Community/Recap/S2 E24 For a Few Paintballs More

It was a dark time for Greendale...

Greendale students: I understand you've unified and intend to draw this game out. Well, if it's a war you want, it's a war you will lose. City College is stronger, faster; our sperm counts are higher, even in our women. Resistance is as pointless as your degrees. —Dean Spreck

Greendale is at war. The school has been all but destroyed by its own students, all playing paintball to win the $100,000 prize offered by Pistol Patty's Ice Creamery. But "Pistol Patty" is really Dean Spreck of City College, who has unleashed this scheme to destroy the Greendale campus and has employed ringers such as the Black Rider and his stormtrooper-esque White Clones — all of whom have been enrolled at Greendale for weeks — to ensure he doesn't have to pay out the prize. The only hope for saving the school is for one of its students to win the prize and donate it to the school, so the Study Group assembles a ragtag bunch of misfit students to fight back, stop Dean Spreck and save Greendale Community College.

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The Community episode "For A Few Paintballs More" provides examples of:

• Action Girl: Britta, Shirley and Annie.
• Actor Allusion: Inverted.

Jeff: Paint? In sprinklers? Are we The Little Rascals? Leonard: I was. —(He wasn't.)

• Air Vent Passageway: Would've been attempted by Troy's squad, had Garrett not gotten stuck in the duct.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Annie's attraction to Han!Abed.
• Aloof Ally: Abed takes the role of Han Solo so Jeff wouldn't beat him to it.
• Affectionate Parody: Of the Star Wars model of a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits resisting The Empire.
• Agree to Disagree: Paradox
• Attack Drone: Doubles as a Surveillance Drone.
• The Bad Guys Win: Only to be averted by Pierce.
• Batman Gambit: The entirety of the previous episode is revealed to be one of these by Dean Spreck of City College. Spreck sponsored the Spring Fling as "Pistol Patty", and then gave out the 100,000 cash prize, knowing the students would turn on each other and trash the school, and knowing full and well that the Greendale wouldn't have the money to fix it.
• Big Bad: Dean Spreck
• Big Damn Heroes: Shirley. Then, surprisingly Pierce Hawthorne.
• Bittersweet Ending: Pierce wins the paintball competition and decides to donate the money to repair the school, but he comes to decision to quit the Study Group.
• Black Dude Dies First: Averted, since a nameless student is the first to get taken out by the Stormtroopers (however, Magnitude is the first named character to "die").
  • technically Chang is the first to be taken out, but since that was in the cliffhanger of the previous episode....
• Brick Joke: Throughout the first half of the episode, Jeff fights with Troy over leadership of the resistance. The dean even believes that Jeff will be the one to save the day. Guess who's the first member of the study group who gets eliminated?
  • Early on, Leonard interprets "Hit 'em where it hurts" to mean "Just below their balls." Later, when getting ready to fight, his Battle Cry is "Let's kick some taint."
• Call Back: Oh boy...
  • Shirley's driving.
  • Troy's super-plumbing abilities, and the return of the janitor.
  • The poster of Dean of Admissions Pat Isakson.
  • Quendra with a Q-U returns briefly.
  • This is a bit more subtle, but as previously shown, it's really easy for someone to mess with the school's application system so that the City College students could double as Greendale students.
    • In fact, that's how Chang got involved with the original paintball tournament.
• The Cameo: Busy Phillips and Dan Byrd from Cougar Town are seen briefly among the extras after Greendale wins. It's a Call Back to the episode where Abed says he was a background extra on the set of that show.
• Chekhov's Skill: Super-plumbing
• Collective Groan: Everyone does this when Abed says they've now entered a Star Wars motif.
• Comically Missing the Point: Pop what, Magnitude? Pop WHAT?
  • Abed didn't understand that no one likes the Star Wars genre shift.
• Decoy Protagonist: The Dean and Jeff himself believe he is the the hero of the story. Turns out Jeff is the first of the study group to 'die'. Really any of the other members could make a better argument for being the protagonist.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Magnitude.
• Dressing as the Enemy: Pierce.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Jeff.
  • But, you know, with paint. Pretendsies dropping of bridge.
• Evil Gloating: A confused Dean Pelton needs Dean Spreck to do this:

Now, I understand everything! Now your whole evil plan is as clear as day! (pause) But if you need to explain it to your men I will understand!

• Famous Last Words
  • "Pop..." Magnitude
  • "I had a dream it would end this way." Troy
  • "Will you still be Han Solo after we die?" "'Fraid not, doll. Once I'm gone, I'm gone." Annie and Abed
  • "Vicki!" Vicki
  • "Charge!" Jeff
  • "Eat paint you stormtroopin' City College knob gobblers!" Leonard
  • "We win!" Shirley
• Fan Service: Take all of the Alison Brie fanservice from the previous episode and combine it with Clothing Damage and being covered in paint.
• Foe Yay: As in "Basic Rocket Science" there seems to be a copious amount of it between the dean and the dean of city college.
• Gatling Good
• Genre Shift: From Western to "Rebels vs. the Empire", as mentioned above. Lampshaded. (By Abed, of course.)
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: The shot of City College raising their flag (a tall building flanked by two shorter ones) over the Greendale flag (an anus). It looks like this.
• The Hero: Jeff and Troy fight over who should assume the role. They both end up being a Decoy Protagonist.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Magnitude

"Pop... p..."

