Recap / Community S2 E13: Celebrity Pharmacology 212

Drugs Are Good!

Kid: Hey, you're not Drugs!
Chang: Oh, but I aaaaaaam! Disappointed? Did you expect me to stay the same forever? 'Cause that's not what Drugs does, baby! I'm gonna deep fry your dog and eat yo momma's face, and I'm gonna wear your little brother's skin like pajamas! I control your lives, and there is nothing you can do.

The study group is helping Annie put on a play to educate about drugs. Pierce, who has some ideas on how to "improve" the performance, follows Annie home to discuss these changes. After assisting Annie with a financial problem, he uses this leverage to get his changes to the play. When Pierce's scene-stealing antics threaten to ruin the message, only Chang can right this wrong.

Has a YMMV page.

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The Community episode "Celebrity Pharmacology 212" provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents:
  • Pierce's father was a huge jerk. He says he preferred the child actor in the commercial to his own son.
  • Annie reveals her mother was in denial about her daughter being Annie Adderall. She apparently made Annie choose between going to rehab or having financial support. Annie chose rehab to save herself from an eventual overdose, at the cost of being cut off.
• Accidental Aesop: invoked An Invoked Trope in-universe. After Chang takes over Pierce's role, the play ends up with the accidental message "Drug use can be fun at first, but usually becomes dangerous and scary when it spirals out of control". Ironically, this message ends up being much more effective (and accurate) than the generic Drugs Are Bad message that the play was originally intended to teach.
• Actor Allusion: This episode has nothing to do with Chevy Chase’s troubles with drugs.
• *Bleep*-dammit!: The PA announcer at Dildopolis reassures customers that for their discretion all purchases will show up on their credit card statements as "AVC Dildos".
• Broken Aesop: In-Universe. Annie's anti-drug abuse play for middle-schoolers backfires thanks to Pierce's interference. The intermission ends up with a room full of middle-schoolers chanting for drugs. The message gets reconstructed though when Chang takes over.
• Call-Back: Annie's bad neighborhood makes one last appearance. She lives over Dildopolis.
• The Cast Showoff: Pierce, in universe, derailing Annie's show. Deconstructed because he goes way off script and violates the message of the play in favor of his ego.
• Ceiling Banger: In the tag with Annie banging on her floor when the PA sales announcements at the dildo store beneath her apartment keep her awake.
• Chekhov's Gun: Those baseballs won't be making a reappearance.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Chang's description of what "Drugs" will do to you. His invokedad-libs actually scared the child actors.
  Chang!Drugs: I'm gonna deep fry your dog and eat your mama's face! [Makes crunching noises] Then I'm gonna wear your little brother's skin like pajamas!
• Dirty Kid: Britta's nephew.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: In-Universe. The study group put on an anti-drug show for a group of elementary school children, but the kids love Pierce's performance as "Drugs" so much it backfires. In the end they fix the situation by forcing Pierce to leave and replacing him with Chang.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Britta says that anti-drug shows are more likely to get kids to try drugs. She is appalled, however, when Pierce manages to make drugs look cool.
  • Jeff will claim that he has no principles due to being an Amoral Attorney. It turns out that he and the study group agreed to do the play since its message is personal to Annie; they all get furious on learning she compromised the message thanks to a bribe from Pierce.
  • The study group (especially Shirley) cannot stand Chang, but they are visibly horrified when he gets trashed onstage by the kids.
• Freudian Excuse: Shown in a childhood film. Pierce's inappropriateness, overzealous creativity, and pathological need to be accepted at all costs are all due to frustrations with getting attention from his father.
• "Friends" Rent Control: Averted. Annie only has enough money to afford a one-room apartment in a terrible neighborhood above a dildo store.
• Friend to All Children: The kids all love Pierce's antics … too bad he's playing Drugs.
• Funny Background Event: As the Dean audibly muses over how Jeff "looks sexy even in a coffin," the girl sitting next to him slowly turns her head to stare at him.
• Happier Home Movie: A not-so-happy version. We see Pierce sit at home watching an old Hawthorne Wipes commercial starring his father, Cornelius Hawthorne. Despite his earlier claims to have been in the commercial, it turns out his father chose a child actor to play the part of his son rather than Pierce.
• Idiot Ball: Having Pierce Playing a Tree was not a good idea in hindsight. He derails the show by buying his way into editing the script.
