G.I. Jeff

[1] The episode received generally positive reviews, with critics praising the affectionate homage to the childhood cartoon series.

[2] The episode begins with Cobra forces led by Destro (Isaac Singleton Jr.) attacking the Taj Mahal.

In the jail, the Group meets "Fourth Wall", played by Abed (Danny Pudi), in the adjacent cell.

He is interrupted by "Vice Cobra Assistant Commander", played by Dean Pelton (Jim Rash), who delivers news of an energy surge at the Greendale site.

Wingman tries to help out in the battle, but he just ends up killing more Cobra soldiers and accidentally setting Lifeline on fire, causing him to burn to death.

The Mutineers easily defeat the opposition and enter Study Room F, where Wingman realizes that he works at Greendale as a teacher named Jeff Winger, and that this cartoon reality is in his imagination, as well as why why he is unconscious – because he drank a bottle of Scotch whiskey and took anti-aging pills from Koreatown.

He explains that Jeff sees visions of the next layer, the toy commercial plane, which separates him from the real world where he must go to confront the reason for the hallucination.

Jeff tricks them using his jet pack to escape the cartoon and enter reality where he is on a hospital bed, surrounded by the members of the Save Greendale committee.

The animated end scene shows Buzzkill catching two kids spray-painting their names onto a park structure.

Joe's Duke, though with inverted colors for his costume; Annie, as "Tight Ship," was an analogue to Shipwreck; Abed's "Fourth Wall" was an homage to the Native American G.I.

Fourth Wall's illustration of the layers of reality is a reference to the 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Deities & Demigods/Legends & Lore book.

[4] The hospital scene where the group laughs and the camera fades to black pays tribute to the light-hearted endings of G.I.

[5][6] Series creator and co-showrunner Dan Harmon initially announced that there would be an animated episode during the cast and crew's visit to San Diego Comic-Con in July 2013.

[7] Series writer and co-showrunner Chris McKenna said the idea for the concept of the episode came about in a simple way: "I think Harmon said, 'Let's do a G.I.

[9] McKenna said that Rob Schrab (Scud: The Disposable Assassin) was the "perfect person" to direct the episode and "he's absolutely a maniac trying to get it together.

Joe: A Real American Hero cast members Michael Bell and Bill Ratner reprised their roles as Duke and Flint respectively for the episode.

Brian Collins of Badass Digest praised the episode's use of the animated medium to tell an essential story in the Community mythology.

Collins enjoyed how the episode immediately distinguished itself from the 1980s cartoon by questioning the lack of deaths when firing multiple weapons while fighting a terrorist organization like Cobra.

Collins also praised the episode for delivering a grounded piece of canon about Jeff turning 40 years old despite making him a “bit too old” for the 23/24-year-old Annie: “It's a daring move, and the fact that he's been ‘lying’ about his age doesn't quite land since he's never revealed it in an episode, but it's one of the many things that helps keep the show grounded in more of a reality than we're used to on a sitcom.” The reveal is especially poignant, Collins wrote, because Jeff was now the one with the crisis, where previous episodes saw dramatic stories such as Troy leaving (Abed's crisis), Pierce dying (the Group's crisis), and Britta seeing her activist friends move on.

Rob Schrab (the director of the episode) plays Cobra Commander, and had me laughing out loud nearly every time he spoke - particularly during Destro's eulogy, which he botches because he's never had to give one before now.”[12] Joe Matar from Den of Geek rated the episode “2 out of 5 stars,” though qualifying his rating by confessing he “can’t even remember watching a single G.I.

But remember the abysmal Season 4 finale where Jeff kind of had a psychotic break and imagined the Darkest Timeline was real and then it turned out it was all a dream?

Well, this one makes a lot more sense and it doesn’t cheaply hide the ‘dream’ aspect so as to use it as a twist at the end, but still, it feels lazier than I expect Community to be.”[13]Emily VanDerWerff's (The A.V.

Getting lost in them can be a danger in and of itself.”[15]VanDerWerff also praised director Rob Schrab's ability to “beautifully [capture] the animation limitations of ‘80s afternoon cartoons…[and] the flat lighting of ‘80s toy commercials.” VanDerWerff requested to give Shirley more material in future episodes, while appreciating her name “Three Kids” as a joke to how rarely the show gives her more than a catchphrase.

Though she found the episode to be “very enjoyable” and “very funny,” VanDerWerff lodged a minor complaint at the final scene in the hospital: “I think works a little too hard to put a cap on everything that doesn’t leave the audience contemplating their own mortality…But I still thought the episode built nicely to a place of genuine existential despair and then sort of… shoved it right back down so we could have the standard group hug…It’s not a huge flaw—Community has been walking right up to the edge of the howling void and then walking right back with a hug since 2009—but it’s one that nonetheless kept me from completely embracing everything that was going on in the end.”[15]