Community Season 5 Episode 11 entitled "G.I. Jeff" delved back into 1980s, G.I. Joe style. Aside from hilarious new superhero names, Buzz Kill (Gillian Jacobs), Tight Ship (Alison Brie), Wingman (Jeff, or in the real world, Joel McHale), Three Kids (Yvette Nicole Brown). Things go bad when Wingman arrives on the scene and actually kills the head of Cobra. This is a problem because no one has ever actually killed anyone in "G.I. Joe" before; after all, it is a show for children. After some kind of haphazardly conducted trial, Buzz, Tight, Wingman and Three Kids end up in prison, where they meet Fourth Wall/Abed. Fourth Wall mentions Greendale to Wingman, and suddenly Jeff starts having some kind of 1980s G.I. Joe action figure commercial dream.
A confused and mourning member of Cobra attacks the prison to "avenge my totally platonic friend," allowing Wingman and his friends to escape. They escape in a plane, on which Fourth Wall accidentally mentions Glendale and the crew falls into a visit at the "excavation" of a strange new reality of Greendale. The real question is, why are the writers of "Community" doing this to us? But let's go on.
At Greendale, they encounter Over Kill aka Chang. "Incredible, it's as if there's something about this place that feeds on ambition," Wingman says. Wingman realizes that he's actually "Jeff Winger" and he works here. He's becoming conscious of the fact that possibly he's not living his real reality. He goes off to find the "truth," which is that Jeff drank some liquor and then took some pills he bought from Koreatown because he's freaked out about getting older. Now he's unconscious and dreaming in G.I. Joe. "80s action cartoon plane" is separated from his non-cartoon reality by "children's toy commercial plane," which is what he's having visions of. "I don't wanna be a middle aged community college teacher," Jeff insists. "I want to be a G.I. Joe!"
Although he longs for his youth, he discovers that the world of G.I. Joe is lacking in Scotch and naked women. In that case, he'll take mortality. "A good syndicated cartoon has a lesson at the end," as Fourth Wall explains. "But getting heavy-handed or preachy could turn an entire generation into jaded, sarcastic babies."
