Many critics, along with series creator Dan Harmon, noted the lack of a strong story or message, though most felt this was not to the episode's detriment.
Troy's (Donald Glover) former pet monkey, Annie's Boobs, steals a paintbrush and escapes into an air conditioning vent.
Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown) begs the group to stop fighting, but Troy suggests they should let everything out now to prevent future arguments.
Apart from the claymation scene (which flashes back to "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas"), all of the flashback clips were written and shot specifically for the episode.
[6] The clip featuring Jeff, Britta, and Abed at the Halloween party (a flashback to "Epidemiology") was not filmed together with the original episode, and the set had to be recreated.
[6][15] The scene, in which the group was filling in for the school's glee club after they died in an accident, was later used to set up events in the season three episode "Regional Holiday Music".
[20] The episode also parodied fan-made shipping videos that use slow-motion montages and sentimental music to make the scenes feel romantic.
The scenes were based on an actual shipping video Harmon had seen on YouTube, made by user VeritasProductions and released on November 13, 2009, two months into the show’s first season.
[25] In its original broadcast on April 21, 2011, "Paradigms of Human Memory" was viewed by an estimated 3.17 million people, with a Nielsen rating of 1.4 in the 18–49 demographic.
Alan Sepinwall of HitFix noted that the episode was successfully able to make fans laugh, tell a strong story, and experiment with new ideas at the same time.
[19] She found the emotional points to be weak but remarked that the story was "basically unimportant", as the sheer number of jokes carried the episode.
[19] Eric Goldman of IGN gave the episode 9.5 out of 10; like St. James, he noted the lack of depth in the story but found it irrelevant given the rapid-fire gags.
He compared it favorably to the episode "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons", remarking that the show often succeeded by simply placing the study group in a room and letting things play out.
[29] Paste's Sean Gandert gave it a 9.3 rating; he commented that the lack of story allowed the show to focus on some of the best jokes it had ever done, and he complimented the episode as "clever [and] unique".
[30] In a retrospective review, Bill Wyman of Slate characterized the episode as being about "overkill", remarking that it lacked a clear theme beyond a focus on its own complexity.
[31] In a December 2011 ranking, Wyman rated "Paradigms of Human Memory" first among the show's episodes released up to that time, calling it "arguably the most ambitious, dense, inexplicable and elaborate 21 minutes of televised sitcommery ever aired.