R.I.P. 30 ROCK R.I.P COMMUNITY R.I.P. PARKS & REC

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/08/nbc-comedies-30-rock-community-parks-and-recreation_n_1499242.html

long live chuck lorre
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http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080329191652/uncyclopedia/images/3/31/Dancing_Banana.gif

at least Its Always Sunny is still alive... right?

Also RIP to... three more seasons? Oh noes! They dun killed... a show that most people thought had died by giving it more episodes! What murderers!

yeah gr80 is obv just being lol sensationalistic. we did discuss this story a bit somewhere a couple days ago when it first broke -- half the people watching these shows are used to cable series w/ <15 episodes a year anyway.

still a sad day for tumblr whites everywhere

ok with community being canceled, love 30 rock but it's on its way out no matter what, P&R is the only real loss here imo

Good riddance to bad garbage.

also lol @ keeping the office alive

Is NBC planning to commit seppuku after next season? Why are they TELLING us they have faith in nothing they're doing comedy-wise except The Office and maybe Whitney? And did they miss that TBS is picking up Cougar Town? Are they really going to do the same "oh wait nevermind" backpedal they did after announcing the forced retirement of Jay Leno if one of these shows goes to Comedy Central or IFC?

Like, yeah, I'm fine with any of these shows only getting one more season, but this is just an idiotic way to go about things considering that "internet favorite" is still yay better than anything else they have going on aside from The Voice.

Apparently NBC's picked up a ton of new pilots. Why not just pepper them around the established shows and see if anything sticks BEFORE announcing you can do better than cult hits?

I like all three of these shows but it's no big loss. It was fun while it lasted.

;_; for P&R -- i can't live w/t Ron Swanson -- but meh to the other two. 30 rock has seen better days, and i was always on the fence wr2 Community so no harm no foul if it goes.

if cougar town is going to TBS, I guarantee that Community or Parks & Rec if not both will find another home elsewhere

That's totally cool, I enjoyed the hell out of them and now I will have an extra couple of hours free each week. There sure as shit isn't anything as good on the horizon to replace them.

half the people watching these shows are used to cable series w/ <15 episodes a year anyway.

The point is more that, as croupier says, this shows a marked lack of network faith in/dedication to a show within the context of US broadcast television. Particularly shows that are as far along as these three are.

what does 'faith' matter except as to whether a show has a longterm future, which is not a question in this case?

Comedy Central is already airing re-runs of Community, it'd be pretty easy for them to put out some new episodes too

I'm saving that gif for when Spin ceases publication.

hell doing shortened seasons just gets audiences ready for "cable"-length seasons of these shows on cable stations.

like once a network says "you'll be on this much longer, no more, no less," it doesn't really matter how supposedly dedicated the network is, short of doing something needlessly cruel like making them do 4 bottle episodes and airing them as a block on a friday night. (xpost)

who knows, maybe the wacky president bill pullman sitcom will go like gangbusters and NBC can join the "lol tumblr WHO NEEDS YOU" pack

shows end, so it's not the end of the world even if p&r + community don't get picked up anywhere else. all these ppl are going to continue to work - tiny fey, amy pohler, dan harmon, all the casts are going to go on to other things, other funny things will appear with them and with other ppl, life will go on, my dvr will not go unfed.

i think it's kind of a given that NBC is going to continue going down the tubes no matter what they do, tbh, so i'm not going to go "bad idea, you guys are so screwed now!" as if there's anything anyone knows that would un-screw them. i'm actually kind of curious to see what the total collapse and expiration of a major broadcast network looks like, and have no problem with them airing some good shows on the way down.

this is like telling a partner that you're breaking up but they can stay till the lease is up and still have sex with you until then. get ready for some nights alone while they're off on dates, NBC!

like once a network says "you'll be on this much longer, no more, no less," it doesn't really matter how supposedly dedicated the network is

I guess not as much in the age of DVD/internet/streaming as it did back in the day. But in terms of the television broadcast itself, it's not even a little bit unprecedented for a network to shelve a shitload of episodes or, as you say, burn them off in a three-hour block. It's not just about getting to make the episodes. I'm sure they'd also like for them to be seen.

so...the cast and crew are going to be entertaining job offers while working on the last season? like every tv show that knows it's on its way out? (xpost)

really cracks me up that they'd allow headlines like this after what happened with leno. like, the one thing they should know not to do is announce you've given an arbitrary end-date to one of the few semi-successful things you have going on.

don't be dense, sd.

eh, the Leno thing was a genuine debacle. this is more on the level of "oh they're letting the Chuck fans have one more year to wrap things up, how nice."

matthew perry's "go away", anne heche's "spare me", ryan murphy's "the new terrible,"

i'm not being dense, i genuinely don't understand what the "your soon-to-be-ex-TV show is going to be out on dates" metaphor means.

you are being dense, because you missed that COUGAR TOWN is moving to TBS, and NBC has just happily jettisoned three critically popular properties, basically leaving them with zero.

i'm actually kind of curious to see what the total collapse and expiration of a major broadcast network looks like, and have no problem with them airing some good shows on the way down.

