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What to watch on Thursday, February 28...

8pm, NBC
Community
Lo these past three-plus weeks, a nation has risen up and asked, pleadingly, with one voice: Wherefore art thou, Ben Chang? The bane of the study group resurfaces at Greendale in “Alternative History of the German Invasion,” which also introduces the gang to their new Europeanhistory class and their new professor, guest-star Malcolm McDowell.

8pm, ABC
Zero Hour
In “Pendulum,” Hank, Arron, and Rachel follow an FBI tip toward a link between the next clock and a famous historical personage. Which figure from history should I shoehorn in a joke about here: a) Former U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld; b) 12th century polymath Ibn Rushd; or c) Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington, bester of Napoleon at Waterloo? Text your choice to WTWT. Normal messaging charges may apply.

MINISERIES FINALE, 9pm, HBO
Parade’s End
Christopher (Benedict Cumberbatch) spells a troubled commander on the front lines, even as developments at home weigh heavily on him. Upon returning to Groby, he must face Sylvia (Rebecca Hall) and her attempts to impede him from a life with Valentine.

10pm, FX
Archer
Rare is the caliber of person who can play on the same level of unbridled dickishness as one Sterling Malory Archer. But a celebrity chef—specifically one voiced by guest-star Anthony Bourdain—may just be the spy’s match, when the ISIS crew infiltrates a high-profile kitchen in “Live and Let Dine.”

SERIES PREMIERE, 10pm, Comedy Central
The Ben Show With Ben Hoffman
The comedian enlists the help of experts and random strangers as he sets out to achieve personal goals in this new sketch series, part of Comedy Central’s ongoing mission to fill 24 hours a day with eponymous sketch comedy shows. In the premiere, Hoffman deploys skits, songs, animation, and man-on-the-street interviews in his quest to buy a gun.

SERIES PREMIERE, 10:30pm, Comedy Central
Nathan for You
Nathan Fielder parlays his business degree and his experience on Comedy Central shows like Jon Benjamin Has A Van into a Comedy Central show where he helps small businesses. The first subjects to experience Fielder's blend of marketing and mirth are a frozen yogurt shop jazzing up its flavor selection and a pizza place hastening its delivery service.

LATE-NITE:
– Eugene Mirman on Conan, 11pm, TBS
– Kate Mara on Chelsea Lately, 11pm, E!
– Rachel Maddow on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, 11pm, Comedy Central
– White House speechwriter Jon Favreau on The Colbert Report, 11:30pm, Comedy Central
– Steve Carell, Joey King, and Shooter Jennings on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, 11:35pm, NBC
– Jim Parsons, California lieutenant governor Gavin Newsom, and Ziggy Marley on Jimmy Kimmel Live, 11:35pm, ABC
– Tina Fey, Bill Nighy, and Bob Mould on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, 12:37am, NBC
– David Duchovny and Ashley Madewke on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, 12:37am, CBS

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Don't you want to know how Season 2 of Whitney ends? Of course you do! NBC has announced the season finale dates for its current lineup, and if any of you folks out there are still watching NBC, you can find those dates below. As for the highlights, the finale for the network's big great hit Revolution is set for May 27, Community ends its fourth season (and maybe the whole series?) on May 9, Parks and Recreation finishes a week before Community on May 2, and The Voice will air its live two-hour finale on June 18. As for the aforementioned Whitney, no one cares. (Just kidding, Whitney goes out with back-to-back episodes on—double just kidding, no one cares!) It was previously announced that The Office will call it a series with a one-hour finale on May 16. 

NBC 2013 FINALE DATES

March 27

8–9pm: Whitney (back-to-back episodes)

March 28

8:30–9pm and 9:30–10pm: 1600 Penn (almost back-to-back episodes)

April 2

9–10pm: The New Normal (back-to-back episodes)

April 11

9:30–10pm: Go On

May 2

9:30–10pm: Parks and Recreation

May 9

8–8:30pm: Community

May 10

8–9pm: Fashion Star

May 15

10–11pm: Chicago Fire

May 16

9–10pm: The Office

May 17

9–10pm: Grimm

May 19

9–11pm: The Celebrity Apprentice

May 22

9–11pm: Law & Order: SVU

May 27

10–11pm: Revolution

June 18

9–11pm: The Voice

June 27

10–11pm: Hannibal

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Community S04E04: "Alternative History of the German Invasion"

Hello! It's me again. Back in this rotating game of Hot Potato with a Community review instead of toasty spuds. Last night was the fourth episode of this brand-new season, the final leg of a special edition of The 4-Episode Test (trademark TV.com), and I think that after these first two hours of Season 4 we can officially say that Community is a charmless imitation of its better days. I don't say that while wringing my hands with glee or celebrating that fact. I'm weeping it out, guys. This SUCKS. 

