Their story begins in 2008. Annie flirts with Troy in high school, but he doesn’t have time for her nerdling ways because he’s being recruited for football. Abed finds a receipt in Shirleys sock drawer that shows that they were both at the mall at the same time. Britta runs into Jeff at the courthouse with her anarchist group, but Jeff is a lawyer. They fist-bump over a woman’s right to use her body however she wants, which they are both interpreting in very different ways. Jeff is at the courthouse to defend a stripper, Misty, who happens to be the woman Shirley’s husband cheated on her with, and “if it weren’t for Jeff that Jezebel would’ve been in jail instead of between my Laura Ashley sheets!” And, it was that very same high profile case of The State v. Misty that caused a jealous coworker to reveal that Jeff never received his undergraduate degree.

High school Troy fake injures himself doing a keg flip, which is like a keg stand but with bonus style points, to relieve the pressure of dealing with recruiters. He blames this on Annie, who is popping a lot of Focusin pills. Annie goes bonkers when Troy gets the Most Likely To Succeed award instead of her, and he insults her by not knowing who she is, which causes her to run through a plate glass window and inspires the catch phrase “pop pop.”

At the mall, Abed ruins Star Wars for Shirley’s kids by telling them that prequels are stupid. Which they are, but still. Then, Abed and Annie converge at Annie’s therapist’s office, which makes Abed’s the super villain. Jeff realizes that they’ve all made some really bad decisions, but insists that he is the true super villain because after Misty douses herself in glitter, Jeff encourages her to pursue Shirley’s husband.

Everyone gets so depressed that they leave to study at home. Abed goes to the mall and consoles himself with an oversized yogurt and too many toppings. Jeff and Shirley show up to make amends. Then Britta, Annie, and Troy. They all just really wanted yogurt. And, it’s where everybody was when deciding to go to Greendale based upon the very enticing flyers handed out by none other than Kevin Chang. It’s also where Dean Pelton realizes that he enjoys women’s lingerie. Well, wearing women’s lingerie. And there’s Chevy Chase, breaking the yogurt machine and faking a heart attack.

Maybe they were really all meant to be together. Or maybe they all just really like frozen yogurt. It’s hard to tell. Finally, Abed finds Chang in a heating vent in the study room and lets him know that he is the reason everyone went to Greendale. This means Chang has always been one of them, and Abed invites him for frozen yogurt. Which is all Chang ever wanted. Chang then stops trying to kill everyone, so disaster averted.

Next week, it’s graduation on the season finale.

It’s the anniversary of Britta and Troy’s first date. But Troy cares more about his anniversary with Abed because one year ago, they watched Freaky Friday…and they try to do the whole switching places thing but it doesn’t work. Or does it….The next morning, Troy’s acting a little bit Abedy, and Abed is acting a little bit Troyesque. After taking a moment to inspect the goods, they start the day in bizarro world.

When Troy and Abed arrive in the study room, they explain what happened with the whole switcheroo thing, and, like Chevy Chase, nobody cares. In order to switch back, they will need to recreate yesterday, which means finding the lost Freaky Friday DVD.

Britta calls Troy and Abed out on their story by going on her anniversary date with Faux Abed, who’s supposedly Troy. Then, they have “the talk.” About their relationship. Britta finds it easier to talk to Abed about Troy, so it helps that Troy is Abed. Then Troy, as Abed, breaks up with Britta, who is Britta.

Meanwhile, Dean Pelton tricks Jeff into switching bodies, and the results are rather amusing. Faux Troy has a talk with Jeff, who is now real Jeff again? Or is this Dean Pelton pretending to be Jeff? Somehow, Faux Dean Pelton is really Jeff. So there are two Jeffs? But this Faux Pelton must be Jeff because he says, “I’m at Greendale, stuck in the body of a man who could be Gollum.” Plus, Annie is oddly attracted to him.

Jeff, who may or may not be Dean Pelton, tells Faux Troy that Real Troy needs to show Britta that he cares. So Faux Troy finds Faux Abed, and they switch back to their own bodies (checking the goods for authenticity again). Then, the really real Troy tells Britta that he wanted it to work so badly…but they’re better in the friend zone. It’s okay, though. No really. They hug it out and everything.

While everyone was out Freaky Fridaying, Chevy Chase made all of the history banners. And, Dean Pelton says “having Jeffrey inside of me” about twelve times too many. But in the end, everyone is who they are supposed to be, and with who they are supposed to be with. I think.

