Chagnesia: Real Or Fake?

Community, S04E06

Abed shot a documentary about Chagnesia to submit to the MacGuffin Institute so that the school would get a grant to pay for Chang's, aka Kevin's, recovery.  Jeff pretended to join the cause only so he could expose Kevin the moment that he slipped up and showed his true colors.  Despite geting his friends to unknowingly investigate Chang's activities before his amnesia and his current behavior, Jeff struggled to find any incriminating evidence to support his theory Kevin was faking it.

As much as Jeff has good reason to doubt Kevin, it was hard to take his side when his friends had already been won over by Kevin.   When Jeff is acting by himself, especially if he's trying to hurt someone else, he looks more like a bully than a lone hero.  In fact, I felt a little bad for Jeff because he looked like such an insensitive ass throughout the whole documentary.  The worst was when he was trying to make out with Chang's ex-wife, in the hopes that Kevin's jealousy would reveal his lies.  Instead, Jeff looked like some kind of sex-crazed animal, attacking a woman who had only come to help her former husband.  I liked that Abed didn't show us how bad it had gotten before people were able to stop Jeff from embarrassing himself further.

Some other things that I liked included the comments at the beginning from Dr.  Kedan.  I thought he gave the funniest line when he mentioned that Kevin didn't remember being Chang, yet was still making puns:

Why Changnesia affects the memory, not the ability to make forced puns is all things we can study now that someone finally has it.

I kept thinking about that myself.  If Kevin has such a huge memory loss, why is he making those Chang puns?  Although, I'm glad he is.

My second favorite line was when Abed and Jeff were reviewing the footage that Britta had taken and Jeff was hopeful that they would see Chang slip up now that he was alone:

Doubtful.  When he's alone he mostly practices smiling and frowning.  We've all done it.

I loved the way Jeff looked at Abed when he said that as much as I like picturing Abed staring in a mirror practicing smiling and frowning appropriately.  It's a nice nod to that fact that Abed usually appears very expressionless in almost all situations.  If any emotion ever shows in his face, it's usually surprise/horror.

In the end, it was interesting that Jeff came to understand a little bit of how it felt to be Chang and be isolated when he friends were surrounding their new friend Kevin, while Jeff had to sit by his lonesome.  It was what he deserved, and it taught him an unexpected lesson.  However, I loved the irony that Chang was in fact lying all along.  Jeff hadn't completely been won over, but it looked like he was going to give Kevin a chance.  This all seems to be going according to Chang's plan, which I'm excited to learn about.  Also, who was Chang talking to?  Was it his wife?  Or someone else that has reason to get back at Greendale as much as Chang does?  Super glad that Chang hasn't turned as good as he seems.

This was a good episode.  I wish that it had been a funnier documentary, considering that Abed was the head of it.  However, he does tend to let stories play themselves out and keep himself neutral from the actions going on around him.  He did sort of help Jeff, but Jeff definitely didn't have any true allies with him on the quest to expose Chang.  After learning what seemed to be a valuable lesson about giving people second chances and walking in another person's shoes, Chang revealed that he was doing exactly what Jeff suspected he was.  It's unclear what Chang's evil plot is this time, but hopefully Jeff will catch onto it before Chang puts all their lives into chaos or worse, in danger.