protect his house, but in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, he went out of his way to lure the robbers into a house of traps. The premise is shoehorned into working rather than organically feeling like the right thing to do." Matar wrote how Hickey being prevented from spending time with his grandson "doesn’t quite work because the problems between Hank and Buzz feel vague and undefined." In the first installment, Matar wrote, the character traits (like Britta's liberalism) of each member shone through. Here, only Hickey's interrogation sequence and Abed's proclivities to act out characters in his universe were displayed, while Shirley was killed off quickly and David Cross was underused. Despite this pronouncement, Matar praised Jim Rash's performance, saying that "his death scene is almost irrefutably the best bit of the episode." He also praised the episode for mixing up the setting. Matar wrote, however, that the lack of a strong villain like Pierce was a severe shortcoming: "Everybody always hated on Pierce during Season 2 when he was at the height of his dickishness, but I absolutely loved how well the character functioned as a villain, and his role in the original D&D episode was a lynchpin in how awesome that episode ended up being. Of course, it’s both wise and completely necessary that 'Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons' doesn’t have the same exact setup. There’s no clear villain and, almost from the start, everyone’s divided into two factions and two separate rooms." Brian Collins of Badass Digest starts by saying he was disappointed with the episode "aping one of the series' best" but then qualified his criticism by saying Dan Harmon undertook this sequel as a "fuck you" to NBC, who hated the original episode in Season 2. Collins recounts Harmon's interview in Rolling Stone where Harmon "admits that the episode was not organic, difficult to write, and it would be all his fault if it was the worst episode ever." Despite this qualification, Collins said how this episode "never really gelled" for him. He initially praised the episode for delivering on enough laughs, but said the lack of a real conflict and a lukewarm resolution soured the episode for him. He said the stakes were not high enough when compared to the original, and found it difficult to become invested in a vague conflict between Hickey and his son. Unlike many other reviews,