Community Preview: Imagination Takes Over In Advanced Dungeons And Dragons

When you look at the image at right and in higher resolution down below, it might not be quite what you expect from a Dungeons & Dragons themed episode of Community. After all this is the show that turned the entire cast into zombies for Halloweens, did a stop-motion animated episode for Christmas, and memorably turned all of Greendale into a war zone for an entire paintball episode.

But even if you were hoping to see Jeff dress as a warlock and Abed morph into a fire-breathing dragon, tomorrow's episode "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" isn't likely to disappoint, both because it totally engages in all the dice-rolling, Pegasus-hunting silliness of a real D&D game, but it's a strong, character-based episode that doesn't feel like a gimmick at all. It's far more like the famous bottle episode "Cooperative Calligraphy" from earlier in this season, with all the characters spending the entire episode inside the study room and bouncing off each other and their personalities-- though in this case Abed at one point turns into a gnome, and Pierce makes use of a flying dragon. In their imaginations, that is.

I got an early look at the episode, which airs on Thursday night, and even knowing nothing whatsoever about D&D I was hooked into the nerdy enjoyment of it. Really at the beginning it feels more like a riff on Lord of the Rings, a British-voiced woman narrating the saga of Fat Neil, a side character we've seen in the background of a few episodes recently. He's been teased his whole life, both for his size and his Dungeons & Dragons obsession, and Jeff has taken pity on him recently. When Neil announces he'll "no longer be needing" his D&D books, Jeff suspects Neil wants to kill himself, and gathers the entire study group for a game that will lift Neil's spirits and give him the will to live. Except, as the narration explains "for obvious reasons," they don't invite Pierce. And that's where the trouble begins.

I have no idea how accurate the show is to the actual mechanics of a Dungeons & Dragons episode, but given the geek audience that Community courts, I have to imagine there's a lot of accuracy going into it. And the remarkable thing is that as we watch the characters use their imaginations to slay dragons and even seduce an elf-maiden, the images come alive for us as well. I don't know if it's just because we know these characters so well or because the writers did such a great job, but it's easy to get as wrapped up in the game as the characters, while also pointing out, like Jeff does, that "everything in this game is silly."

"Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" airs during Community's usual time slot, 8 p.m. EST. Check back that night for a full recap of the episode, and see the full-size image of Pierce boning up on Dungeons & Dragons below.