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Plot[]

“
For a guy who’s not playing you’re sure shooting a bunch of mothers!
”
— Elroy Patashnik
Late at night on the Greendale campus, Star-Burns is in the parking garage having just left Vicki's one woman stage show. He is approached by Todd and an unexpected paintball battle erupts between them. Star-Burns gains the upper hand when a third party shoots him and Todd with silver paint. The next morning, Frankie has security escort Star-Burns off campus since paintballing is now prohibited. She dismisses Dean Pelton's advice on handling the matter and instead turns to Jeff for help. Deputy Chief Custodian Lapari is being honored at a "Clean Up Greendale" gala and she needs Jeff to introduce him. As the de facto leader of the campus she asks that at the event he use his influence to persuade everyone not to play paintball.



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The committee has joined the outlawed paintball.
Jeff reluctantly agrees and goes to the Save Greendale Committee meeting to explain Frankie's concerns. However, he discovers they are all playing the illegal contest when the committee members shoot Chang with paintball guns. Jeff himself is also drawn back into the game when several competitors rush the study room. He seizes Chang's abandoned weapon and quickly eliminates them. Frankie arrives a few minutes later and asks about a paintball player who claimed Jeff shot him. Despite her suspicions, Jeff assures her no one on the committee are playing. After she leaves, the committee members point their paintball weapons at each other. Abed ends the standoff by mentioning his suspicions of who is sponsoring the game.



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Welcome to Club Club!
The committee joins him in a storage room he converted to conduct his investigation. He shows a connection between a player named "Silver Ballz" who uses silver paint and Greendale's rival school City College. His presentation is interrupted by Dean Pelton who tries in vain to assert his authority. The committee ignores him and agrees to work together to thwart City College's plans. Abed infiltrates the school's Club Club to find a paintball munitions supplier named "Fun Dad" who turns out to be Preston Koogler. When Abed asks him about obtaining silver paintballs, Koogler flees but is stopped by Annie. Before she can get answers about "Silverballz" an unknown player shoots Koogler and fires at her.



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City College is at it again.
During the commotion Koogler slips away but Abed manages to obtain a thumb drive he left behind at the club. Elroy identifies it as an encryption key which unlocks a message chain between Koogler and Silverballz. It reveals that a large amount of silver paint was ordered with a message implying Silverballz plans to use at the "Clean up Greendale" Gala. That night at the event the committee members are in attendance spread out to scan for any potential threats. Jeff is coordinating their efforts via headset and checks on Pelton whom he sent to the school's custodial wing. It's there that the Dean is ambushed in an elevator by several custodians and surprisingly eliminates them all before heading back to the gala.



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Committee in position.
At the same time Elroy and Britta engage in a messy paintball battle with chefs in the cafeteria's kitchen. Jeff overhears the conflict on his headset just as he is on stage introducing the gala's honoree Lapari. He becomes disoriented when Frankie has the crowd pop balloons in celebration. Jeff shocks Frankie when he shoots what he believes to be an assassin who turns out to be an innocent bystander. Dean Pelton arrives and declares that Lapari and the custodians are behind the underground paintball contest. A huge paintball battle erupts when Lapari calls in his men and during the struggle Annie, Abed, Elroy and Britta are eliminated.



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The underground paintball comes to light.
Amidst the chaos Lapari manages to escape with Jeff and Dean Pelton hot on his trail. They follow him inside the school's Custodian hall wing and manage to catch him off guard. Lapari tries to appeal to them, claiming Frankie's changes to Greendale are too drastic and that they could use the money to keep it the way it is. Jeff implores them to stand down, pointing out that improving Greendale is truly a good thing in the long run, and though Frankie will be annoyed she will not fire them. Frankie appears and agrees with Jeff, promising they will suffer no major consequences, but tells them to end the game quickly so things can go back to normal. Once she leaves Jeff proposes that they all eliminate themselves by shooting their own foot. The others agree but when Jeff counts down from three they all shoot each other instead at the same time. Sometime later, Frankie punishes Jeff and the rest of the Save Greendale Committee by having them pretend to be babies.