When I shared my thoughts on the Season 4 premiere, I likened that episode to an impostor dog purchased by parents to fool their kid into thinking the family dog didn't get run over while the kid was away at summer camp. It looked the same, it was still a dog, but it wasn't dear old Mr. Ruffington von Leglifter, the best friend we used to count on. That analogy still holds today; in the season's second and third episodes ("Paranormal Parentage" and "Conventions of Space and Time"), the dog looked less and less like our old friend... and also peed in our slippers and rubbed its butt all over our toothbrushes. If you still like the show, and I hope you do, then great. It still has one of the best casts on television today, no one can argue that, and it still exists in the wonderful Community universe that was created in seven days by its god Dan Harmon. There just happens to be some sort of New Testament thing going on here in Season 4.

HOWEVER! "Alternative History of the German Invasion" actually showed signs of improvement over its Season 4 predecessors because it didn't rely on the shameful pandering to Community fans we'd seen in the previous three episodes. Thankfully, last night's episode took place at Greendale Community College, and not in Abed's mind, Pierce's mansion, or at an Inspector Spacetime Convention. Things felt relatively normal for the first time this season, and that was comforting. It feels weird to say, but this episode was better for only seeming like a bad episode from Season 3 instead of like the fashion show of outrageous costumes we've been watching for the last few weeks. 

"Alternative History of the German Invasion" brought back the Germans (minus the only actually funny German Juergen, played in "Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism" by Nick Kroll, who was replaced here by Juergen's unintentionally stale brother), and they instantly had beef—or pig blood stuffed into sheep intestines—with the study group and reacted by taking over the group's usual study room. It was a sparklingly clean us-against-them scenario as the study group, acting as a whole instead of the motley crew we've come to know them as, was thwarted by the Germans at every turn because the Germans were always one step ahead. In the B-story, Chang returned to campus supposedly afflicted with amnesia, and Dean Pelton thought it was all an act and sought to prove it. 

Okay, wasn't the the best story the series has ever done, but this show has gotten away with far less and turned it into magic (missing pen, anyone?). But the biggest problem with "Alternative History of the German Invasion" was that it forgot to be funny or interesting, even though I think it was just as funny if not funnier than the previous three episodes. This is all subjective, of course, because the pitfall of reviewing comedy is that we all get our jollies from different things, so opinions will and should differ, but there are a few specific reasons that laughter was absent last night. 

First, the Germans were painfully bland and only roused half-arsch jokes about efficiency and Hitler, mostly from Jeff, who has been reduced to reciting Winger Zingers without passion in Season 4. Second, the individual personalities of the study group were wiped clean as the conflict became just homogenous Germans against homogenous college students. It didn't have to be the Greendale Seven in this episode, it could have been any seven sitcom people. Third, what should have been an interesting C-story with Abed and Lukas's gaming history went completely unfinished, leaving me to wonder why it was there in the first place. And fourth, the Dean-Chang bits floated away with zero weight, and threw Dean into a nurse's outfit for a lazy attempt at laughs. Jim Rash won an Oscar! Now he's being treated as a Barbie doll at dress-up time. It was funny when Community put the Dean in funny outfits a handful of times per season, but my lord, this explosion of wardrobe props is flat-out embarrassing. 

All that, plus most of this week's plot points made no sense. Changnesiac was brought back to Greendale and into the Dean's supervision by authorities for "immersive therapy"? The Germans were stopped for celebrating their own heritage, one of the penalties being the retraction of study room privileges? This script was softer than a present-day Pierce in an airplane bathroom with Eartha Kitt and no potency pills.

But the silver lining to all this is that "Alternative History of the German Invasion" felt like the most Community-esque episode of the fourth season, devoid of what the new Community crew thinks the fans want (PLEASE STOP IT WITH THE COSTUMES!). We were back at Greendale. It wasn't an attempt at another "special" episode, which Season 4 has so far whiffed on. It didn't try so hard. And there were some pretty good moments sprinkled in there that didn't feel like a stretch. The callbacks to "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" and "Cooperative Calligraphy" felt like the old days (although with the latter, most people should have been at the Puppy Parade and not trying to get into the study room). "Someone must have changed the channel to USA, because I just watched a Burn Notice!" shall forever be quoted. The group switching from Grande-sized coffees to Venti-sized javas as they tried to wake up earlier on the second day of beating the Germans to school was one of those great small details (but why didn't they have buckets of coffee on Day 3?). And Dean inserting his own name into a sentence while chastising Chang for doing the same thing was clever enough. 

