Last night, NBC’s ratings-challenged cult favorite Community paid homage to comic books with a stylized, in-joke-laden episode titled “Heroic Origins.”Premising the episode on M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable, Abed posits that the study group is like a superhero team, having had their destinies itersect a number of times over the years and ultimately being destined to come together. He’s got a diagram to show how that all works and goes back to the superhero/Unbreakable metaphor periodically throughout the show. There’s also a kind of recurring motif where a key moment is followed by a screen freeze and Ben Day dots, ostensibly aping the look of a comic book page.Ultimately there isn’t a lot new here; Cougar Town just did an episode a few weeks ago with an almost identical premise, but better execution and a good deal more subtlety and cleverness as to how the characters’ destinies had intersected in the past. The Ben Day dot device used in the episode is virtually identical in both look and execution to one used on an episode of Psych in late 2011. Community, arguably, has its fingers more on the pulse of comics and their fans than do those others, although it’s debatable.You can check out the video at the embed below.