This, basically. NBC has been run by mindblowingly dumb fucks for at least half a decade now. This looks like it could really be the beginning of the end for them. I mean, regardless of whether some people dislike these particular shows or care whether or not they come back, there's an established audience who would probably stick around for as long as these shows are on. I guarantee that a large part of the reason NBC fails to see that is because it isn't reflected in the Nielsen numbers, which are growing increasingly-antiquated with respect to measuring the actual viewership of a television show (particularly shows that appeal to a younger demographic).

I dunno. Once that Thursday night block is gone, SNL will be literally the only NBC show I watch. So...kudos to NBC, I guess?

whether any of these shows jump to cable and make their good-for-cable ratings into a virtue instead of a liability doesn't actually hurt NBC or even make them look stupid, though. (xpost)

actually, it does

Maybe with some new shows they can finally beat Univision:

http://instagr.am/p/KdI-e_Md6F/

i meant i'm not being dense on purpose in a way that warrants the reply "don't be dense," obviously i can't control whether i am actually dumb

now i don't have to care about the fate of nbc, phew

whether any of these shows jump to cable and make their good-for-cable ratings into a virtue instead of a liability doesn't actually hurt NBC or even make them look stupid, though.

It absolutely does. They've been dead last in the ratings for years, and it's increasingly appearing that their method of attempting to fix this is to chuck everything out and start over from scratch, i.e. effectively become the new CW. Maybe it'll be a process of hurting themselves to ultimately improve themselves down the line, but it's undoubtedly going to be a painful process.

i dunno, i feel like it's just some very forced schadenfreude to act like NBC is going to be screwed BECAUSE of this and not because of a hundred other much bigger reasons

Wow, I don't think I'd really looked at the current NBC slate of shows, but it's largely very Grimm (ell oh ell).

i mean i'm sure Futurama fans watch the new eps on Comedy Central and go HAHA FUCK YOU FOX but i don't think Murdoch really gives a shit as long as Groening is happy driving the Simpsons money train

Oh, come on, all American sitcoms run too many seasons. I'd be happy if they were all cut down to 13.

xxxpost

Oh, I wouldn't pretend that this act in and of itself is gonna sink the ship. It's just, as you say, one among many displays suggesting that the execs at NBC don't know what the fuck they're doing.

some dude, I think it's fair to say that most television execs don't give shit one about the shows they air. As has been noted before elsewhere, TV shows are just ways to fill time and keep people's attention between commercials. But as viewership goes down, so does ad revenue. Execs most definitely care about things like that. At any rate, comparing the potential loss of these shows in the context of NBC's current state and Fox's loss of Futurama is kinda apples and oranges.

i dunno, i feel like it's just some very forced schadenfreude to act like NBC is going to be screwed BECAUSE of this and not because of a hundred other much bigger reasons

no one is saying this

What is the combined audience for these shows? Comparable to "Girls" plus "Veep" or something? 3 mil?

is anyone considering the possibility that this might actually be a good move for nbc

'cancel failing shows' isn't really that far-fetched of an idea

these shows aren't doing appreciably worse than any of their other terrible shows though.

as i said upthread, if any of their pile of new pilots stick they could laugh this all off, but i don't know how announcing that you're jettisoning your most hailed shows in a year in and of itself can be a good move.

doesn't look like they really care anymore about appealing to audiences that care about a show's acclaim though. this looks like a hail mary to capture the masses that watch CBS, which the thursday night lineup could never do. can't really blame NBC for trying to stay alive.

and if they're trying to move away from the network-tv-for-tumblrers brand, the jettisoning might not be a bad idea at all.

wait, if an audience doesn't care about a show's acclaim, why would they care that a network has announced its cancelling all the critically popular shows? surrounding these shows with a bunch of CBS shit and then kicking the nerds out when they pale in the ratings I get, but I don't know what audience will appreciate an "all-clear in a year".

for the same reason anyone does anything with regard to 'branding'? the brand wasn't working, audiences were avoiding it, they're changing the brand. that's all.

brand brand brand

- don madman from the critically acclaimed series 'mda men'

again, i am not questioning the decision to be CBS II with more multi-camera shit (other than the fact that ABC is actually having some success with single camera sitcoms and will probably love this move to abandon brains entirely), I questioned the decision to declare that brains have a year to get out.

because nerds are losers and everyone wants them to feel bad

even nerds, judging by this thread

oh definitely

If they're desperate to be seen as non-nerdy, ending all these shows immediately would seem the smoother move than to risk giving them a whole year to damage PR and sign deals with other networks while Matthew Perry's "Go Away" tanks, but then NBC has consistently found "goodbye" to be the hardest word.

ending all these shows immediately would seem the smoother move than to risk giving them a whole year to damage PR

very strange opinion

i guess you missed conan/leno

that was a pretty different situation

i mean maybe nbc misses having employees badmouthing them in the press while taking meetings

do you remember what a nightmare it was when they let Chuck have a season to end the show and the whole season was just Chuck shitting on a picture of Jennifer Salke.

you guys realize we're talking about the entire NBC thursday night line-up and not a single show on the weekend right?

