Dean Pelton reveals that he is allowing the app designers to beta test their new social networking application, MeowMeowBeenz, using the Greendale staff and students.
Jeff eventually caves in and joins the app, after discovering that Shirley has 5 MeowMeowBeenz, which makes her extremely popular amongst everyone on campus and also gives her the ability to influence what people rate others.
The group of Fives, made up of Shirley, Abed (Danny Pudi), Chang (Ken Jeong), Hickey (Jonathan Banks) and a party animal named Koogler (Mitch Hurwitz), become concerned about the lower levels turning against them and decide to host a talent show in order to give them hope of rising in the ranks.
The episode worked on a pure plot and character level, wrote VanDerWerff, in exposing our desire to be liked and admired by projecting facsimiles of ourselves in different social media platforms, while subconsciously accepting that those are the versions we want the world to see.
Gabrielle Moss of TVFanatic, on the other hand, rated the episode 4.8 out of 5 stars, and relished how a social media app transformed Greendale into "one of the season's most delightful fits of whimsy".
[3] Moss wrote how the episode spoofs how we are one "poke" way from a fascist nightmare, with wise elders making Starburns run around dressed like the protagonist-enforcer from the film Zardoz.
Collins wrote how this was a strong episode for Britta, who had been sidelined in the first few episodes: "[Britta] suddenly sounds more reasonable when she has mustard on the corner of her lip ('It dilutes or distracts from your excessive intensity,' Annie explains), which of course leads to the actress tossing whatever vanity she may have aside in service of a sight gag where she tries to boost her control over her audience by smearing it over her entire face.
[5] Umstead wrote how the episode started personally and intimately through an emotional rift between Shirley and Jeff, going "on and off the rails so many times that it was merely close to, but never quite a disaster," and ending with some real meaning between the two.
Umstead praised the episode's homage "to many a Sci-fi flick from the 70s, most notably Zardoz and Logan's Run, and of course there's a bit of H. G. Wells style future from The Time Machine".
But the episode pushed the plot forward at the expense of jokes: "So much of what works or doesn't will rely on your knowledge of dystopic satires or how much you enjoy seeing comedians Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim, and Jen Kirkman as disco-angel stylized 4s."