Among the fan favorite episodes of the vampire drama Angel is "Smile Time," a fifth season stand-alone episode that saw David Boreanaz' brooding vampire character Angel magically transformed into a puppet. There's just something hilarious about the concept, so it should be especially great to see the Community cast get a similar treatment. We've seen them in stop-motion and as 16-bit video game characters. Now see what the Greendale Community College study group looks like in puppet form. (Spoiler alert!)
Abed has an Inspector Spacetime t-shirt on. And Change appears to be wearing some goggles. But I especially love that Jeff has been immortalized with his typical unimpressed, sarcastic expression.
The announcement that the Community cast would be immortalized as puppets came at the PaleyFest panel this week. The episode is set to air in April and will have the study group taking a wild balloon ride, which crash-lands in the woods. Seinfeld's Jason Alexander will play a friendly mountain man that they happen across. "As the study group recounts their adventures in the woods, which has left them all feeling a little awkward with one another, Dean Pelton (Jim Rash) encourages them to speak about their experience with the use of puppets."
So it seems, therapy is once again playing its part in the story. Just yesterday, we shared a clip from this Thursday's episode, which involved Britta rapping about giving therapy to one of the characters. Sorting through their issues is a recurring theme on Community, so I suppose the puppet gag was inevitable, but it's no less exciting. Sometimes a plot on the NBC comedy cannot be contained in the traditional medium.
The puppets for the episode were made by Scott Johnson and Drew Massey, whose recent puppet-making credits include Warren the Ape and the Jim Henson Company's Muppets Wizard of Oz.
