We aren't just getting puppets out of this Thursday night's episode of Community, we're getting songs! Or at least one song, anyway, based on the above clip. Puppets and music? It seems almost too magical to be true. Though the tag for last week's episode did actually hint at music, as it had the characters seated around the study room table humming Troy's favorite tune, "Daybreak". I guess we were too distracted by all of the puppetness to fully appreciate the hint we were getting.
The above clip, which has the Community characters setting off on a balloon ride, also fills in some of the blanks in the plot. We knew there would be puppets, and based on the official episode description for "Intro to Felt Surrogacy," (SPOILER ALERT!) we also know that there will be an appearance by Jason Alexander, playing a mountain man that the characters encounter when taking a wild balloon ride. It seems that balloon ride will occur while they're in puppet form, and the clip also teases guest star Sara Bareilles and her vocal talents, which are clearly being put good use here. The relevance of Bareilles is particularly notable if you remember "Paradigms of Human Memory," which featured her song "Gravity" during dramatic montage moments.
INTRO TO FELT SURROGACY (TV-PG)THE STUDY GROUP TAKES A UNIQUE BALLOON RIDE AND SPENDS SOME QUALITY TIME TOGETHER – JASON ALEXANDER AND SARA BAREILLES GUEST STAR – The study group takes a wild balloon ride that crash lands in the woods and they end up spending some quality time together with a friendly mountain man (Jason Alexander, “Seinfeld”).
The only major mystery left right now is how the characters end up as puppets to begin with. Based on the photos from the episode, I'm theorizing that it has something to do with Britta and her psychology studies. Perhaps using puppets as a form of working through some issues results in things getting out of control the way things sometimes tend to do on Community. We'll find out when the episode airs Thursday at 8:00 p.m. on NBC.
