NBC has released two clips from this Thursday’s upcoming episode of Community, “Intro to Felt Surrogacy.” Watch them here!

We’ve been anticipating Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander’s Community guest appearance since it was announced last summer and have been anticipating singer Sara Bairelles’ since…well, last week. And now we’ve got our first look at both of their characters, as well as our whole Greendale crew as puppets.

There may come a day when reflexively yelling “Others!” when someone walks out from the underbrush is no longer funny but thankfully we’re nowhere near that day. One can forgive Abed for thinking a scraggly Jason Alexander is one of the Island’s inhabitants from Lost but it appears he’s just a former Greendale student (and part psychic) making his way in the wilderness. As Jeff points out, “transient mountain man” does seem to be about as good a fate as any Greendale graduate could hope more.

But it’s the Sara Bareilles’ clip that really offers the best hope for the episode.

Really, any show can throw puppets in front of a camera (and most shows should. Imagine how amazing it would be if Game of Thrones switched out its entire cast for puppets for an episode without any explanation). Puppets alone, however, are not enough for a stellar half-hour of TV. There needs to be a fun, manic energy and legitimately good or even just catchy music.

With that in mind, this clip is rather exciting. It’s only about 30 seconds and the lyrics to Bairelles interactions with the Guppets (that’s what we should call “Greendale puppets”) are limited to basically just describing routine maintenance to a hot-air balloon. But it’s still somehow exciting, catchy and fun. And Shirley has a very lovely singing voice.

For good measure, here is the tag from last week’s episode that turns Abed and Troy’s favorite song “Daybreak” into a beat-boxed rhythm, as it should be.

This is the least shy NBC has been about promoting any Community episode this season. This certainly bodes well for Thursday night.