I really see Chang as the primary Harmon stand-in.

31 and 22 doesn't pass the "half your age plus seven" test. Although I could be fine with an "over 21, anything goes, if maturity lines up."

I think Harmon's pining for Murray in that role was a lot like Jeff's pining for his dad.

Actually, if they ever go back to the Paintball well, I'd be totally up for a radio-themed or offscreen Paintball episode. I think it's the only way to further step away from it than the retroactive noir one.

Is that a line about his reluctance to do anything BUT National Lampoon style humor or a gag about his super-virility?

By the halfway point of Season 3, I thought we were supposed to accept that Jeff is insecure and maybe even mentally ill. I felt like this episode deftly played with that by giving us the collected version of Jeff and then showing us that he was never collected.

It's not all new writers.

I'm not sure I can think of any show that ever lost writers faster than it "hemorrhaged" viewers. Probably because if you lose 20 writers, that's a whole staff and if you lose 20 viewers, that's a margin of error.

Who's to say they didn't have ANOTHER argument over a lost pen?

Pierce is impotent.

I think they did think about what it means and that the cruelty is deliberately played for laughs.

I'm also starting to get the feeling that every episode this season was somebody's pitch for the season premiere and that Moses Port and David Guarascio don't reject pitches.

They did it for the Hogan's Heroes reference and the foozball callback. Though I agree.

I'm less worried about recycling. Although this episode is full of references, I actually think it would work just fine if you'd never seen the all of the older episodes.

I'll add:

In the increasingly unlikely event we have a Season 5, the showrunners need to pull in a writer who has a sense of longform structure and drama to run the show.

They at least need someone with a sense of structure running it, if not Harmon.

You clearly haven't seen anything else Malcolm McDowell has been in, in the last 20 years or so.

I'll add that my take is much like both of the reviewers' but I'm perhaps a BIT less critical.

Also, soup is better. Abed is better.