Annie gives the group good news, and bad news. The bad news is, they failed their collective history paper, which Jeff needed to pass to graduate early. The good news is that Annie invited the professor to the party so they’ll have a chance to show him a good time. But, Jeff puts the kibosh on costumes and funny voices.

When the Professor arrives, he is already off to a crabby start. Then, Jeff tells Britta that he left his section out of the history paper because he was counting on everyone else doing a good job. So, it’s Jeff’s own fault that he’s failing. In an effort to get the Professor alone, Jeff distracts Chang with “poppy poppy paper.” But the Professor lets Jeff know that his sucking up won’t work, and lowers their C minus to an F, or F minus. To Annie, a C minus is the same as an F, so she told everyone that they were failing. Which they now are, so I guess she was right all along?

The group retires to the bedroom to come up with a harebrained scheme. In the meantime, Chang ties the Professor to a chair and offers to kill him if he won’t change the grade. The Professor says that the first person who unties him gets an A, but everyone else fails.

Although Winger encourages everyone to stick together, but the Professor is convinced that one of them will betray the group. He looks for “romantic entanglements” and notes that the “damaged blonde” is dating “the childish black one.” Britta volunteers that she used to date Winger, and Troy’s jealousy bubbles to the surface. The Professor’s plan is working….Next, he turns Shirley and Annie against each other by suggesting that Shirley could be Valedictorian. Finally, he gets Jeff to admit that he is the one who dropped the ball on the history paper.

Saved by the bell! Dean Pelton stops by and is angry that he wasn’t invited to the party. The distraction gives someone enough time to untied the Professor. But who? Winger doesn’t want to find out because the group functions on the strength of knowing that the six of them are being punished for something that one of them screwed up. To stop the Professor from betraying the betrayer, Jeff ties the Professor to the chair again.

Unwrapping presents reveals that he was never really tied up because Chang has no idea how to tie knots. He pretended to be tied up because he is a lonely old man. As a Christmas gift, he gives them a C plus. Chang takes a phone call from his…person? Leader? And explains that the group has not yet been expelled.  Then, Dean Pelton gives everyone the greatest gift of all—kittens!

Shirley and Troy sign up for what they think is P.E. class, but it’s really P.E.E. class: Physical Education Education. It’s a class to learn how to teach physical education to physical education students. Since it doesn’t actually involve any physical activity, Shirley quickly rises to the top of the class. She excels in the crucial skill of ranking students in order of ability, whereas Troy gets picked last because he is the worst student in P.E.E. class.

To test their skills, the P.E.E. teacher has drama students play the role of P.E. students in a locker room. Shirley has natural disciplinary skills. Troy, on the other hand, gets tossed in a locker. Nobody deserves to be mocked for being mock locked in a mock locker, so Shirley helps Troy become a better P.E. teacher by teaching Kevin how to play sports and drink from a water fountain.

Chevy Chase crashes the party planning committee, so Jeff takes a hit and distracts him with a whole day together. They go for a shave, and Jeff realizes that shaving your own face is for suckers when there are people to do it for you.  The shave ends with a snifter of brandy, and it turns out that Chevy Chase isn’t such a bad guy after all. He just wanted to get Jeff alone to deal with his father issues. But just as the unlikely pair starts to bond, Chevy Chase finds out that Jeff was only humoring him. Thankfully, good old-fashioned male bonding is hard to squelch, and it looks like Jeff and Chevy Chase will be spending more time at the barber shop, together.

To attract the whale, Dean Pelton offers Half Pikes And Half Pipes class with Professor Shaun White. City College gave Archie a scooter, so Greendale have to give him something even better. Annie suggests drugs, but they settle for telling him about Bikini Class 101 and throwing him a party complete with strippers and a balloon drop.

Archie is impressed and decides to attend Greendale, but Annie is not feeling good about what they’ve done. And when Archie tries to take another student’s catchphrase, Dean Pelton draws a line in the sand. As it turns out, being treated like a normal guy is all Archie ever wanted. Why do I get the feeling we just gained another cast member?

 

Reprinted with permission from www.survivingcollege.com

Chang•ne•sia [chang-‘n-zhuh]

Noun | Origin: Greek/Chinese

1. The complete loss of memory caused by a sudden trauma that was, itself, also forgotten.

2. See also: “Kevin’s Disease.”

Kevin is a Changnesiac. He remembers nothing. He doesn’t remember being hired as a Spanish teacher and then becoming a whole mess of other things before turning into Kevin. Britta has a theory that he used to be Kevin, went crazy, and then became Chang. So if he hits his head again, he’ll rebecome Kevin.

