The gang behind NBC's Community is horrendously in-touch with their inner gamer. Showrunner/creator Dan Harmon is no stranger to making the most of nerd references, from the inside joke character Inspector Spacetime (who's really a Doctor Who nod) to the paintball match that morphs into a combination of First Person Shooter and John Woo homage in "Modern Warfare." Just in case you've been under a rock and never even heard of the show, it's a weekly comedy that follows the adventures of a study group at Greendale Community College led by Jeff (Joel McHale) and his study partners/friends/kooks.
Last night's three-part season finale began with "Digital Estate Planning" went back to an earlier arc, but the premise is what makes it game friendly: in order to gain control over his family's wealth, Pierce (Chevy Chase) has to play a video game developed by his family's company. The animated sequences are entirely 8-bit throwbacks, recalling the same nostalgia that the Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: The Game brought when it was released last year on Xbox Live and the Playstation Network.
It's the type of fantasy setting that pokes fun at scrolling through endlessly, pointless items to find a spell or the wanton murder of characters because they're playing a video game. At points, the randomness could be a bit much (really,a giant floating Colonel Sanders head?) Or when Abed figures out he can distort and control the world since, as we now know, the hackability of those simplistic 8-bit games that can be repaired and restored with parts from an electronic's store. The sentimentality for gaming was lost on some critics, like the A.V. Club where the references weren't as welcome:
"It's possible I would have liked the episode more than I did if I were more of a gamer, but I got most of the tropes being mocked, and the show just never says anything new enough about them to provoke lots of laughter."
It's not as entirely tongue-in-cheek as G4's Code Monkeys,but the appreciation for retro gaming humor is always welcome in a time where memes on the Internet and in-game jokes are becoming stale faster than Link can kill a chicken. Yes, we mean the obvious one:
But how would we compare this to an iconic sitcom turning into a video game itself? We wouldn't go any further than 8-bit Mad Men, 8-Bit Breaking Bad or the viral Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now, which is an absurd take on Perfect Strangers, the show's catchy theme song and then one of the show's characters, Balki (Bronson Pinchot) flies around collecting stars to make your dream come true. Insane? Yes.
But Pinchot himself loved the game--save for one TMI detail he told TMZ. TV and gaming can continue to co-exist, as long as they keep intersecting into wonderfully odd moments on the Internet. Besides, what other shows should go the low-rez route, or what games try to break onto the big screen?