• If I Wanted You Dead...: Downplayed, regarding Annie's landlord:
  Annie: What are you doing here?
  Pierce: Never mind that, there's a rapist in the hallway.
  Annie: That's my landlord, and if he wanted you raped you'd be raped.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction:
  Pierce: Come on, Annie. You and I are alike. We're independent. We need each other.
• Inadvertent Entrance Cue/Incoming Ham: Parodied:
  Shirley: That's a Suicide Mission!
  Chang: Did someone say crazy PERSOOOOOON?!
  Everyone else: No.
  Chang: Well, I heard it.
• Insult Backfire: Lampshaded.
  Annie: You don't count, Britta, you don't respond to anything appropriately.
  Britta: Thank you!
• Interchangeable Asian Cultures: Chang apparently suffers from this.
  Chang: Are you ignoring me because I'm Korean?
  Shirley: I thought you were Chinese.
  Chang: (sardonically) Oh, there's a difference?
  • Also Lampshade Hanging. Chang's actor, Ken Jeong, is Korean-American.
• Like Father, Like Son: Pierce grew up to be as manipulative and controlling as his father, using money and words to get his way.
• Love Letter Lunacy: Well, more like Sexting Psychosis, but still.
• Manipulative Bastard: Pierce dials it up this time.
• Never My Fault:
  • Jeff tries to drag Abed into helping him fix his own mistake, despite Abed being against it from the beginning. Abed has to serve as The Conscience with Annie compromised and gives Jeff a muted Death Glare.
  • Pierce refuses to apologize or acknowledge why Annie fired him. He claims he did nothing wrong while trying to make Annie happy again.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Pierce claims that he and Annie are similar in how they want to be independent but need each other. Annie calls him out over this contradiction and how he used her to be an Attention Whore. Ironically, they both had Abusive Parents; that would have been a better patch of common ground on which to build.
• Pet the Dog: Chang lets the kids beat him up by replacing Pierce as Drugs in Act Two. He did this so that Shirley would consider letting him into their child's life and he really likes her. Shirley genuinely thanks him and apologizes for calling him crazy.
• Playing a Tree: Pierce was assigned to play Drugs, who had no lines initially. This ends up being a bad idea since Pierce bribes his way into becoming a bigger part of the show. Had he played a bee, crayon, or cool cat, then his stealing the show almost certainly would have been better for the message.
• Playing Cyrano: Jeff tries to do this for Britta. It goes very poorly indeed.
• Relative Error: Played for Laughs. Britta tells Jeff that a creepy guy is texting her, named Marcus. He finds her phone and starts sexting the guy to mess with him. It turns out that Marcus is Britta's underage nephew who is a Creepy Child. Jeff goes to clear up the situation and gives Marcus his aunt's bra to buy his silence.
• Replacement Scrappy/The Other Darrin: An Invoked In-universe example. Pierce's character Drugs in the school play becomes the most popular character, leaving a roomful of middle-schoolers shouting for "Drugs." The gang recasts Drugs as Chang, who quickly scares the kids to death. Ironically, this accidentally makes for a much better message, portraying drugs as fun and appealing at first, but then changing to be dangerous and out-of-control.
• Sexual Euphemism: Annie delicately refers to Dildopolis as a marital aids store.
• Shout-Out: Abed apparently thought smoking weed just made people paint vans and solve mysteries.
• Sleep Mask: Annie wears one in The Tag.
• That Came Out Wrong:
  Pierce: Don't expect me to visit you at night with a generous spirit again!
  [Cue looks of disgust from the rest of the group.]
• This Is Reality: Mentioned by Britta; an anti-drug play is more likely to make a kid get interested in drugs due to the heavy-handed message. Jeff tries to get her to shut up for Annie's sake.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: After Chang saves the play from being a complete disaster, the group thanks him and they even include him in the group hug.
• Toilet Humor: Pierce's farting strikes a chord with the youngsters.
• Unlikely Hero: Chang, of all people. After Pierce ruined it by making the kids love drugs, he manages to save the show by taking on the role of drugs. By playing his normal, Ax-Crazy self, he manages to send the message that drugs, which seemed fun at first, turn into something horrifying and dangerous. This not only salvages the play, but actually makes it much more effective than the original version.
• Wakeup Makeup: Annie looks just as fresh and cute when woken up in the middle of the night as in daytime.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Jeff, of all people, leads this in the cast against Annie when they find out Pierce bribed her to compromise her message in the play. He says he thought Annie was better than that.

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