Community: PIERCing goodbyes....

"We're doing a bottle episode", Tonight's episode recalled the classic "Cooperative Calligraphy" bottle episode, in fact--- it so matched the claustrophobic format of that episode that it is almost remiss that Abed did not make some sort of meta-textual observation about its repetitiveness. Pierce makes one last attempt at emotional manipulation from beyond the grave and, ultimately, a final attempt at making amends as only Pierce could--- on Jeff's sexuality, they will just have to "agree to disagree".

Still, the final bequeathments were both sweet but still laced with the show's trademark humor; Annie's tiara was once worn by Pierce as a child because his mother wanted a girl and each member, in addition to their personalized inheritance, is left a sample of Hawhorne's own freeze-dried sperm (I'll admit... the first one was funny, the second one less so... but when he left them to the male group members as well, I was cracking up).

It should also be noted that Pierce expresses a bit of a grudge towards Abed, the one group member not extended any sort of post-houmous olive branch, and states that he never understood anything he said.  This is because, more than any other character, Abed represents the meta-textual nature of the show something that, in real life, was much of the conflict with Chevy Chase who never understood the concept of reference humor (Based on the commentary, he was much happier doing good old fashioned physical comedy).

Was tonight's episode great? Not by any means, but it was an all around solid episode and, in Pierce's departure, it has laid the groundwork for Troy's (Donald Glover) departure from the show. I'm not blown away yet, but here's hoping that Harmon and Co. are just warming up 

UPDATE: Thanks to my following of community on Facebook, this was brought to my attention:

 Nice!