Herstory of Dance (Season 4, Ep 8)

You Can Watch the Episode Here

The Greendale 8??

Character Development, as far as the eye can see! Abed, how far you have come and I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we are all thrilled for his romance with Rachel. This dramatic developed was brought together by the Dean's most recent dance. In classic form, the Dean announces this dance to the Gang while dressed like a 1950's housewife. After the Dean tells that group that it will be a Sadie Hawkins Dance, Britta decides to make her own dance in protest. She starts to "britta" the situation by calling it a Sophie B Hawkins dance instead of  Susan B Anthony dance. Not backing down from her mistake, she promises Jeff that Sophie B Hawkins (a singer from the 90's) will be at the dance. Annie and Shirley both decided that they can find a date for Abed.

Abed opens the show by stating that in order to grow as a person he has "been making a conscious effort to get away from filtering everything through a TV." But presented with the opportunity to go to the same dance with two different girls (a classic opportunity for high jinx that was a "once and a life time opportunity") despite his desire for personal growth. He then allows Annie and Shirley to believe that Abed has picked their date. He even brings two sets of clothes tailor (Ha, puns) to each of the dates. Cue my favorite new character.

 

"We're you talking about me?"

Actually, yes we were, Rachel. Abed explains to the Coat Check Girl (Rachel) that he will be coming back to change clothes a few times and lies about not being about to decide which pair of clothes to wear. He goes hangs out with each of his two dates for a little while and then leaves to get punch. When he returns to the coat room, Abed and Rachel have this charming dialogue. (Click on her picture above to see the scene.) In classic romantic comedy style, Abed screws up and misses the person he is supposed to be with (Rachel) while chasing after the other love interests. He makes a public, fiery confession and Rachel comes back to him. Abed makes an apology and they enjoy the rest of the dance together. Through out this episode we see many instances where they click quite well and overall seem to genuinely fancy each other.

Sorry buddy, you did not need a fake mustache to get chips.

This moment wouldn't have been possible without Troy, by which I mean, since Troy couldn't help Abed, Rachel was able to help him. Troy gets roped into helping Britta with her dance but we can see that his desire for malarkey/ antics isn't being satisfied. Troy is disappointed by the banal tasks of gathering ice or getting more potato chips and desperately tries to make it an adventure.

Could this be a possible rift between Troy and Britta? To add to this possible division between those two, Jeff sends Britta a strangely personal text message at the end of the episode, even though they are standing ten feet away from each other. They then share a long gaze, then stand next to each other while Sophie B Hawkins performs. They have a history, and things between Annie and Jeff have been pretty stagnant. 

The last piece of character development felt the most forced. Through out the episode, Pierce is telling Britta to hold her ground against Jeff and continue to through her Sophie B Hawkins dance even though she won't show up. In the end, Pierce is some how able to get her to perform because of his old business connections. He then lectures Jeff about how "he doesn't like how he talks to her." Since when is Pierce a nice guy, especially to Britta. His final monologue felt forced and sappy. Possibly to placate Chevy? Or maybe these last two episodes were making him seem kinder so that he can be a jerk in one of the upcoming episodes (which wouldn't be a good reason, honestly).

Either way, I hope Rachel becomes a regular cast member AND i can't wait for this week's puppet episode. Check out the the clip to "Intro to felt Surrogacy." My favorite part of the clip, That the Jeff puppet has moving eyebrows. lol

See you guys soon,

leave me some comments,

Tom