• • • Not Quite Dead: "For Greendale!"
• Hollywood Tactics: Jeff's plan to frontally assault a machine gun.
• Ho Yay: Between the deans.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: The City College Stormtroopers make their kills through sheer weight of numbers (and a conveniently placed Paintball turret) rather than anything approaching accuracy.
• Ironic Echo: Within the space of ten seconds.

Stormtrooper 1: [reading from a poster on a door:] "Welcome to Greendale: you're already accepted"? Stormtrooper 2: Pfft. Losers. [The Stormtroopers get shot through the poster by Annie and Abed.] Annie: Welcome to Greendale. Abed: You're already dead.

• It's Been Done: Annie and everyone else consider the idea of a Star Wars Whole-Plot Reference played-out.
• Jumping on a Paint Grenade: Alas, poor Magnitude, we hardly knew ye.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Vickieeeeee!!!!
• Magnificent Bastard: Dean Spreck
• Mission Briefing: See above picture.
• More Dakka: See Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy.
• Non-Indicative Name: Like the previous episode, the episode title refers to a spaghetti Western. Unlike the previous episode, the actual episode isn't a Western pastiche in the least.
• Now or Never Kiss: Abed and Annie after they've both run out of ammo and are about to be eliminated.
• Oh Crap:

Troy: I had a dream it would end this way.

• Old Soldier: Leonard:

"Britta, I've been in a few real wars. This one is actually the most terrifying."

• Opening Scroll: It's about four sentences long.

"Let's not draw this out."

• Operation Blank: Increasing passive aggressive iteration between Jeff and Troy.
• Opposing Combat Philosophies: Jeff and Troy have two different plans on to how to defeat City College. Annie merges them into one.
• Outrun The Shower of Paint
• Paintball Episode
• Playing Possum: Pierce. It's ambiguous whose side he'll be on all episode, and then when he's left alone with a Stormtrooper, "HHNNNNNNNG!"
• Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner: The end of the game.

Stormtrooper: Who are you?  Pierce: Your mother's lover. (shoots him)

• The Quisling: Pierce offers to give any information about Jeff Winger to Dean Spreck in exchange for not being shot. They turn out to be only things that Pierce made up to make Jeff seem gay, and not anything of real tactical value.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The study group and other Greendale students have to band together to fight the City College invasion.
• Redshirt Army: Jeff leads this along with Britta and a few recurring characters against the ice cream truck.
• Remember the New Guy?: Paradox, the British student dressed like a hobo who contradicts everybody.
  • Fridge Brilliance: "Remember the New Guy" is, itself, a paradox.
• Redemption in the Rain: Troy.
• The Reveal: At the start of the episode Pistol Patty is revealed to be Dean Spreck from the rival City College.
• Self-Deprecation:
  • Dan Harmon shows up on an admissions poster and is called a loser.
  • At the end of the episode, Britta suggested that they take Anthro 201 next semester, and Abed said it was too risky because 'sequels are always disappointing'. This can both be a reference to the Star Wars franchise, and the episode itself, which was a sequel to a Sequel Episode.
• Scenery Gorn: They really trashed the school.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them: Since Spreck is technically sponsoring the event, he makes it so that if someone get's paint on them, they're out rather than just getting hit by a paintball gun.
  • Beat Them At Their Own Game: Which Troy makes the most of by filling the school's sprinkler system with paint.
• Serious Business: Paintball was already Serious Business at Greendale, but somehow this episode managed to make it even serious-er.
• Ship Tease: Annie and Han!Abed.
• Shirtless Scene: Much like Jeff in "Modern Warfare", Troy spends the whole episode in a muscle shirt.
• Shout-Out:
  • Literary Allusion Title: The episode title is taken from For a Few Dollars More.
  • There's the Star Wars Whole-Plot Reference, of course...
  • A subtler Star Wars shout out is the fact that the City College soldiers call each other "White Clones". The Stormtroopers are dressed in white, and are all clones.
  • Also ones to war movies. Britta sees people getting "killed" in slow motion like Saving Private Ryan. Troy poses like Willem Dafoe in Platoon.
  • "Welcome to Greendale. You're already dead".
  • Both Jeff's plan and Troy's refer to the climaxes of films: Troy's is to Constantine (Holy water in the sprinklers killing vampires), and Jeff's is to the classic Western The Wild Bunch (where the climax involves charging a machine-gun nest)
• Special Edition Title: Star Wars themed!
• There Can Only Be One: The only rule of this year's paintball game.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: How Troy gets taken out.
• Took a Level In Badass: Vicki was scared to leave the fort in the previous episode. Here, she was the first to charge the ice cream truck.
• Trash the Set: Whatever didn't get wrecked last episode gets properly destroyed here.
• The Unfought: Dean Spreck.
• Wham! Line:

Pierce: No thanks, I'm done with you guys.

• What the Hell, Hero?: Pierce calls the group out on their treatment of him.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Twice. One during the paintball game, and one at the end of the episode.