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The final standoff.

End tag[]

Garrett is on stage in front of a live audience performing stand-up based on surviving Vicki's one woman musical. In particular he mocks a section of her act devoted to her dead mother which the crowd laughs at. However, everyone goes silent when Vicki makes her presence known and confronts Garrett on stage. The audience watches on in dismay only to learn the entire thing was staged to promote a new show starring Vicki and Garrett. The revelation, along with Garrett acknowledging Vicki's very much alive mother in the room, causes the audience to boo. Garrett defends their act by comparing it to Andy Kaufman's subversive comedy and demands recognition for the amount of work they put into it.

Recurring themes[]

Continuity[]

Continuity lists
Narrative
Recurring or debuting plot points in this episode:
  • Previously: This episode features the fifth instance of Paintball Assassin on the show.
  • History lesson: Lapari reveals animosity towards Jeff as he and the custodial crew were forced to clean up the campus after paintball games Winger had become infamous for having participated in.
  • Discontinuity: Britta says "I've won a few times now," but she never won a paintball game. The first game was won by Jeff and the second by Pierce. The third game had no winner shown, and the fourth was an imagined game that Jeff won.
People
Recurring or debuting characters in this episode:
Places
Recurring or debuting places in this episode:
Things
Recurring or debuting items in this episode:
  • School supplies:
  • School song: The song "Daybreak" is heard in the school's elevator.
  • Winger speech: Jeff tries to end the Mexican standoff with Dean Pelton and Lapari with a speech.
  • Mad Skillz: Vicki's singing talents are once again displayed. It is revealed that she majors in music.

Running gags[]

List of Running gags
Running gags in this episode:
  • Bon Appetit!: Britta asks Jeff if Frankie broke up with someone, and if so, of which gender.
  • Deanotation:
    • Dean Pelton replaces the word "times" and "desperate" with "Dean" and "Dean-sperate" respectively when using the old phrase "Desperate times call for desperate measures".
    • Pelton tries out a few different names for the committee using his title as part of it. This includes: "The Secret Dean Force", "The Dean Boys", "Task Force Dean", "Dean Sport".
  • Man crush: the Dean wants to measure Jeff for a suit.
  • Nice outfit: The Save Greendale Committee is forced wear baby bonnets and pacifiers for a week because they played paintball.
  • NOOOOOO!: Annie and Abed both scream this after being eliminated.
  • You're the worst: Britta is given the Batman-themed codename of "Clooney" after the actor George Clooney who starred in the 1997 movie Batman & Robin, generally considered to be the worst in the Batman franchise.

Pop culture references[]

List of Pop culture references
Pop culture references in this episode:
  • Shout out:
  • IMDb:
    • Jeff mentions the movie Iron Man (2008).
    • Koogler says the first rule of the Club Club is that they're not a "Fight Club", referring to dialogue from the novel and film of the same name.
  • Use your allusion:
    • Star-Burns says that the name "Silver Ghost" is "probably already taken by an indie comic book or a terrible tequila." There is a Silver Ghost comic, but it's published by DC Comics, not an indie publisher, and there is no tequila with that name. Silver Ghost is best known as a model of Rolls-Royce car.
    • Frankie uses a popular quote from Joseph Campbell: "Follow your bliss". Dan Harmon has often spoken of Campbell's influence on his writing.
    • During the Gala scene, each of the committee members and Pelton's codenames refers to an actor who once played Batman. Abed is Bale (Christian Bale), Jeff is Keaton (Michael Keaton), Annie is West (Adam West), Elroy is Kilmer (Val Kilmer), Britta is Clooney (George Clooney), and the Dean is Voice of Diedrich Bader (Diedrich Bader voiced Batman in the animated series Batman: The Brave and the Bold). The group's codename is Belfry which refers to the saying 'bats in the belfry', meaning insanity.
    • The monologue that Lapari delivers in the museum of custodial arts over the microphone mirrors the final monologue that the Joker delivers in the Batman comic, The Killing Joke.

