By Galen Simmons

For your consideration, I submit to you seven ex-Greendale Community College students: Jeff, Britta, Shirley, Annie, Pierce, Troy, and Abed. They found out last night that the school they attended for the past three years (13 in Pierce’s case) only existed in their minds. Greendale is actually the name of the mental institution they were all patients in, up until their recent release.

But all is not what it seems. Were the Greendale Seven really patients at a mental hospital, or was this part of some dastardly plot by the school’s head of security to keep them from uncovering the dean’s disappearance and subsequent replacement?

Oddly enough, it’s the latter of the two, even though the mental hospital’s explanation makes a lot more sense and would explain some of the people who attended Greendale as their classmates / fellow patients.

With that in mind, here are five things I learned from last night’s episode, “Curriculum Unavailable.”

1) John Hodgman makes a very convincing fake psychiatrist. For most of the episode, he had me convinced that all three seasons of Community were just delusions of seven mental patients. OK, fine, maybe I wasn’t completely convinced, but is it so wrong to want to believe your favourite show would end with exactly the same twist as Shutter Island (movie-spoiler if you haven’t seen it, but if you haven’t, I’m very disappointed)?

2) Pierce is becoming senile. Even a fake psychiatrist could see that. He’s slow to react, rude, and forgetful, and that was all before the senility began to sink in. Now it seems like Pierce has the potential to forget he was talking to someone in mid-conversation or even in mid-sentence. But I guess everyone is little crazy-town-banana-pants sometimes. Read more…