People are going to whine about the shows being canceled either way, but fans really don't like it when shows get canceled before an ending is written (see Deadwood, My So Called Life, Freaks and Geeks, etc.).

yes, that is probably the logic nbc has. a logic dependent on these shows going to heaven rather than taking meetings. they also thought leno would say thank you and in five years float to heaven.

community has been on the brink of cancellation forever? parks and rec took a several month hiatus this year? both tina fey and alec baldwin have said that they didnt want to extend their contracts? this doesnt feel like enough of a surprise to be "controversial" or "a bad pr move"

Looking at this from another angle: even if you don't see the 'cancellation' writing on the wall, I guarantee that the casts and crews of these shows are considering that very likely possibility. Even if NBC did decide to give the shows more than one season, it's likely that the creative teams will be so fragmented at that point that it won't be an option (see: fragmentation in the Community production team in the past week alone). It really might be worth it for NBC to go full-on scorched earth rather than saddle themselves with a whole night's worth of shows whose creative teams slowly split up/give increasingly less of a shit.

thinking da croupier might have placed a lot of money on "six seasons and a movie." he might be in trouble.

let me see if i can make this clearer. nbc has some cult comedies, a hit reality show or two, and a lot of shows no one cares about. they've just announced that the cult comedies will be cancelled (or really, kicked off NBC) in a year. the surprise is not that any of these shows are on the chopping block, but that NBC has decided to announce their EVENTUAL demise EN MASSE. NBC, the network that has regularly been bit in the ass by doing this very thing.

a logic dependent on these shows going to heaven rather than taking meetings.

oh no, not meetings!

they also thought leno would say thank you and in five years float to heaven.

You can keep bringing this up all you want but it isn't applicable here. Leno made an announcement on his show that he was leaving, and Conan signed a contract, and the networked reneged. These sitcoms don't even have full season guarantees. Plus, live television is dangerous for the network in a way that scripted television isn't. If they don't like Community episodes they can just bury them. They couldn't do that with Conan.

but that NBC has decided to announce their EVENTUAL demise EN MASSE

btw this hasn't actually happened yet.

NBC, the network that has regularly one time been bit in the ass by doing this very thing something that wasn't much like this.

i can't tell if i'm dealing with pedantry or obtuseness. i am not saying this is the death knell for nbc, but a familiar and avoidable source of embarrassment for them. they tell their talent that they're getting the boot after an awkward grace period, and, with the exception of chuck which was grateful for what it could get, they hoot and holler that they're the best thing on nbc and threaten to go to a network that would be happy to have them. nbc freaks out and everyone's got egg on their face.

whose creative teams slowly split up/give increasingly less of a shit.

Dan Harmon and Mike Schur still seem like they give a shit to me.

btw this hasn't actually happened yet.

i wondered about the "rumor" element too, but i think NBC would have dropped a "woah woah WOAH, we're only canceling 30 rock" by now if it wasn't the case

but a familiar and avoidable source of embarrassment for them.

You are saying that canceling these shows immediately without letting them write endings would be less embarrassing than the alternative, and I am saying you're wrong. That isn't pedantry or obtuseness.

but i think NBC would have dropped a "woah woah WOAH, we're only canceling 30 rock" by now if it wasn't the case

That isn't how it works.

NBC, the network that has regularly been bit in the ass by doing this very thing last in the ratings because of the consistently stupid shit that they do.

Fixed?

You are saying that canceling these shows immediately without letting them write endings would be less embarrassing than the alternative

if their goal is to wash their hands of the nerdfest they've currently got, yes.

the politics & business of network tv is def one of the stranger things ilx is into

ha otm

go read a bronies thread then

washing their hands of the nerdfest

I'm into it by proxy because the vagaries of suits dictate what winds up on TV. Having some idea of how this stuff works and why certain things happen the way they do helps alleviate a little of the frustration when things go pear-shaped with shows I enjoy.

but this is like if ilx had actual bronies on it

poly i was clearly responding to zachlyon's "re-branding" comments when i noted maybe they should just rip the band-aid off if that's the case

it's hard to believe that a bunch of music journalists and film journalists would be interested in television journalism.

well itd be easier to believe if they were film & music business journalists, but im just playin w/e carry on, i do tho think they shouldve offed the office too for symmetrys sake

the office is set to be re-booted right? whatever that means

I'm honestly curious as to how they're gonna keep The Office going with half of the cast leaving. Are they still seriously talking about starting fresh with a whole new cast (speaking of terrible NBC ideas)?

poly i was clearly responding to zachlyon's "re-branding" comments when i noted maybe they should just rip the band-aid off if that's the case

I think that would be a terrible decision, but I agree that it's something someone might do in a hypothetical situation.

NBC's decisions are roughly equivalent to waiting until the last week of your lease to start looking for a new place to live.

but im just playin w/e carry on

psh when did you go soft

a breezy googling suggests there's already some folks saying the parks & rec/community death sentences are "premature"

psh when did you go soft

― polyphonic, Thursday, May 10, 2012 6:43 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha i just didnt have the heart for it

tumblr may get its "jesus is risen" moment monday

People are going to whine about the shows being canceled either way, but fans really don't like it when shows get canceled before an ending is written (see Deadwood, My So Called Life, Freaks and Geeks, etc.).

So get writing, writers!

Also, "Freaks & Geeks" totally got an ending. Feig and Apatow both say it ended how they wanted it to end, just not when they wanted it to end.