Clearly the best thing to do in a situation like this is to use it as a fundraiser for the school, so Dean Pelton tries to get a McGovern Institute grant to fight the disease, and also pay for the documentary to fight the disease. “This needs to be the Hoop Dreams of things people care about.” Oh, and Abed’s shooting the documentary.

Jeff thinks Kevin is fine, except for him being a lunatic. Shirley agrees, yet hired him to work at her cafeteria kitchen. “Welcome to Shirley’s sandwiches where the food is Kevinly.” I’m still a little fuzzy on the details, but apparently Kevin tried to kill everyone. Jeff wants to expose Chang in front of the whole school to show his friends how gullible they really are, because that’s what friends do for each other.

Jeff suggests Chevy Chase host the reception for the McGovern Institute. He puts Annie and Troy on the case of finding out what happened to Kevin before he got to Greendale, while Britta and Shirley are going to follow Chang around with a camera and record every moment of his life. And Chevy Chase is going to host the event with a racist hand puppet. Wait, two racist hand puppets.

Annie and Troy’s investigation takes them to a trout farm. Turns out the fish farmer used Kevin as unpaid manual labor for months before naming him after his dog, Kevin, and driving him into town.

Jeff is sure that Chang will slip up at some point because he’s not smart enough to play dumb. Luckily, Shirley and Britta’s camera catches Chang making a phone call.

At the reception, Jeff brings in former Mrs. Ben Chang, to show everyone that Kevin is lying about his Changnesia. Kevin does not remember her, but somehow he was dialing her phone number, repeatedly, and hanging up. He explains that it was instinctual, and the school received its grant, and Jeff is persona non grata.

Kevin is the bigger man and wants to start over fresh with Jeff, and they shake on it over cafeteria trays so it’s definitely official. Later it is revealed that Chang really is messing with everyone and has an evil plan that involves maniacal laughter, so that should be fun.

Shirley invites everyone over to her house for Thanksgiving dinner, but Jeff can’t go because he’s spending the holiday with his estranged father. Britta does a victory dance because it was her Halloween speech that brought them together. She invites herself along for emotional support because according to daytime television, parent-child reunions can get intense. Oh, and there’s also a half-brother.

Jeff and his father are like Frick and Frack, French and Saunders, Beavis and Butthead….His half brother, Willie Junior, however, is a disaster. “He’s the Schwarzenegger, I’m the DeVito, I get it!”

Everyone else arrives at Shirley’s house and meets her inappropriate family who fill the holiday with tension and backbiting. Because it’s awkward, the group hides out in the garage like trapped rats. Abed suggests a prison break, but they need a plan that won’t hurt Shirley’s feelings or destroy her property. Chevy Chase suggests faking a stroke and talking in a gibberish foreign language. Annie tries to break out on her own by pretending to have “girl problems,” but instead received an impromptu gynecological exam from Shirley’s sister-in-law.

The group decides that teamwork is their best hope and tag teams the rest of Turkey Day, popping into the house one by one and then retreating to the safety of the garage. Finally, Chevy Chase goes in and tries to fake a broken hip. But instead of a trip to the hospital, he finds the perfect audience for his crappy comedy routine.

Abed, Annie, and Troy were about to make a desperate move and dig into a rotten batch of seven-layer dip and suffer the consequences, but Shirley let them know that they were free to go since she only invited them as a buffer. Because they’re family, too, they stay and offer to bust Shirley out of there, with Abed helpfully drawing a map of Shirley’s house on his stomach. Shirley explains that those people may be awful, but they’re her family, so she goes back in for more punishment.

Winger’s father tries to take credit for Jeff’s success and dresses up abandoning him as a good thing. When Willie Junior asks his new big brother Jeff to teach him everything he knows, Jeff explains that their father was terrible. Jeff tells his father that he should take credit for how he turned out—a broken mess. To get out of the conversation, Jeff’s father faked a heart attack.

Something about Chevy Chase doing white face over black face, and Jeff makes everyone Thanksgiving dinner back at school. Which I guess is like their home.

Kevin is back and he still has Changnesia so a psychologist recommends emersion therapy and dumps Kevin on Dean Pelton.

The Germans are hogging the regular study table because something about a coffeehouse being closed, combined with German jokes. I think Chevy Chase insulted both Vietnam and Canada, and Abed realizes that he and one of the Germans play video games together.

