I don’t watch a whole lot of current television shows, but I make sure never to miss a single episode of “Community” or “The Office”. Both shows continue to make me laugh, but they are very different styles and clearly take place in different universes. This season, however, I’ve been noticing more and more similarities between the shows…
HEADS UP: This post contains spoilers for the current seasons of both shows. If you’re waiting for the DVDs, just move along.
1. In the season premiere of “The Office”, Creed mentions that he is sick of everybody talking about Betty White. In the season premiere of “Community”, Betty While is a guest star. Okay, that could be a coincidence; both Creed’s line and “Community”‘s casting could just be a reaction to Betty’s resurgence in popularity. And even if “The Office” was indeed referencing “Community”, it wasn’t a secret that they were getting Betty on the show. Not a huge deal. But then…
2. In each show’s Halloween episode, a male character wears a Lady Gaga costume. Okay, could be another coincidence. Lady Gaga is a huge current pop culture figure, and they both could have thought of the obvious twist to put a man in one of her zany outfits. But in both shows, the character in question was an authority figure that none of the other characters actually take seriously. Hmm…
3. In “The Office” episode “Christening”, which aired November 4, Michael refers to the other Dunder Mifflin employees as “Mean Girls”, comparing them to the Lindsay Lohan vehicle of the same name. In the “Community” episode “Aerodynamics of Gender”, which aired THE EXACT SAME EVENING, one of the subplots involved a group of bitchy queen bee-type girls, very much in the style of “Mean Girls”. The show even made a point to cast Hilary Duff, Lohan’s real-life former Disney Teen Star Rival, as the leader of the pack. Very suspicious.
4. Most recently, we get to last night’s Christmas episodes. In “The Office”, Dwight had built a snowman around himself, waiting to pounce on Jim. And in “Community”, Abed believed himself to be building a snowman, but was actually talking to Chang. It’s likely that he began packing snow on top of Chang, which would mean both shows contained sequences of a character packed into a snowman, or threatened to be packed into a snowman.
My friends, the evidence is irrefutable. The writers of “Community” and “The Office” are teaming up to send us some sort of message.
I know what you’re saying. “Dave, you paranoid freak! All of those are nothing but coincidences! Hell, that last one wasn’t EVEN a coincidence! You just stretched–and I mean STRETCHED–to make a connection there because you didn’t have any other ideas for a blog post today!”
Oh, yeah? Well, if I’m a paranoid freak who is making connections where there are none, then WHY do all the similarities CLEARLY add up to a subliminal advertisement for Betty White and Lady Gaga starring in a television remake of “Mean Girls” with an all-snowman supporting cast?
It’s so obvious! Instead of starting off with an obvious viral campaign, NBC is starting to promote this new show subconsciously, through innocent-seeming suggestions that only internet bloggers would notice. (Bloggers, after all, are the only people who ever truly understand what is going on in any conspiracy, be it related to entertainment or politics.)
Okay, fine, say I’m crazy. Say I’m paranoid. Say I’m so desperate to update my blog that I’ll resort to completely absurd and nonsensical rants. But don’t come crawling to me when this new show premieres, and you don’t know why you’re so interested in checking it out.