Replace F&G with Party Down or Carnivale or whatev.

It would be hilarious if NBC had this green mile of self-aware last seasons on Thursdays next year

wasn't 'community' only supposed to last four seasons anyway? having the same 6-7 characters stay in community college for longer than that seems like a stretch.

I'm sure there's a reason why they named it Community and not Community College.

90210 dudes were in high school for like infinity years.

ok i haven't read this thread but we all know that this is only happening to 30 Rock so far, right?

I don't think we really know anything for sure yet.

30 Rock has been officially announced for a shortened final season.

Aside from the abbreviated seasons thing, I mean.

i thought the freak & geeks ending was great, very appropriate (plus awesome grateful dead action)

comparing that to deadwood is wrong, deadwood's ending was so disappointing and that's one of my fav shows ever

f&g ending was more successful for sure but I still think f&g deserved more time to finish telling that story.

actual last scene of Deadwood was great

yeah but there were so many storylines that were left up in the air :(

freaks and geeks it seemed better to me, i guess just because that's more what high school feels like, it's this huge experience for you and then it just...ends arbitrarily and then suddenly you're whole world has changed

@televisionary

It's official: 13 eps for #Community.

Yeah, just coming in. Seems reliable.

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/nbc-renews-community-for-season-4

13 episodes.

my whole FB feed is like OMG THEY CANCELED 30 ROCK?!?!

i think another season of 30 rock will be enough, it's had a fine run

i thought baldwin was gonna quit anyway?

I guess there's still a chance that this is just a direction NBC is going across the board. Like, alternating 13-episode seasons of more shows than the currently air. Which could be a smart move. Which is probably why NBC won't do that.

I guess there's still a chance that this is just a direction NBC is going across the board. Like, alternating 13-episode seasons of more shows than the currently air. Which could be a smart move. Which is probably why NBC won't do that.

There is precedent for wheel shows (as they're called). In the 1970s, NBC ran the "NBC Mystery Movie" and spun off Columbo, McCloud, and McMillan & Wife from it into their own successful series. They could easily do a "NBC Weekly Comedy" for new shows and just spin-off what sticks with people.

Who still watches the office for anything other than masochism?

The spin on this thread feels so weird, since the other day everyone was wondering whether Community was going to get cancelled, and 30 Rock ending has been pretty much a given for months. I doubt this will be P&R's last season. The article doesn't say anything about that. Whatevs.

i'm definitely ok with 30 rock ending, this was a pretty lackluster season overall

farewell unseen sitcoms

so this is where we're at officially?

* 30 rock has one final short season
* community is coming back for a short season (with the possibility of earning itself a back nine)
* nothing about parks and rec is official yet

i'm fine with 30 rock's fate and okay with community's, but goddamn do i want a full season of parks

I've said it before and I'll say it again: never change, Morbs.

That joke in tonight's 30 Rock about NBC turning into a website that sells used office supplies feels both a propos and precient.

DWH, I have changed. You will abandon some things forever in a few years, too. If you're lucky.

what have you abandoned?

the desire to try anything

Article mentions a show called "Hannibal" that I have never heard of. Instead of looking up what it actually is I am just going to imagine that it is a show starring Hannibal Burress walking around Chicago doing something awesome.

There is precedent for wheel shows (as they're called). In the 1970s, NBC ran the "NBC Mystery Movie" and spun off Columbo, McCloud, and McMillan & Wife from it into their own successful series. They could easily do a "NBC Weekly Comedy" for new shows and just spin-off what sticks with people.

I wish they'd do this.

I was agitating for a similar thing on the 30 Rock thread the other day. If a broadcast network were to go for it it'd be NBC.

I wound up watching a bit of Community tonight and I just don't get it. Not funny, not funny at all.

Hmm, that's surprising, because I've found it funnier when it's on the verge of cancellation.

mook: sitcoms is the relevant one

Article mentions a show called "Hannibal" that I have never heard of. Instead of looking up what it actually is I am just going to imagine that it is a show starring Hannibal Burress walking around Chicago doing something awesome.

As much as that would be awesome, it's another attempt to cash in on the Hannibal Lecter character.

i laughed pretty hard at community tnite

the 'weekly comedy' idea is basically the Channel 101/Acceptable TV model that the creative core of Community started out with

so like I don't really keep up w/ network tv politics but why all the schadefreude upthread at NBC's inevitable demise? i mean NBC is literally (literally!!) the only network television I watch! shame about these shows; I still dig 30 Rock and def love P&R (community I haven't really watched on the reg since s1... But glad its there etc)

You can't really just dip into these shows like you can Everybody Loves Raymond or something. That's part of why I like them, but that's also a part of why they're hurting for ratings.

The schadenfreude is due to NBC's tendency towards failing to see or appreciate when they have something good going for them and also their tendency to shoot themselves in the foot with some regularity. The people in charge have displayed a level of ineptness with both the creative and business end of running a network and they should probably not be running a network. It's like if some arrogant blowhard who didn't give a shit about food opened a restaurant and slowly ran it into the ground: there's a level of entertainment in watching the restaurant fail even if you enjoy some of the food.

