The Dark Knight Returns to Avenge His DVD Set on Last Night’s ‘Community’

Allow me to be the millionth person to say this about last night's episode of Community: This isn't the sitcom we deserve... it's the sitcom we need. And last night's episode was the perfect example of why. It involved the pretty typical sitcom setup of one of the characters destroyed a valuable possession belonging to one of the other characters -- so typical, in fact, that the show itself comments on this fact -- but it did it with the offbeat cleverness that makes Community so great.

And like all great stories, it did it with Batman. If you missed it, check out the full episode below!

The episode also involved a completely unexplained anime sequence as two characters hashed out their personal issues over a foosball table, and it's not the first time that Community has used geeky pop culture elements as part of its storylines. Last season, the show got some attention from nerdier audiences for building an entire episode around a game of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Unlike other shows that go to that well as a source of comedy, however, the geeky stuff is never just the cheap punchline.

Case in point, Abed's transformation into Batman, which comes complete with Dany Pudi's hilarious take on Christian Bale's infamous growl and a sample of Hans Zimmer's score from The Dark Knight. It might not be based on a tragedy to the extreme of a double murder, but just like Bruce Wayne, Abed is reacting to a world that he no longer understands. The moment when Annie actually fesses up and he tells her that doesn't make sense in the new world he's created where crime is the enemy is such a complex reflection of Bruce Wayne's motivations that I should probably get David Uzumeri in here to break it down scene-by-scene with me.

Of course, it's also a dude in a funny costume yelling at a larcenous creep with a foot fetish. I might be reading into things a little bit.

Either way, it makes for some great gags that are smart and silly, which is exactly what Community's all about -- and what makes the fact that it's being put on hiatus in January such a bummer. I mean, really, where else on television can we get a story we can all relate to, about a guy who pays a lot of money to have an actor who played Batman sign a DVD with an autograph codifying his relationship with the Dark Knight?

That is something we can all relate to, right?