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.

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.

The show starts out like a low budget Saved By The Bell, complete with laugh track and applause from a can of audience. But don’t worry, it’s only a glimpse at the inside of Abed’s head. You see, it’s their last year of school, and Abed is a little freaked out at all of the changes. So Britta told him to go to a happy place in his mind which involves everyone wearing hipster reading glasses, and, well, this is Abed’s idea of happiness.

The entire school is attempting to register for the only history class offered that semester—History of Ice Cream. Appropriately, registration is on a “first come, first served” basis. Or, so they thought. Dean Pelton has different plans, and registration is based upon performance in a Hunger Gamesesque battle. Why? I’m not sure. But it probably has something to do with Jeff being two history credits away from graduating, and the dean being two strawberries short of a shortcake.

There’s a lot of hitting and running and punching and Chevy Chase is sitting on the sidelines desperately trying, but failing, to come up with a ball joke that’s marginally funnier than his talk show.

Meanwhile, Annie decides to do senioritis, and recruits Shirley as her partner-in-crime. After Shirley nixes several of Annie’s more subtle pranks, they decide to fill the dean’s car with popcorn. This involves wrapping the interior with tinfoil, pouring kernels into the car through the sunroof, and waiting for it to pop a la Jiffy Pop.

There’s something going on in Abed’s head that I don’t understand involving human Muppet Babies.

Britta and Troy have progressed to handholding and do some sort of ritual where they toss pennies into a fountain in exchange for wishes. Britta wishes for a great school year, but Troy has the forethought to wish for a thousand wishes and then gives some to Britta. She wastes one of them on wishing for an end to all wars, which Troy correctly points out is a bad thing because Star Wars, thumb wars, and Storage Wars. A fight ensues, and the wishing fountain turns a little wet-t-shirty.

There’s a tear-away dress and a tango, and a freshman mixer inside of Abed’s head. His anxiety about their final year is so acute that he is stuck in his happy place. Jeff snaps him out of it by giving a moving speech…in his head, Inception-style.

In the end, Jeff loses the competition for the only history class physically and intellectually lazy Americans would ever sign up for, but Dean Pelton offers another history class that semester so that Jeff can finally graduate. Oh, and Pelton bought the condo next door to Jeff, with absolutely no subtext.

Next week, Kevin returns with a bad case of Changnesia.