“Advanced Documentary Filmmaking” is the weakest documentary episode so far.

It’s incredibly rare for a show to be completely undermined by its stinger, and, yet, here we are with “Advanced Documentary Filmmaking.”

Last night’s episode finds Community once again adopting a multi-camera Office-esqe format. This time, Abed has been charged with creating a documentary for Greendale’s application to the MacGuffin Institute for a grant to study Changnesia.

Jeff, however, still doesn’t buy Kevin/Chang’s Changnesia routine, so he sets out to reveal Kevin/Chang’s lie in front of the whole school and the MacGuffin Institute. Jeff, being Jeff, decides to go about this by pretending to be in support of Kevin/Chang and using the study group to dig up the evidence against Kevin/Chang under the guise of getting footage for Abed’s documentary.

Troy and Annie investigate Kevin/Chang’s missing months at a trout farm, Britta and Shirley get footage of Kevin/Chang working and Pierce practices his black-face hand puppet routine for the presentation.

Jeff combs through all the footage shot, trying to find something incriminating until he manages to find a clip of Kevin/Chang calling his ex-wife’s phone number. This sets the stage for the disastrous MacGuffin presentation where Jeff brings the ex-wife over to try and reveal Kevin/Chang’s ruse.

I liked the direction the show took with Kevin/Chang. Chang had slowly devolved into a Gollum-like abomination after season 1, so it was refreshing to see the show put a far more human spin on him.

Pitting Jeff against the newly rehabilitated Kevin/Chang worked well as another one of those Jeff’s a jerk episodes, even if it added nothing particularly new to the formula.

The documentary aesthetic, however, is wearing thin. I liked it in its first outing and the second iteration fitted the story, but using that format to tell this particular story felt wrong. The documentary stuff just feels forced onto a story that probably would have been better shot normally, as if the writers were desperate to come up with another multi-camera episode.

Some of the little details are appreciated, like the opening credits and the jokes about cutting footage, but the conceit as a whole was uninspired and poorly executed. Compare “Advanced Documentary Filmmaking” with “Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking,” and you’ll see what I’m talking about. The rhythm and pacing was just off last night, and the script definitely needed a few more passes.

This, however, is a minor problem. So let’s talk about the big problem with last night’s episode – that stinger which revealed that Chang was faking all along as part of a complicated City College scheme.

When I saw what was going to happen, I literally groaned out loud. In service of some (likely to be) lame conspiracy arc, Community ruined just about the only time I ever sympathized with Chang. I didn’t like Changnesia at first, but I warmed up to it during this episode because it reset a troublesome character and presented, in his replacement, a fairly likable, eccentric character.

That little reveal at the end basically brings us back to where we started with Chang – a psychotic madman has been unknowingly set loose in Greendale. I seriously don’t look forward to Ken Jeong’s double agent routines now that the cat’s out of the bag.

Credit, however, goes to the writers for ending the episode on an ambiguous enough note such that Jeff’s character arc didn’t depend on whether or not Chang was faking. The reveal did undermine Jeff’s arc slightly, but the main point – that Jeff needs to start trusting and respecting everyone else’s judgment – still stands.

Tidbits

– I don’t appreciate that Tree of Life jab, guys.

– While the stinger did totally ruin the episode for me, I did like how it tied into the ending from season 3.

– Chevy Chase’s performance is, again, disappointingly lackluster. The racist hand puppet gag was a complete non-starter

– The Greendale library has a book titled How to Wear Hats. Of course.

– “I’m Chinese?”

– “I was pretty relieved when it was a naked Asian guy and not a trout.”

– “Growing up I had a dog named Troy, a bird named Troy and a hamster named Troy. They were all older than me…oh my god.”

– “My logic is flawless!”

diversionsdbk@umdbk.com