season 1's "Physical Education," but it's not there anymore. Then I pondered something from "Modern Warfare" (which I'd held off on using as long as possible) but couldn't find a good standalone excerpt. I briefly pondered the chloroform scene from season 2's "Accounting for Lawyers," which is among the most explosively funny scene the show's ever done, but a good chunk of it was featured in the montage of Troy crying from the very first entry in this series. After thinking long and hard on other possibilities, I decided to go with another scene that never fails to make me laugh: Annie and Abed making love, nerd-style, in season 2's "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons." 

Annie's barely-contained sexuality is one of the show's more bountiful wellsprings of humor (even at PaleyFest, it seemed like virtually every audience question for Alison Brie involved Annie hooking up, or more, with other characters), and this is one of my favorite examples of it. Here, it's not even about Annie losing control of her hormones, but Annie's irrepressible Type-A side leading her to do the required job as effectively as possible, decorum be darned. Brie's miming is brilliant, as are the reaction shots of her co-stars to sweet, innocent, girly Annie showing off a very dirty, masculine side when she accidentally winds up playing as the character Hector the Well-Endowed.

In fact, why don't we start with the clip of how the study group winds up playing the roles that they play in the game: 

And here's Annie's moment to shine:

Once again, feel free to talk about the clip, Annie, or anything and everything "Community"-related as we count down the days until the show returns. (You can even go watch the movie-style trailer for the new episodes, though please don't discuss any plot details from it in the comments.)

The first episode back (which was screened at Paley) is a very good one: Shirley-centric, and a funny, effective example of what a "normal" outing for the show looks like. At Paley, Dan Harmon promised that things get weird in a hurry after that, so we may need to buckle up.

Alan Sepinwall
Sr. Editor, What's Alan Watching

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Alan Sepinwall has been reviewing television since the mid-'90s, first for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, The Star-Ledger, and now for HitFix. His new book, "The Revolution Was Televised," about the last 15 years of TV drama, is for sale at Amazon. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com