Meta references[]

List of Meta references
Meta references in this episode:
  • Homage:
    • The episode's plot, opening sequence and some of its action set pieces are derived from spy movies. According to Dan Harmon it was meant to be based more on current spy films like Bourne and Mission: Impossible franchises and not the old style James Bond-type thrillers.
    • On commentary for this episode, "Community" creator Dan Harmon confirmed the paintball gun fight with Starburns and Todd in the parking garage was inspired by the opening scene of "Highlander".
    • The elevator scene with Dean Pelton is an homage to a scene in the 2014 film "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" which itself was paying tribute to an action sequence from the 1995 Bruce Willis movie "Die Hard With A Vengeance". Dan Harmon confirmed in an episode commentary this was a nod to former Community executive producers the Russo brothers who directed that particular Marvel Entertainment film. Incidentally, Danny Pudi (Abed) makes a cameo appearance in said-film as a S.H.I.E.L.D. technician.
    • When shooting breaks out during the gala, Annie and Abed are shooting people with their backs to each other, but they then turn to face each other and continue shooting. This is a reference to the final action scene in the 2005 film "Mr & Mrs. Smith".
    • The scene where Lapari, Dean and Jeff shoot each other is a possible reference to the final scene in the The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
    • The scene with Britta and Elroy looking at Koogler's thumb drive is a parody of hacking films and police procedurals. The image of Lapari loads slowly in order to be a gradual reveal, which happened with 90s-era Internet, but the Dean points out that this would not happen with modern download speeds -- Elroy has keystrokes programmed to make pictures load slowly.
    • Vicki and Garrett stage an elaborate show piece designed to promote their next show, but when the audience reacts negatively to their manipulative staging they claim their work is "performance art" similar to Andy Kaufman's work. Kaufman was notorious for occasionally doing bits that were deliberately designed to provoke a negative reaction from his audience.
    • The "Steamy Pipe Exhibit" parodies the cliché of using steam pipes to make action scenes atmospheric.
  • Everyone's a critic: Abed acknowledges certain fans' tendency to call episodes like "Modern Espionage" parodies, indirectly telling viewers that "homage" is the more appropriate term.
  • IRL: Lapari calls Abed Indian, only to be told that he is Arab. Actor Danny Pudi is indeed half-Indian.
  • Résumé:
    • Dean Pelton guesses that Lapari has done stand-up which refers to actor Kumail Nanjiani 's stand-up career.
    • Erik Charles Nielsen's stand-up career is also acknowledged with Garrett's stand-up in the end tag.
  • Up against the wall:
    • Frankie's parting words to Star-Burns are "Bye forever, Star-Burns". This was in fact his last appearance on the series.
    • After getting in the elevator where "Daybreak" is playing, Pelton asks if it's "the only thing they play in [the elevator]", a reference to the recurrence of the song throughout the series.

Trivia[]

  • Frequent background extra Jeremy makes the last of over 45 episode appearances. He is seen dancing in "Club Club" along with Long-haired guy who is making his second to last of over 65 episode appearances.
  • Silver Ballz and Koogler exchange emails titled "tips on getting laid".

Quotes[]

I'm gonna go get a shovel because theater is dead.Star-Burns
Season Six Episodes

1. "Ladders"
2. "Lawnmower Maintenance and Postnatal Care"
3. "Basic Crisis Room Decorum"
4. "Queer Studies & Advanced Waxing"
5. "Laws of Robotics & Party Rights"
6. "Basic Email Security"
7. "Advanced Safety Features"

8. "Intro to Recycled Cinema"
9. "Grifting 101"
10. "Basic RV Repair and Palmistry"
11. "Modern Espionage"
12. "Wedding Videography"
13. "Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television"

Community Season Six DVD front cover

Season OneSeason TwoSeason ThreeSeason FourSeason FiveSeason Six
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