But sadly, it still wasn't the old Community, and the show's future will always suffer the disadvantage of being compared to what came before it, and longtime fans will always have the built-in excuse (no Harmon) to dissect it with extra vigilance. 

It's worth nothing that I also thought Season 3 had a high bar to overcome, and we all know that turned out great. I tip my hat to the fans who still adore this show and I will keep my eye out for improvement (don't be shy, send me a Tweet when it does get better), but for now I'm dropping out. Auf Wiedersehen, Community. We'll always have Seasons 1 through 3.

STUDY NOTES

– As you could probably tell by the gang wistfully looking at the first day of class of "The History of Ice Cream," "Alternative History of the German Invasion" was supposed to be the second episode of the season. It was moved back to S4E04. Why? The likely theory is that NBC thought it sucked, and wanted the show get off to a better start. Or to use Valentine's Day—which coincided with Episode 2—as a way to air the Halloween episode. 

– Pshhhhhhhtt. Putting Annie and Britta and Shirley in Oktoberfest costumes isn't going to work. Actually okay, it did.

– What a waste of Malcolm McDowell as Professor Cornwallace! Will anyone even remember he was on this show?

– What a continued waste of Pierce! 

– Game of Thrones reference? Works for me. 

– The Winger speech to close the episode was one of the weakest speeches he's ever given. It felt like, "Hey, we need to wrap up this episode, get Jeff in there and have him say something with some of that cutesy piano music in the background and let's get to credits."

– Community tied its series-low rating of a 1.1 last night. And Ken Jeong has already booked a pilot for next season. Take that information as you will.

Follow TV.com writer Tim Surette on Twitter if you want to: @TimAtTVDotCom

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Community S04E02: "Paranormal Parentage

Because reviewing any early Season 4 episode of Community requires one to spend at least a few sentences describing their feelings on the show post-Harmon, let me just get this out there: Yes, it's a real, big bummer that Community creator Dan Harmon is no longer employed as the showrunner of the NBC sitcom. And yes, the show is going to miss him and might not ever remotely reach the insane, yet moving heights we saw in Seasons 2 and 3 (but mostly Season 2; no shots fired, but Season 3 was kind of a mess). But you know what? I love these characters and I love these actors and I can imagine a world where they make a good version of the show happen, so I'm just going to let this play out. It might all suck (though it's hard to imagine anything being worse than Troy and Britta in the fountain again because oh my spirits was that dreadful), but it might not.

And this week's episode, scripted by fan favorite and Team Harmon holdover/survivor Megan Ganz (who did just leave the show but only after Season 4 was complete), suggests exactly that. Community still has some life left, especially when it concentrates on the characters' fundamental fears and hang-ups instead of shouting and half-baked meta-baiting. "Paranormal Parentage" wasn't as innovative as the show's last two Halloween episodes, but it was mostly on a par with the Season 1's "Introduction to Statistics." Though it was fairly simple, it was effective, and led the way for the show moving forward. Meaning, the new showrunners don't have any business trying to match Harmon's creativity, but something they can do is go easy on the gimmicks and tell warm, maybe slightly softened stories about who these characters are as they approach graduation. And even though this is all happening by accident, moving back toward a Season 1 vibe feels like the perfect way to wrap up their time at Greendale. It sort of mirrors college in that way: You start slow, go HAM for a couple of years, and then (hopefully) realize it's time grow up.

"Paranormal Parentage" moved a few characters toward big realizations, even if some of the beats were slightly repetitive. The haunted Hawthorne mansion setup provided a few random gags that worked (the sex room; the scene that's appeared in several show promos with Abed making reference to how Community "used to be about a community college"), but it mostly served to tell a nice little story about Jeff and Pierce's respective daddy issues. While at the end of last season, Pierce kinda-sorta moved past his problems and Jeff mustered up the courage to Google his con-man father (and apparently Jeff referring to him as a terrible con-man was accurate, if he was easy to find on Google), those momentous events only temporarily solved their problems.

Without his father—or Troy, for that matter—hanging around, Pierce's mansion has gone to hell and he kind of has, too. He set up the haunted house gambit solely to bring the study group to his home, and even when Jeff called him on it before the performance even began, the group got suckered in. It was kind of like the sadder, kinder version of the bequeathing Pierce performed in "Introduction to Documentary Filmmmaking," and I think it served this version of the character better. The group has moved past its real hatred for Pierce; now they just feel bad for him. It's not vitriolic pity, they're just sad.

