Reviews in Pop Culture: MeowMeowBeenz (Community)

Once more, we turn to Community to give us a beautifully heightened sense of what a review can really be. Previously, we highlighted the magic that is Leonard Likes Pizza, the YouTube channel in which series standout Leonard reviews pizza, chips, and whatever he really feels like reviewing (you can read all about it here).

In Season Five, we are gifted MeowMeowBeenz, an app that is being beta-tested at the school.

“MeowMeowBeenz lets you say how much you like, who you like, when you like, all from a standard, non-Boost Mobile phone… With MeowMeowBeez, students can rate teachers, teachers can rate students, everyone and anyone can rate each other. MeowMeowBeenz! - David, jammyPow™

In case that verbatim text didn’t explain it enough, MeowMeowBeenz is a social media app that allows its users to rate each other on a scale of one to five MeowMeowBeenz.

So let’s say you’re a fine and friendly person. Hooray, people like you and rate you 4-5 MeowMeowBeenz! But then you have a bad day and make a scene in public. Uh-oh, now everyone is updating their ratings, let’s see how far your MeowMeowBeenz fall.

You can see where this is going, can’t you?

Spoilers ahead, obviously! But this is just a comedy show, so it really doesn’t matter that much anyway.

And precisely because this is a comedy show, the premise that MeowMeowBeenz presents balloons into something wildly absurd. (which is going to make this real fun to summarize!)

This episode opens with a rift between Jeff and Shirley, you don’t need to know why, just know that there is drama. And plopped right into that drama is a social media app, like fuel to the fire.

While much of the school becomes consumed with the app, Jeff and Britta hold out against its stupidity, but only for so long. Seeing that Shirley is a Five and using her weighted rating as a weapon (the higher your status, the more effect your ratings carry), Jeff gave in and decided to get in, if only to take down Shirley.

What follows is a beautiful sendup of dystopian tropes. The school is transformed and a caste system arises based on ranks, with uniforms, rules, and rhymes:

Fives have lives. Fours have chores. Threes have fleas. Twos have blues and Ones don't get a rhyme, because they're garbage.

It may not be a brave or beautiful world for all living in it, but as a viewer, it is wonderful seeing where your favorite characters fall and how much they do (or don’t) fit into that role.

There’s no better gatekeeper than an old man

To quickly run through the remainder of the plot, Jeff slowly but surely ascends the ranks until he becomes a Four, which also coincides with a talent show being put on for the good of the unruly masses (everyone down to the Twos, anyway- the ones are banished to the Outlands). By now we know that Jeff can craft a masterful speech when the moment needs it, but instead of tearing down the system, he does standup and kills it. Before Shirley can weigh in, Jeff receives five MeowMeowBeenz from another Five and becomes a Five himself.

Still simmering from their earlier rift, the two don’t go long without arguing, leading to their quick diminishment from Fives to Ones. Britta seizes the opportunity to overthrow the system with an army of Twos, but it is quickly revealed that the beta test had ended days previously. Jeff recommends everyone delete the app, and the school, by and large, moves on.

If you would like to read more about this episode, you can do so here and here (or just watch it!).

The “Real” MeowMeowBeenz

Fans will do what fans will do, and just like the YouTube channel that currently exists for Leonard Likes Pizza, there is also a MeowMeowBeenz app available for download (in the Apple and Google app stores), working in much the same way as on the show.

Well. That’s a big overstatement.

First of all, it doesn’t work anymore. You can download it, it’ll look almost like it does on the show, but you can only register, not actually use it. Nothing ever loads properly.

Further, instead of rating people like on the show, users would rate random things. A quick look at a screenshot shows ratings for dogs, cats, pizza, mustaches, bad teeth, gold chains, tae bo, among many other things. That’s smart, but a true fan would want a true recreation of the app.

The app developer (a certain POP POP LLC), has likely moved on, but never removed the app from the app stores, leading to average ratings of 2.8 and 3.1 stars for the Apple and Google stores, respectively.

Maybe we’ll see an improvement one day. Maybe it’ll disappear. Maybe we’ll get our “and a movie.” May. Be.