Community Season 2, Episode 6
"Epidemiology"
Original Airdate: Oct. 28, 2010
Writer: Karey Dornetto
Director: Anthony Hemingway
Cast: Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Yvette Nicole Brown, Alison Brie, Donald Glover, Ken Jeong, Chevy Chase, George Takei, Jim Rash, Greg Cromer, Richard Erdman, Dino Stamatopolous, Erik Charles Nielsen, Craig Cackowski
This episode was voted on by the Pop Heist readers as the Best Halloween TV Episode of all time!
Nobody did pop culture references like Community.
'Epidemiology' opens with ABBA's "SOS" playing over the narration of George Takei. "Halloween, a time of vampires, hobgoblins, Draculas, boogens and headless mice," he tells us.
At Greendale's Halloween party, Jeff and Pierce discuss the taco meat on offer. Pierce says it's pretty good, but perhaps he's not the person I'd want vouching for its quality. Jeff points out that it's military rations from a surplus store. The party isn't going quite as Dean Pelton hoped, either. As Britta points out, the playlist keeps playing his personal voice notes. "Check Netflix for that movie where Greg Kinnear plays a ghost... no, an angel." Can't fault the Dean for loving Greg Kinnear!
We get some classic Britta and Jeff banter. She pokes fun at him for putting so much effort into looking "accidentally handsome" when choosing his costumes. He tells her it's only half the effort she'll spend eating and drinking.
Annie arrives, nervous that Shirley's costume is too ambiguous for her to identify. "She's not Miss Piggy," she warns them. Of course, Shirley rolls up looking and sounding exactly like Miss Piggy, asking everyone to guess who she's dressed as.
Abed shows up as a Xenomorph, paired with Troy as Ripley in her Power Loader exoskeleton. The costumes are made even better by both of them providing the appropriate sound effects. Jeff calls Abed out for spending too much time on his Comic-Con costume.
Meanwhile, Pierce is sweating and hallucinating thanks to the taco meat. Annie takes him to a doctor, but it turns out to be just a guy in costume. The real doctor is dressed as a banana (aka Rich from pottery class). Pretty soon, the Dean brings over some other sick partygoers. When Rich suggests food poisoning, the Dean scolds him for not ruling it out as he'd asked. As Starburns walks by, Pierce bites him, setting the events of the episode in motion.
Chang shows up dressed in a figure skating costume. When he asks the others to guess who he is, they start naming Asian figure skaters. He reveals that he's Peggy Fleming, proving they're all racist, just as he'd intended.
Jeff begins to notice the increasingly weird vibe of the party, as people around him seem to be falling into some sort of trance.
After getting a talking-to from Jeff, Troy has changed into a "sexy Dracula" costume. Abed is understandably surprised, since they'd planned coordinated costumes.
Starburns seems to have fully transformed after being bitten by Pierce. In his office, the Dean calls the surplus store to complain about the taco meat, only to discover he's served biohazardous meat to the entire school. His call is interrupted by Special Operations Officer McHenry, who tells him to listen carefully.
Back at the party, Leonard tries to attack Shirley, but she manages to fend him off. Rich and Annie warn the rest of the gang that something is seriously wrong, just as Leonard bites someone on the neck. "Holy crap, Leonard's a zombie!" Troy calls out.
The party descends into chaos as "Dancing Queen" plays. The Dean locks everyone inside, having been ordered to quarantine the building until the army arrives. The gang runs for their lives, fending off attacks along the way. "You punched a lady bee!" Eventually, they manage to barricade themselves inside the study room.
Rich explains that everyone has been infected and it's only a matter of time before the infection takes hold. It's the end of days. Abed and Troy want to barricade the room, but Rich insists they first need to check whether anyone has been bitten. Everyone will be at risk if they don't come forward. Of course, Rich has been bitten himself.
Annie suggests lowering the temperature of the entire building to break everyone's fevers. Abed knows where the thermostat is and pitches Troy on rising to the occasion like Ripley by "kicking monster butt in their undies." But Troy isn't Ripley anymore. He's sexy Dracula.
Rich starts describing the symptoms, capping things off with "sluuurrrreed speech." Turns out Britta has also been bitten. Both she and Rich thought they were special. "Nobody's special!" Jeff yells at them. Chang decides to throw an ice skate at the infected pair to "destroy the brain," but misses and breaks the window keeping their zombified classmates from getting inside.
The surviving members of the gang rush off, accompanied by "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)." Chang and Shirley wind up in the bathroom, where he recognizes her costume as Glinda the Good Witch. He goes in for a smooch.
Troy, Jeff and Abed end up in the basement. Abed wants to hash things out with Troy after being called a nerd. As they make their way through the basement, a cat keeps flying past them. In one of the episode's best line deliveries, Troy asks, "Is someone throwing it?" Abed wants to get to the thermostat, but Jeff just wants to escape. Rather than climb through a window and ruin his suit, he heads for the door, where he's immediately swarmed by zombies.
Troy and Abed find a momentary reprieve and head for a window. Abed lets Troy escape so he can be the first Black man to make it to the end of a horror movie, sacrificing himself in the process.
Outside, Troy finds the Dean, who threatens to mace him if he's a zombie. Troy announces that he's going back inside to save everyone. After punching the Dean and taking his keys, he's asked how he plans to do it. "I'm going to be a nerd," Troy tells him.
Accompanied by "Mamma Mia," Troy dons his Power Loader exoskeleton and attempts to force his way to the thermostat. Unfortunately, the costume just gives the zombies more places to grab onto him. "I don't know why I thought this was a good idea," he admits.
Troy fights his way through Annie ("What big fists you have... in your face!"), Pierce ("Beam this one up, Scotty... in your face!") and Shirley ("I don't know what you are, but in your face!"). But it's Abed who ultimately bites him on the arm. As Troy begins to succumb to the infection, he crawls toward the thermostat, managing to reach it just before fully transforming.
As everyone wanders around aimlessly, the air conditioning kicks in at the exact moment ABBA sings, "There was something in the air that night." Perfection.
The secret agents arrive, ready to implement Scenario B. Everyone wakes up with no memory of what happened. Britta concludes that someone mass-roofied the entire party, while Troy and Abed decide to go watch Marmaduke.
The episode ends with George Takei providing a free voicemail greeting for Kevin and wishing everyone a happy Halloween. In the stinger, Troy receives a voicemail from Chang claiming that he and Shirley "totally did it."
"Why did he call me?" Troy asks.
The whole thing is a perfect satire of the zombie movie. This type of thing was what Community did best (see: the paintball episodes or the D&D episode). It could take familiar genres and commit to them so completely that the parody becomes as entertaining as the thing it's poking fun at. The incredible visuals of the episodes, the ABBA soundtrack and the joke writing all combine to make it a fun episode. But that's not to mention that within it is a lovely little storyline about friendship. It's everything that made Community special and it's not hard to see why Pop Heist readers (and Brett) chose it as the Best Halloween TV Episode of all time.
This recap was made possible because it topped the list of Best Halloween TV episodes, so we should probably rank the Halloween costumes.
- Dean as Lady Gaga
- Troy as Ripley in a Power Loader exoskeleton / sexy Dracula
- Abed as a Xenomorph
- Chang as Peggy Fleming
- Brita as a t-rex
- Annie as Little Red Riding Hood
- Shirley as (not Missy Piggy)
- Pierce as Captain Kirk
- Jeff as David Beckham
