Even “Battlestar Galactica” had its “Scar” – all right; different genre. The message is still the same, though.

That said, this week’s episode of “Community,” “Advanced Criminal Law” is not the cleverest kid on campus.

It seems that someone had the audacity to not only cheat on Senor Chang’s (Ken Jeong) exam – but to do so using a crib sheet – a vile and racist atrocity. In a characteristically hysterical abuse of authority, Chang proclaims that if the culprit does not identify himself, the whole class will get a zero.

In a rare opportunity for character depth, and not so rare moment of righteous courage, Britta (Gillian Jacobs) comes forward and must now face disciplinary action, “much like she would at a real university.”

Predictably, this enables ex-attorney Jeff (Joel McHale) to bravely step in as her legal counsel before a tribunal consisting of Chang, Dr. Duncan (John Olivier) and Dean Pelton (Jim Rash) – by the school’s pool. (Yale’s extremely jealous of their built-in sound system.)

The funniest moments of the episode take place at this point – particularly between the irked instructor and the boisterous Brit, who, apparently, rather resembles Ron Weasley, according to Chang and that Britta left the class like it was “tampon time.”

We learn more about Britta, with that long-awaited, tragic flaw finally emerging. Jeff has an amusing line proclaiming “Look at me. No, look how handsome my face is. If all I wanted was sex, I could get it from plenty of women without having to go through all this crap.”

This is where the funny ends, however.

Another of the three storylines focuses on Annie’s (Alison Brie) search for a new school song to honor Greendale’s most distinguished alumnus, Luis Guzman, “celebrated actor and model Puerto Rican-American.” Unfortunately, she makes the grievous mistake of hiring Pierce (Chevy Chase), whose own distinguished abilities primarily manifest in stealing the melodies of pop standards and consciously believing them to be his own.

To be fair, however, his eventual and wholeheartedly unoriginal tune was thoroughly amusing, but not enough to make up for the comedic cacophony leading up to its debut.

The last is by far the most heartbreaking, since it honestly had the most potential. Abed (Danny Pudi) and Troy (Donald Glover) have hitherto had hilarious hideaways. Their impromptu, nonsensical Spanish rap in “Spanish 101” was the episode’s best moment and their ill-plotted teasing through a not-so-sound-proof window in “Social Psychology” was incredibly cute.

Now that they’ve gotten an entire storyline, it honestly could have been amazing. Instead, it was simply strange.

Troy, seemingly amused with Abed’s Asperger’s, decides to mess with him by presenting several untrue statements as facts. Abed’s response to his friend’s claim that he can’t take a joke is to come up with an elaborate scheme to convince the former prom king that he’s an alien – down to inventing a new language, weird walk and even hiring a buddy to don a dorky costume (they ‘d gone over their budget).

Abed has Herculean commitment to any endeavor.

Although it admittedly did have several endearing moments, it could have been so much greater.

Pud and Glover are the show’ strange, kooky, kinetic young odd couple. Troy is the product of a social silver spoon and Abed is a sheltered young man with silverware roughly made of base metals – he hasn’t had at easy.

In all fairness, this should have worked, so we’ll call it a fluke and due to their continued success until now, Abed and Troy deserve another chance.

Perhaps next week, when Jeff tries to con Troy to try out for the school’s football team in “Football, Feminism and You,” we’ll see a marked improvement.

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