The next day, the Germans are still at their study table. They like the table. They want the table. They call security. “Do you have a sign-in sheet?” “You’re asking for our papers? I thought this was America.” Annie declares war on Germany.

The Germans commandeer the study room the next day, too, and our crew ends up in a storage closet with fluorescent lighting. Chevy Chase electrocutes himself but not enough to kill him off entirely. They try even earlier the next morning and are again relegated to the storage closet. On day three, they get there “crazy early” and still no study room. Back to the storage closet, where all of their chairs break in a reference to something I’m not getting because this is supposed to be funny, right?

Jeff is not willing to give up the place they became a family. He decides to go Hogan’s Heroes on the Germans. All they need is a ruse. Bring on Oktoberfest, complete with luftballoons. The Germans are suspicious, especially of the giant German chocolate cake with nothing hiding inside of it except for Troy. As the Germans take a sip of the German beer, they are busted for celebrating their own cultural heritage (which apparently is against school policy) and are banned from certain school amenities, including study rooms.

The rest of the school protests their hogging of the study room because they’ve had it for three years and the only time anyone stood up to them, they got banned. So the study tables have turned, and now they are the Germans. Huh.

Meanwhile, Kevin is camping out in Dean Pelton’s office before checking himself into jail for all of the bad things that he’s done. Dean Pelton bails him out while dressed in a sexy nurse’s outfit because the real Kevin would never have showed remorse, so this proves that he really does have Changnesia.

Over German chocolate cake, Annie suggests that Jeff is Hitler. Naturally, Chevy Chase wants to be Hitler. Then, Jeff thinks that the history professor set the whole thing up to teach them the lesson that one man’s hero is another man’s villain. But he really just showed up to let them know that they missed the test. And failed. Which opens the door to another season of Community because Winger doesn’t have enough credits to graduate.

Instead of continuing their battle with the Germans, the group fixes up the storage closet study room for the next batch of students. Then Kevin shows up and everyone freaks out but I don’t know what that means because I still haven’t watched the first three seasons.

After gratuitous shots of Britt in black lingerie, Abed convinces Jeff to join everyone on a roadtrip to the Inspector Spacetime convention, or “InspectiCon” for those who choose to leave their action figures hermetically sealed in the original packaging. And by “everyone,” I mean not Chevy Chase.

At the convention, Britta is on a mission to find the only female inspector, Annie tries out a little cosplay, and Jeff wants to leave and go skiing…until he realizes that he bears a striking resemblance to a character on the show, Thoraxis.

One of Abed’s Internet friends, Toby, shows up. This freaks Troy out because the bond between Internet friends is strong and he is afraid that Abed will replace him with Toby. Britt advises Troy to play it cool so that he doesn’t scare Abed off.

Meanwhile, Shirley and Chevy Chase arrive even though nobody wants them there…except for the market researchers who are focus grouping an American version of Inspector Spacetime. Chevy Chase immediately ruins the show by suggesting they cast a tall blonde chick with a tennis racket.

And where’s Annie? Oh, she’s alone in a hotel room and goes a little batty when the room service guy calls her “Mrs. Winger.” She weaves an elaborate fantasy about their perfect marriage, until the room service guy tells her that Mr. Winger is in the lobby chatting up a lady (who has mistaken him for Thoraxis).  Rather than come back down to reality, she plays it out to the end and Jeff ends up with a drink in his pretty face.

Troy goes similarly psycho girlfriend on Abed, and it sends Abed running into the arms of Toby. But there’s something off about Toby. Like most Internet friends, his story doesn’t quite add up. Plus, he’s a walking Wallace & Gromit character. Abed realizes that he needs both Troy and Toby, but Toby’s not interested in sharing Abed with anyone and locks him in a phone booth. This leads to a Troy and Toby showdown, with Toby surrendering quicker than the French, and Troy and Abed rekindling their bromance.

Speaking of bromances, Jeff confronts Annie about the whole “Mrs. Winger” thing. She fesses up that she was upset about being ditched at the convention and maybe was sort of fantasizing that they were married. He lets her down easy, but to make him suffer just a little bit, she forces Jeff to order her an appletini. And that’s when we get treated to Jeff ripping off his shirt. Don’t ask, just enjoy the visual.

Oh! And cameos by Luke Perry and Jennie Garth starring in the American version of Inspector Spacetime. Thank you, Chevy Chase.