(And I also love these shows, but for me, there's always been a sense of dreadful inevitability underlying that love. The NBC of today is never gonna nurture another Cheers/Seinfeld/Cosby Show into long-term existence.)

tbf nothing is ever gonna be like the Cosby Show, ever again

the *television* of today isn't going to nurture that

not in terms of creative genius or w/e I was 3 when that went off the air, but no primetime sitcom is ever gonna get 30 million households ever again selfxps

xpost

I don't think that's necessarily true. Maybe in terms of the level of viewership, but you could definitely nurture a show to the point of its becoming a long-running staple of your schedule. Other networks have their long-running staple sitcoms. I get the feeling NBC abandons shit because it doesn't get Cosby-era ratings, but nothing can in this day and age.

cosby show didn't remotely need to be nurtured into long term existence, show was #1 rated show EVERY WEEK it was on until roseanne premiered and gave it serious competition and later fox scheduling simpsons against it cut into its numbers (and made cheers #1). cheers famously was the lowest rated show on tv it's first (best) season and wasn't an actual smash until cosby premiered, seinfeld famously struggled for years.

balls bringing science

also i don't think nbc is imagining it can hit cosby era numbers, i imagine they're hoping/demanding they can get better or at least comparable numbers to pawn stars or maybe even jersey shore. on thursdays, the most valuable night of a network schedule.

I wound up watching a bit of Community tonight and I just don't get it. Not funny, not funny at all.

I hate to be that guy, but tonight's episode really did require a lot of familiarity with the Community world beforehand to make it work.

it's sorta weird that now w/ tv critics like sepinwall/seitz/avclub so much more prominent than tv critics were before (i'm not any of them approach the power shales had/has?, sepinwall probably, but shales was more a variety type critic w/ a dose of nikki finke tossed in than something like sepinwall plus i'm not sure many ppl ie viewers really read shales outside of dc/ny/la, i can't think of a show shales 'made' for example) that they're also less relevant or powerful. see also, and more importantly i'd guess, the diminished power of the emmys or the cover of tv guide.

wasn't 'community' only supposed to last four seasons anyway? having the same 6-7 characters stay in community college for longer than that seems like a stretch.

Yeah, I'm among the bigger Community stans but a four-season arc seems like it would be perfect to me. Imo, most sitcoms fade when they outlive their initial premise.

Btw, I totally used the "Alfie and Abner" 'flashback' from 30 Rock in class today when talking about minstrel-era stereotypes.

(People laughed but fwiw, not one student made even a sign of recognition when I asked if anyone watched 30 Rock. A bad sign, no doubt.)

lagoon otm

So NBC's entire slate of long-running sitcoms is broadcast on Thursday nights. The Office is currently their longest-running sitcom at eight seasons, and the wheels have arguably been coming off of that thing for a couple of seasons now (and they almost definitely will if they completely recast, as has been suggested). 30 Rock is next in line with six seasons and they're shuttering that one for sure. Parks & Recreation and Community are at four and three seasons, respectively and (Community's upcoming Comedy Central reruns aside) neither is anywhere near the magic 100-episode marker necessary to send them into syndication. Literally every other sitcom they air started this season.

If you compare the state of sitcom affairs at NBC to ABC (whose Wednesday night line-up is young but seems safely entrenched for the foreseeable future) and CBS (with some of the longest-running trad sitcoms currently on air, including How I Met Your Mother which was renewed for an 8th and 9th season earlier this year) and Fox (which at the very least has their well-entrenched animation block), you'll get a sense of what I mean when I say that NBC doesn't display any desire to nurture their sitcoms long enough for them to become A Thing. And they're picking at the seams of Thursday night just when it had started cohering into a block of shows that made sense together and had a solid (if small) fanbase. And yeah, I know the networks' schedules are composed of more than just sitcoms, but NBC doesn't really have a whole lot going for it across the board at the moment.

tbf shows that don't become A Thing by the end of their 3rd season almost certainly never will

i'm almost disappointed NBC didn't actually announce the slow screwing of the sickly pooch.

The Office is going to keep Pam, Jim, and Andy at least.

I think it's ridiculous to say that NBC hasn't nurtured its comedy programming. It has desperately tried to make them work, and the ratings for any of their comedies save The Office would have seem them cancelled on any other network. ABC's sitcom offerings weren't that successful (or solid) until Modern Family came along. They were picking up Scrubs for a season as they transitioned away from multi-cams and weren't doing a very good job of it. Likewise with Fox - Sunday animation block aside they've struggled to get anything significant off the ground, save New Girl this season. I think NBC was hoping to find a huge hit, but if they couldn't, they'd stock their Thursday night with edgy, more youth-oriented shows but it just hasn't worked. I don't want to see Community or Parks and Rec go, but they've had a hell of a good run of it considering the ratings.

Arguably, though, the only thing that has saved these shows this long has been the utter failure of everything else on their schedule. A few seasons of The Biggest Loser and now The Voice is all they've managed to produce that can even compete with anyone else for years. Thursday is the biggest night of TV of the week money-wise, and they've got to sort it out.