But it turns out Pierce isn't the only sad-sack in his family. As the end of the episode revealed, Giancarlo Esposito's Gilbert, Pierce's half-brother, has been even more aimless since learning that he'd been left in charge of the Hawthorne estate when Daddy Cornelius died. He has no one to serve, nothing to really worry about—except himself, and that's what makes him sad. He and Pierce have nothing in common other than that they're alone, but for one middle-aged dweeb and one racist senior citizen, that's probably enough to start a real bond. I know Pierce is easy to hate (and Chevy Chase is really easy to hate, but it's nice to have the show ask us to feel something other than disgust or pure pity for the character. All Pierce ever wanted is a friend. Maybe Gilbert can be that friend. Chevy's pretty good at making the character just sympathetic enough, and that was on display in this episode.

The strongest part of "Paranormal Parentage," however, involved Jeff and his daddy issues. Yet again, Britta's terrible armchair psychology worked its backwards magic, pushing Jeff to talk about how all he ever wanted to do was move on from his dad and getting him to acknowledge that he'd found his father's phone number online and had been carrying it around, even in his Halloween costume. Joel McHale nicely mixed Jeff's resistance to Britta's unprofessional and unsolicited advice with his vulnerability once he realized (for like the hundredth time) that he didn't want to end up like Pierce, angry and alone.

Though we didn't get a big pronouncement about it, this was a major development for Jeff. He's been outwardly in denial about his father for years, but acknowledging his search to someone else—and if you want to read something important into the fact that Britta knows first, go ahead—signals that New Jeff is actually a real thing. He's still a selfish prick, but he knows he doesn't always have to keep the guard up with the study group. He still didn't tell everyone about having his father's number, nor did he say anything about the boxing gloves belonging to his father, but this is still Jeff Winger, after all.

And now he's made that phone call. Choosing Greendale in last season's finale helped Jeff accept himself and his circumstances; reconnecting with his father, in any fashion, will only help him further. The journey toward Not Pierce is on.

"Paranormal Parentage" didn't light the world on fire, but it was a stabilizing, promising episode for this new season of Community. Though I've heard some questionable things about next week's Inspector Spacetime-centric episode (pro tip: Don't workshop ideas at Comic-Con, writers), I think this one served up a good model for the show from here on out. These are likable characters who we all have rooting interest in. Getting them to graduation, ready for the world, is a worthwhile story to tell, and one that doesn't need all the pop-culture riffs or yelling. More like this, please.

– To further the "Season 1 redux" point, it's worth noting that this episode focused almost entirely on Jeff, Pierce, and Britta. Oh, and Troy is just not in a good place right now. The writers are struggling to: 1.) Find traction between him and Britta, and 2.) Remember that he's not a full-blown imbecile. We're getting girly sneeze Troy. Don't do that anymore, show. Donald Glover's still doin' work though; his line delivery in the moment Troy broke the remote was great.

– Shirley's judgment of Britta seemed somewhat out of place, but also not. She acted that way in "Remedial Chaos Theory" as well, and I understand her desire to protect Troy.

– No Chang and very little Dean this week, which makes sense, but was a little disappointing. The show has the tendency to introduce these big Chang stories early on and then just completely lose the thread. I'm hoping that doesn't happen again.

– Whose costume was your favorite?

– Annie and Jeff are certainly in a different place now, aren't they? They're texting about matching Halloween costumes? Shipper hearts be a-flutterin' this Valentine's Day.

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Great news, guys! Community is returning on October 19! "But wait," you say. "Today is October 19, and I don't see the internet exploding in reverie!" I'll let Troy and Abed explain:

So there you have it. The cast and crew are very aware that they're getting jerked around by NBC, but they also know it won't do any good to pout about it, so they made a hilarious video with a perfectly absurd positive spin. October 19 isn't a date, it's the joy you feel inside after getting the last plate of chicken fingers, the thrill of seducing an Elven maiden so she'll let you borrow her Pegasus, the ecstasy of eating Starburn's ecstasy at Annie's Dia de Los Muertos party while dressed as The Beastmaster.

No, Community still does not have a premiere date. But now that NBC has scheduled Whitney away from Fridays (where it'd initially been paired with Community in the most mismatched comedy block of all time), maybe the network has bigger, grander plans for Community than to simply dump it in the litterbox that is Friday night? Who knows, maybe NBC will even do the right thing and bring Community back in the midseason, either as part of its Thursday comedy block to replace 30 Rock or as a partner for the almost-as-goofy Go On, which has been performing well and definitely shares a vibe with Community.

And for those of you who may have missed it, here's Joel McHale on Ellen showing off a clip from Community's Season 4 premiere, which plays off The Hunger Games and will debut... someday.

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