Community "Basic Email Security" Review

by Graham Osborne

Now we’re reaching the half way point of Community, I’ve started to work on a theory. The reason the show feels so different to its previous seasons is because they’ve hit a proper reset switch, not like at the beginning of Season Five with their Repilot, but a proper full-on reboot. The show has taken things back to the very beginning, with plenty of long forgotten aspects of characters coming out of the woodwork.

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The crisis alert of this week’s episode revolves around a hacker breaking into Greendale’s network and publishing the emails of various faculty members and the main cast. The episode falls into the same vein as Cooperative Calligraphy in Season Two, where a lost pen saw the Study Group almost fall apart. It seems strange to say that the best episode of this current series is down to the infighting between the group, and it’s the revelations and reactions from various characters that make it so strong. There’s no messy second storyline that draws attention away from the drama, just a pure, focussed beam that cuts through the miasmic fog that has been sapping the show and allows a glimpse of what once was there, and could maybe, someday, be regained.

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Further lending credence to my theory of flipping the reset switch is the resurgence of Britta’s true political activism. It’s been referenced a few times already since the return, but it is in this episode that it rears its head to show its true glory. Britta’s rant about freedom of speech, which manages to argue both for and against the concept, is quite possibly the highlight of the episode, and the fallout from it pushes the episode forward with great strength.

Basic Email Security has shown us that there is still that spark that made Community great in the first place, all they need to do is rekindle it to bring things back to that shining beacon of comedy it once was.

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