I think the days of a sitcom like Seinfeld finally finding its audience three seasons in are over.

office won't be entirely recast, ed helms, jim and pam are all signed to come back. cbs canceled shit my dad says after one year when it had higher ratings than the office ever had nevermind 30 rock, etc. 100 episode marks isn't what it used to be re: syndication but parks and community will both be in the 80s by the end(?) of next season, comparable to the number of episodes sex and the city got, less than taxi, more than arrested development. himym nearly got canceled after it's second (best) season, when it had higher ratings than every nbc thursday show (and it was on monday), it became an actual big hit during it's third (maybe fourth) season, one of the actual occasions where stunt casting paid off (for occasions where it didn't see 30 rock, season 3). abc, cbs, and esp fox (which has generally struggled w/ live action sitcoms anyway)(eg arrested development) have all canceled many many sitcoms during the time nbc has nurtured (for lack of better options) community and parks. when nbc gave chuck 5 seasons despite horrible ratings because it had a solid if small fanbase and sepinwall liked it it was a sign of incredibly dysfunctional management, not a sign of a nurturing environment taking the longview a la tartikoff or whatever. nbc has had deep, entrenched problems for a long time, they have new ownership and new management and they're doing what new ownership and new management does in almost any other business scenario - they're blowing it up and rebuilding. that we're getting what we're getting of community and parks is a nice bonus (anyone who actually watched arrested development or freaks knows the end is usually nowhere near this graceful, it's usually a burnoff on a saturday night - last episodes of ad - or months later popping up on abc family channel - last episodes of f&g) and probably due to nbc still having few options and wanting to milk farewell tours out of 30 rock and (probably) the office.

I mean, my obvious sentimentalism towards the sitcom as a format may not even have a place in this conversation. The job of these suits is to sell ad space, and if they're not doing that effectively with their sitcoms, they may just wind up (somewhat justifiably) saying "fuck a sitcom".

if an actual hit boosts ratings for thursdays on the whole either or both shows could be kept around for another after this, but either way, both Community & P&R are getting a solid run.

Still...the earlier rumor was just so beautifully Qwikster-ish. AH well.

Freaks and Geeks got the Saturday burnoff too, although perhaps not in all markets.

i mean compared to terriers i'm nowhere near as heartbroken or angry about the end of community/parks (and i caught terriers on netflix so i'm part of the problem). the show i'm holding my breath for renewal on is happy endings, which i like at least as much as community (tbh more this season) or parks and unlike those shows (esp community) i could see actually turning into a big hit (though if it didn't happen by now, and w/ a post-modern family slot...). what ppl who like 'quality' tv should dread really isn't nbc moving away from single camera shows w/ prominent writers, they should worry about cable figuring out that the path to relevancy/mattering isn't necessarily 'quality' it might be genre stuff that networks won't touch w/ the tits/gore they can't touch. if/when the 'golden era' of tv ends it's gonna be because hbo, amc (where this has probably already happened), showtime, and whoever wants to be the next hbo/amc/etc are more interested in creating the next walking dead/true blood than the next mad men/the wire, esp since the latter is much much harder to pull off (see treme or even luck).

deric the network sitcom and the network drama have died more deaths over the past 30 years than snl. neither is going anywhere, even w/ reality tv clearly here to stay.

i mean i know everyone on ilx hates girls cuz it's filled w/ white ppl and what's worse they're women and what's worse still it appears they went to college but if you want this weird era of smart tv to keep going you better root for that thing to succeed, the idea that young tumblr whites have more desirable eyeballs than old whites who post on chain restaurants facebook pages and the concept of 'buzz' have sustained a huge proportion of the good, interesting, or smart popular art in this country.

as much as i hate these shows ending, balls is totally right about NBC - from a business standpoint they've kept all these shows around much longer then that probably should have. the notable exception being 30 Rock which had a slight bump during that whole Palin thing

happy endings is another show i love but it's firmly in the 30 Rock/Community mold where it's just too damn fast and weird to ever be a big hit, and doesn't have that gooey sentimental center helps something like HIMYM break out

man, terriers... yeah, FX should've backed that one, but the ratings were abysmal iirc. but, geez, how seasons did Rescue Me eventually get?

sitcoms will come and go but it's not a coincidence that almost all my favorite sitcoms are on NBC now, and i am worried that after their failure is complete we'll all lose out on this style... i don't think cable networks have the money/staff to really do these kinds of manic balls-to-the-walls nerdy sitcoms, at best they're clever and low-budget like Sunny

p.s. fuck chuck lorre

What made The Simpsons so popular?

(I personally enjoy these three shows more than The Simpsons - especially after the 90s - but it seems like a reasonable point of comparison.)

Scrubs wasn't as intellectual imo but it did have the manic bizarro thing - no less than Happy Endings for sure - and it became a success. Maybe the whole long-game love story was the trick there?

as intellectual

as 30 Rock or Community. I don't really see Happy Endings as an especially intellectual comedy although I do like it.

Don't forget that Scrubs used to run after a little show called Friends.

Scrubs was pretty weird, like NBC kept trying to kill it, then changed its mind over and over again before dumping it to ABC. Zach Braff becoming popular for a minute probably helped it for a season or two, much like the whole Tina Fey/Palin moment. The ratings were never THAT great, though, just solid... good for NBC, though?

