The evil timeline returns. Meh.

“Advanced Introduction to Finality” was fine.

No, really, that’s pretty much the only way to sum up the finale: fine. Adequate. Sufficient. It didn’t push any boundaries, didn’t upset the status quo, but it satisfied, and that’s good enough.

After passing history, Jeff is now finally set to graduate from Greendale Community College. His old partner at the firm (strangely not Rob Corddry) enthusiastically offers him back his job. Jeff, on the other hand, has his doubts.

These doubts linger as he agrees to a graduation party held in his honor by the study group and Dean Pelton. Jeff admits privately to Britta that he’s worried about how Abed might handle his departure. Britta tells Jeff not to worry, mentioning how Abed hasn’t mentioned anything about the darkest timeline in a long while.

Dramatic pause.

On the day of the graduation party, Troy ends up forgetting the soda, again. Jeff wants to decide who’s going to get the soda through a die roll. The die lands on a crack, in between two numbers. Abed freaks out.

Meanwhile, Evil Jeff does his Terminator teleportation thing into the dean’s office. He links up with evil Annie, and the two of them set off to alienate Jeff from the study group and force him back to his old job.

Evil Jeff sends Abed into the darkest timeline, Evil Annie steals Jeff’s phone, and before long the study group sans Abed, Jeff and Pierce ends up commiserating in Troy’s apartment. Jeff arrives at the party to find no one else there, save for Evil Annie.

She tries, but fails to seduce him, forcing Evil Jeff to show himself and try to shoot Normal Jeff with his magical teleportation paintball gun. Chang ends up taking the bullet, giving Jeff the chance to escape.

He rushes back to Troy’s apartment to try and explain everything. Abed then suddenly shows up, having successfully jumped back into the real timeline with paintball teleportation guns provided by Evil/Ra’s al Ghul Abed.

“We’ve finally figured out a way to make paintball cool again.”

The evil study group shows up in vaguely grunge leather crap redolent of The Matrix to fight the normal study group. Evil Shirley’s very drunk and misses all her shots, Evil Troy doesn’t seem to understand intimidation, while Evil Britta Britta’d her shot.

It all comes down to a showdown between Jeff and Evil Jeff. Abed gives Jeff a pep talk, pointing out how this is all taking place inside Jeff’s head. Jeff faces down Evil Jeff and sends the bastard back to the hell from whence he came.

Normal Jeff snaps out of his reverie at the study table, die still clutched in hand. He decides against rolling the die. The graduation party proceeds as expected until Pierce bursts in and demands to graduate as well.

The study group reconvenes at the study table after the party. Jeff gives us his closing Winger speech, the camera pans back and fades to black.

If this does turn out to be final episode of the final season of Community, I’m not quite sure how fitting a denouement “Advanced Introduction to Finality” is. The paintball material wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected, and the integration with the ramped up darkest timeline proved to be more fitting than “Intro to Knots” suggested.

The big issue with “Advanced Introduction to Finality” is that it treads no new ground. We’ve seen all of this closure, all of this character development at the end of the last season. In essence, the back third of season four has simply restored everything back to the way it was during season three: Troy and Britta broke up, Abed’s no longer on the verge of a serious mental breakdown and Jeff’s grown substantially.

Jeff’s graduation, then, ends up being a big “so what?” There’s not much of an indication as to where the show and its characters will go afterwards.

I wanted, I suppose, more of a closure, something that wrapped everything up so that Community could end here with its head held high. Instead, we have “Advanced Introduction to Finality,” which was, to reiterate, fine.

Tidbits:

· “Evil Troy and Evil Abed in the Morning,” however, could be a perfect close to the series.

· “Nobody sleeps with Jeff. Not even me.”

· I would nag about how shoddy the Pierce material was, but that’s really not fair to the writers who were forced to write Chevy Chase off. I liked that he left with at least some dignity at the end.

· “Wait, cold.”

· The entire Dean Pelton collage/Evil Terminator Jeff sequence was spectacular.

· I was a little deflated by the finale, but I still hope to see Community back next fall. Six seasons and a movie, yeah?