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(S01E04) All hail Ken Jeong, returning to the cast this week. Now we see how he can be a part of storylines even when the students aren't in his class. Despite being in very few scenes so far, I can already tell that his Senor Chang is going to be one of the funniest characters on the show.

Couple him with last week's Professor Whitman (John Michael Higgins), and it becomes clear that the teachers at this community college are going to be the ones who are completely off-the-wall insane.

Our motley crew is more eccentric. We got an opportunity to get a little further into Shirley's unique personality, as she and Jeff discovered something they could bond over and talk about. In fact, it turns out this thing is about the only thing they can talk about, and it's something we can all relate to.

Oh the heady days of higher education. Oh, the gossip! Lord knows when I was in college we spent as much time gossiping and spreading rumors about everyone on campus as we did studying. And that weird hacky-sackin' dude did have tiny little nipples. Speaking of which, we had hacky-sackin' dudes on my campus. In fact, it may have been some of those same guys. Nice to know some things stay the same.

I think I've had people in my life that I realized I had absolutely nothing in common with except for a desire to rip on other people around us who were just begging to be ripped on. You find yourself stumbling around when there's no handy target. Still, I think there's hope for a true friendship to form between Shirley and Jeff. I'm glad to see she's rooting for him and Britta to work it out. She really is sweeter than sugar.

As for Britta, seeing her make out with -- and obviously sleep with -- the shirtless wonder, I realized that we really don't know her all that well yet. We know she's intelligent and not at all impressed with Jeff's charm. We know she gets easily annoyed with Pierce and ... that's about it. What kind of a girl finds that kind of a guy appealing?

What a great social experiment conducted in this episode. It was so perfect that it was Troy, who's clearly smitten with Annie, and Abed that outlasted everyone in the waiting game. When Abed hit 26 hours of calm waiting and accepting a "five more minutes" explanation, that was hilarious stuff. The students and teacher conducting the experiment started having the waiting symptoms themselves.

Abed's explanation that he was, in fact, livid during that was priceless. Yes, it was a little precocious that he did it because Annie asked him to and he thought they were friends (insert audience "aww" if this had a laugh track), but it still worked.

HIGHLIGHTS:

• Senor Chang freaking out at the first "five more minutes" in the experiment.
• Shirley getting Britta's boy toy to take off his shirt just by asking where it was from.
• Pierce's earnoculars; he didn't have much to do this episode, but they made it work.
• The weekly closings with Troy and Abed on the couch, this time making up voices for people walking by ... and discovering via Jeff that they can be heard.

[Watch clips and episodes of Community at SlashControl.]