I think The Simpsons had really good timing, as it'd been a really long time since a prime-time cartoon had been big, and they broke out after the peak of that whole TGIF/super wholesome family sitcom era of TV, and started/rode the wave of generally more snarky 90s TV

Yeah, Happy Endings is one of my favorites, but there's rarely any kind of second-layer to those jokes.

Yeah - Happy Endings is smart and quick, for sure, but its a show which has limited boundaries and sticks well within them.

simpsons was on a network that had had one 'hit' to that point (married w/ children) and was looking to establish a brand that simpsons played into, was like nothing that had ever been on tv before, and was incredibly well written and funny and vaguely dangerous initially. also: merchandising. in fact, ppl forget this, the merchandising predated the show somewhat (though, like dave matthews take on 'all along the watchtower', it took it to a whole nother level after the show premiered), the tracey ullman sketches had done well enough that i can remember talking to other kids on the school bus about looking forward to the simpsons getting their own show, and i can remember camelot records and tapes had a bart simpson 'underachiever and proud of it' poster i almost got before opting for a beasties one instead. what's weird w/ the simpsons is that the actual creative peak of the show is probably after it's mass phenom popularity peak - those first two seasons feel somewhat odd but THAT's the simpsons that inspired black bart t-shirts, george bush jeremiads, etc.

what's amazing to me is that a show like seinfeld could not only be a hit but be THE hit. faster than happy endings, more 'coastal' than 30 rock, weirder than community (arguably, definitely relative to what came before it), waaay meaner and 'unlikable' than any of these shows w/ only one attractive protagonist. one of the hugest smashes in tv history. what are the odds.

I'd probably quibble that Community at its weirdest is further out than Seinfeld's weirdest but yeah, Seinfeld had no heart at all. And even Julia Louis-Dreyfuss wasn't exactly Jennifer Aniston or Christina Applegate or anything. I put it down to a 90s zeitgeist.

Here are some differences though:
i) You can jump in and watch any episode of Seinfeld and understand it without needing the context of the rest of the series. This is not the case with at least this season of Community.
ii) The humour in Seinfeld does not generally rely on layered cultural references. You don't need to know a bunch of other things to get the jokes on Seinfeld. I often think that e.g. as much as I love "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas", no one will find much of it funny in 20 years when Bjork, Tim Burton, and Lost are no longer current (or recent).

My parents can get The Office but not 30 Rock or Community.

in fact, ppl forget this, the merchandising predated the show somewhat

Absolutely true. Just recently came across my Simpsons trading cards...which featured stills from the Ullman shorts.

yeah community is weirder but i think in comparison to sunny, 30 rock, happy endings, himym it's not as far from the norm as seinfeld was in comparison to cheers, cosby, friends, raymond. i guess the main difference is community's weirdness frequently dominates the entire episode whereas w/ seinfeld it was usually just the kramer plot. still before troy and abed in the morning there was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4SewgD0Vz0

Yeah, as much as I love these serialized sitcoms, I don't know how NBC fails to realize that they also need some sitcoms that people can just dip in and out of. The investment necessary to really enjoy their current Thursday night crop is an awful lot to ask of the casual viewer.

My parents can get The Office but not 30 Rock or Community.

They can get Monty Python and Woody Allen btw so it's not just a 'weirdness' issue.

The humour in Seinfeld does not generally rely on layered cultural references

30 Rock's recent live show may be an extreme example of this.

the show i'm holding my breath for renewal on is happy endings, which i like at least as much as community (tbh more this season)

otm

You guys are reading into and basing A LOT on a few largely speculative articles. I wouldn't be surprised if most of these ended up being given longer than 13 eps, there's nothing suggesting they likely won't*, NBC is just being cowardly and faffing around as is apparently usual.

*Except maybe for 30 Rock, which is something of a special case.

yeah tbh i wouldn't be surprised if NBC's slate of new fall comedies fails so immediately that they start ordering more episodes from the older shows.

in fact, ppl forget this, the merchandising predated the show somewhat

Absolutely true. Just recently came across my Simpsons trading cards...which featured stills from the Ullman shorts.

iirc those Butterfinger commercials had a hand in blowing Bart up--since they were pure Bart-being-badass snippets

I think the days of a sitcom like Seinfeld finally finding its audience three seasons in are over.

― Fas Ro Duh (Gukbe), Friday, May 11, 2012 12:16 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is the way major labels treat bands now too, sadly

Yeah, the days of a Laurie Anderson getting a seven-album deal with a Warner Bros. are pretty much over.

From a business standpoint, it's often a sound decisions to order third and fourth and partial fifth seasons of a very middling, only moderately popular show /w cheap production costs (multicam, standing sets, low cost actors at launch) to get to the traditional 100 episode syndication watershed. Since a lot of shows run in the red until they're sold off/stripped/sent overseas, it's not that risky to expect that a long-running show w/ poor ratings to be given a final run of episodes that won't garner many viewers as 'new TV' but will position it for a longer cable or syndicated run.

yeah i don't know if america will ever get behind these shows in a major way, but shows that hit a niche are probably as likely to get a decent life somewhere on tv today (esp if the cougar town tbs shift works out) as they ever where.

i thought 30 Rock's overall ratings/cultural profile would raise after syndicated reruns started this past year, but if anything the opposite has happened.

a thousand points to the first web journalist to find a kid raised on 30 rock reruns who had no idea NBC was a real network

lol

Here are some differences though:
i) You can jump in and watch any episode of Seinfeld and understand it without needing the context of the rest of the series. This is not the case with at least this season of Community.
ii) The humour in Seinfeld does not generally rely on layered cultural references. You don't need to know a bunch of other things to get the jokes on Seinfeld. I often think that e.g. as much as I love "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas", no one will find much of it funny in 20 years when Bjork, Tim Burton, and Lost are no longer current (or recent).

