Cannes Film Festival 2013

HitFix First Look: A 'Community' family reunion

Jeff Winger and his dad get together, with a little help from Britta

<p>Joel McHale as Jeff Winger on "Community."</p>

Joel McHale as Jeff Winger on "Community."

Credit: NBC

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Dan Harmon didn't leave an awful lot of dangling threads for his "Communitysuccessors to tie up, but one big one is Jeff Winger's search for closure with the father who abandoned him and his mother when Jeff was young. This Thursday's episode, "Cooperative Escapism in Familial Relations," finally brings Jeff face-to-face with the man he's resented for so long — in the form of an actor who's starting to specialize in playing estranged TV dads.

In this clip — exclusive to HitFix for the next few hours — Jeff and his father attempt to lay out the ground rules for how this reunion will work, with help from Britta, who's overjoyed by the opportunities this presents to test out her new knowledge (or lack thereof) of psychology. 

Alan-sepinwall-sm
Alan Sepinwall
Sr. Editor, What's Alan Watching
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

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  • Default-avatar

    jstone77

    Well, there goes my hope of Bill Murray as Jeff's dad...

    March 4, 2013 at 3:10PM EST Reply to Comment
    • Default-avatar

      adama1843 No, he needs to replace Chevy Chase if there's another season.

      March 4, 2013 at 8:41PM EST
    • Default-avatar

      lazy iggy @jstone
      Mine too.Stripes has been on a lot lately, and I was keepin my fingers crossed we'd see a stripes inspired episode or bill Murray walking slowly down the halls of Greendale.
      Ohs wells

      March 4, 2013 at 9:30PM EST
    • Default-avatar

      --bd No, you two. Abed has already answered that for us. It will be Fred Willard. And it will always have been Fred Willard. Something involving a shower or a snow-globe.

      March 6, 2013 at 10:37AM EST
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    jenfullmoon

    Wow, Britta, "sleep with each other?" Damn, girl.

    March 4, 2013 at 3:29PM EST Reply to Comment
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    Karen

    That's not even funny.

    March 4, 2013 at 3:40PM EST Reply to Comment
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    Daggor

    The new show-runners have no idea what they're doing. That would have been a perfect time for Winger Sr. to say: "She's the worst."

    March 4, 2013 at 5:10PM EST Reply to Comment
    • Default-avatar

      hahahahaha! I think this might be my favorite over-criticism of Community 2.0 yet -- "Dan Harmon would've written a different line there and I know exactly what that line should've been!"

      March 4, 2013 at 5:22PM EST
    • @HAHAHAHAHA!

      Internet fans are truly better writers than the writers of the very shows they watch.

      March 4, 2013 at 10:58PM EST
  • Default-avatar

    Irrational Cry Baby

    THE NEW SHOWRUNNERS CAN'T DO GOOD CLIPS AND I KNOW BECAUSE I AM A TV GENIUS THEY ARE BAD AT EVERYTHING BASED ON A MINUTE OF VIDEO I DECIDED THIS EPISODE SUCKS BEFORE EVEN WARCHING IT WHERE IS DAN HARMON WAAAHHHHH WAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!

    March 4, 2013 at 5:19PM EST Reply to Comment
    • Default-avatar

      GRubi Lol. This comment made me laugh. But I will say that this one particular clip was pretty unfunny. But that doesn't mean the rest of the episode will be that way. I've more or less enjoyed the first four episodes

      March 4, 2013 at 5:49PM EST
    • Mr_burns_89_01_talkback_profile

      Jonas.Left That would have been a hell of a burn, if we hadn't seen four full epsiobes to judge the new show runners by.

      March 5, 2013 at 6:01PM EST
  • Default-avatar

    connor

    well, i thought it was funny.

    March 4, 2013 at 7:07PM EST Reply to Comment
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    Ethan Landa

    He may not have said it, but he was definitely thinking it. Very funny clip! And there's always room for a your the worst later.

    March 5, 2013 at 1:24AM EST Reply to Comment
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    Arthur F.

    I'm interested to see what happens, if just because I invested in the beginning of the series and this storyline was important.
    Pity that's what the series became for me, viewing out of curiosity the disjointed mechanics. Mostly out of respect just because there was a time it really surprised me and loved the combination of writing and characters.

    Britta's entrance in the end of the scene with one of her psycholo-propisms bothers me because it tries too hard, delivered sitcom style, you can hear the laugh track afterwards, and not Community style, where lines were delivered in conversations that went by in real time and the convoluted Britta-logic (or Pearce or Troy/Abed isms) felt part of the mix and fit the tone (this did not) even as the scene goes on.

    So yes the new episodes aren't awful, but Community was more than "not awful".

    March 5, 2013 at 3:53AM EST Reply to Comment
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    Tobias

    does that mean Jeff Winger and Rick Castle are brothers? That actually makes a letter sort of sense.

    March 6, 2013 at 11:29AM EST Reply to Comment

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