Right now, Troy is Abed and Abed is Troy.
Troy and Britta's upcoming one-year anniversary falls on the the same day as Troy and Abed's three-year celebration since watching Freaky Friday (1976) together. The two of them say the Trigger Phrase while holding the DVD and the next day finds the two of the them feigning switching bodies. Abed goes on an awkward date with Britta as Troy, while Troy-as-Abed goes hunting for the DVD with an indignant Jeff to restore their former selves.
Meanwhile, Shirley and Annie are shocked to find that Leonard usurps them both on the class list to become Valedictorian and they both set off to find out his secret.
The Community episode "Basic Human Anatomy" provides examples of:
- Ambiguous Situation: Did Troy and Abed really switch bodies? Or were they just messing around like always?
- Apathetic Teacher: Cornwalis adds a whole new meaning to it.Jeff [reading]:"Pick any moment from history and tell me about it. Be as creative as you like, or not, I don't care. Professor Cornwa..." He didn't even finish signing his own name.
- Author Appeal: Jim Rash wrote in a lot of Dean Pelton Fanservice.
- Behind the Black: The janitor doing the light switch check came as a surprise for everybody in the room.
- Bittersweet Ending: Troy and Britta break up, but they remain friends.
- Brick Joke:
- When Troy and Abed switch back, they look down the front of their pants again.
- Also possibly a reference to this
BriTANicK sketch featuring Danny Pudi.
- Also possibly a reference to this
- Whilst the group split-up to resolve various issues, they simply tell Pierce to "stay alive". When they return after resolving the various plots, it turns out Pierce did the assignment for their history class on his own, since after a while he just figured the rest of the group weren't coming back.
- When Troy and Abed switch back, they look down the front of their pants again.
- Call-Back:
- Annie proposes a series of banners for the project.
- Troy and Britta return to Senor Kevin's, "where it all began", for their first-anniversary date and run into the Die Hard-hating waiter.
- The Tag has Troy, Abed, and the Dean doing (deliberate) outtakes like "Intro to Felt Surrogacy".
- The Lost and Found room has a Bee Costume in it.
- Britta is wearing her Help the Gulf t-shirt.
- Dead Sparks: Apparently, Britta and Troy have had this for a while.
- Demoted to Extra: Pierce gets barely five minutes of the episode. While assigning each of the study group to their tasks, he's told to simply "stay alive".
- "Freaky Friday" Flip:
- Troy and Abed. Purposely invoked by Troy to avoid being the one to break up with Britta.
- The Dean tries to invoke this with himself & Jeff, but Jeff refuses to play along. Instead, the Dean just acts as he would imagine Jeff to act, which is appealing to Annie.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus:
- The whiteboard behind Annie and Shirley reads, "Hey everyone Happy Oct 19! Glad you could join us back in the Study Room" and "Welcome Back K. Otter".
- The blackboard behind Annie has a note regarding "all lost & found items". The John F. Kennedy-inspired "Ask not what your community can do" from "Advanced Documentary Filmmaking" is also there.
- The whiteboard has "GCC 410", a message about study room schedules, and "Thanks for your attendance & continued support".
- Hidden Depths: Who knew Pierce was good at creating banners?
- Hilarious Outtakes: Subverted. Abed and Troy have a fun time messing up, until Jeff points out that the body-switch was last week and they can stop doing outtakes now. When the Dean turns up hoping to join in, they tell him they've stopped.
- Hypocritical Humour:Pierce: Leonard. He's old.
- Insistent Terminology: The Dean had Jeffrey inside him.
- Magic A Is Magic A: When Jeff first returns with a Freaky Friday DVD, Troy-as-Abed insists they'll have to keep looking for the original DVD as Jeff will have rented the remake & not the original, which changed the method behind the "Freaky Friday" Flip & thus would not work to return Troy & Abed into their normal bodies.
- Overly Long Gag: The Dean taking every opportunity to suggest that he had "Jeffrey inside of me." ("NO ONE WAS INSIDE ANYONE!")
- Rule of Three: Routine light switch check - third check is Jeff, not the janitor.
- Running Gag:
- "Routine light switch check."
- "I love those movies, they should make more of them."
- A few movies are discarded with violent throws.
- "...having Jeffrey inside of me"
- The Dean's season 2 bee costume makes its third appearance.
- Annie's increasing attraction to the Dean, much to her confusion.
- Ship Tease:
- Annie and the Dean (And by proxy, Annie/Jeff), while he has "Jeffrey inside of [him]".
- There is a similar, but more subtle, Britta/Abed, as they go out on an anniversary date as Britta and Troy.
- One-sided example; Pierce seems quietly hopeful that Britta is "working her way around the table" in terms of the members of the study group she enters into relationships with.
- Ship Sinking: Britta/Troy is no more.
- Shirtless Scene: The Dean.
- Shout-Out:
- "Welcome Back K. Otter"
- To a list of six body-swap movies: The Change Up, 13 Going on 30, 17 Again (2009), Eighteen Again, Vice Versa, and Freaky Friday (1976).
- Although it's not one of the movies mentioned, Troy and Abed looking down their pants is a reference to the movie Big.
- Abed wears a shirt with an image of a Police Box, along with a short man and man in a Highlander outfit during the cold open.
- Something Only They Would Say: Britta tries to trigger Abed by encouraging the waiter to denigrate Die Hard.
- Status Quo Is God: Subverted: While Troy and Britta both return to their status as single at the end of the episode, this only happens because of significant development and growth from Troy.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: Both the Dean and the Janitor are of the opinion that there's not enough body-switching movies in the world.
- Take That!: To Judge Reinhold.
- Two Scenes, One Dialogue: Troy-as-Abed in the Lost and Found and Abed-as-Troy with Britta at lunch share the same exposition on the Britta/Troy relationship.
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- Mildly invoked when it turns out that Troy can barely remember that it's a year since his first date with Britta, but remembers that it's three years since he & Abed first watched Freaky Friday (1976) together.
- Played for laughs when Shirley's had enough of Annie's being giggly & flirty towards the Dean whilst he has Jeffrey inside him.
- Troy pulls this on himself when he breaks up with Britta as himself, acknowledging that his attempt to pretend to have switched bodies with Abed to avoid breaking up with her just proves his immaturity and unreadiness to be in a proper relationship with her.