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Friday, May 11, 2012 12:27 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM, at its base, seinfeld was about really primal human stuff - vanity, hate, boredom, pettiness, etc

tbh i sometimes see early 30 Rocks on syndication and some of the references are already starting to become incomprehensible

For all I know, Bjork and Tim Burton will be taught in schools 20 years from now

like, yeah, there are alienating elements to these shows that make them less likely to achieve Wings-like ratings, but if these shows age like SCTV...I'm fine with that.

wings was p dope overall

i didn't mean to suggest wings wasn't mad fresh

church

i) You can jump in and watch any episode of Seinfeld and understand it without needing the context of the rest of the series. This is not the case with at least this season of Community.

I think Community is off-putting for new viewers, (Seinfeld probably was too--taking several episodes for viewers to figure out who you were supposed to be rooting for: no one) but it's not really any more of a serial comedy than most other sitcoms--certainly not like Parks and Rec with its season-long story arcs. What do you really need to know about the Community mythos to enjoy that Law & Order parody? These characters are wacky?

ooh a law and order parody i bet that was funney

dear community,

your arms are too short to box with god.

http://www.emcblue.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/law-nd-order-svu.jpg

Parks renewed for 13 episodes and slated for the fall, so a back 9 isn't out of the question. Up All Night also renewed. Not so much with the overhaul, then.

ughhhhh fuckin Up All Night

ParkandRec has been renewed for 22 episodes, not 13!

Whitney also renewed.

haha jesus christ

Outsourced aside, pretty much all the new comedies NBC has canceled in the past 2 years are far more tolerable than the ones that have been renewed

HAPPY ENDINGS will be back for a full season of 22 episodes.

^^^Important news not to be slept on^^^^

Yay for P&R, Up All Night and Happy Endings!

Hope that The Office really does go away, but it probably won't.

Parks renewed for 13 episodes and slated for the fall

Good news for Schur's proposed arc to have Ben working in D.C. through the first week of November.

glad for 'up all night' even though i've never watched it tbqf, a friend of mine is on that show.

more interested in watching 'parks and rec' or 'community' at some point.

are you friends with the baby

is the baby ur friend on up all night

Up All Night has the same general feel as Modern Family to me, except there are fewer characters to follow and it's (thank goodness) not shot documentary style.

I do not watch Modern Family regularly, though, so I don't have the same sort of attachment to any of its characters as I do Up All Night.

hooray for everyone!

max otm

Up All Night has the same general feel as Baby Blues comic strips to me

lovin this tv analysis

some dude, have you watched Up All Night at all since, say, December?

Really glad Parks & Rec got the full pickup. It's the least niche-y of the ones I watch, and I feel like it could really catch on with more people if, like, more people would watch the fuckin' thing. Plus this last season was so good. So yay. Also yay to Happy Endings, which I only really caught on to shortly before the season ended, so I have some catching up to do.

probably, but not much -- i made some effort to give it time to improve, but obv once it starts to feel like a conscious effort to 'keep up' it becomes kind of a lost cause to do so (xpost)

so community is on for a fourth season reduced?

yessssss, so glad parks and rec got the full 22!

yeah Community is confirmed for 13 eps (although the possibility appears to still exist of more episodes being added or it suriviving past next season, not a firm "13 and that's it" thing as previously speculated).

the onion article speculates it's essentially coming back as a "new" show, competing with the other new sitcoms for the back 9. oh yeah, and Dan Harmon might be stepping down as showrunner.

very happy about P&R. figured Happy Endings had a good shot at renewal

wtf gr80

dan tweeted that if he stepped down as showrunner, it wouldn't be just because chevy is dick. like that article reported. then again he didn't flat out say "no i'm not stepping down" so PANIC

ughhhhh fuckin Up All Night

― some dude

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpYhGdrknlA

lolololol

i tell markers what banks told me, go head switch ya style up

Amazing fact about NBC: Harry's Law, which they've just cancelled, was their most watched scripted show.

Wow. Yeah, that just about sums them up, all right.

i didn't even know that show existed until just now

That show was part of why they brought Spader in on The Office.

Was it Harry the judge from Night Court?

n, Kathy Bates.

It was a pretty stupid decision, calling a Kathy Bates Harry's Law. I mean, "that show with Kathy Bates" and "that Harry's Law show that I don't know what it is but which I assume is a courtroom drama about some dude named Harry" were two distinctly different entities in my head for most of the show's run. But I guess I'm not really the target demographic, so whatevs. Still, I feel like the networks aren't really thinking some of these show names through (wondering if GCB has really caught the public's imagination...bad sign when your brand new show's title is an acronym that's basically undecipherable out of context).

For all I know, Bjork and Tim Burton will be taught in schools 20 years from now

like, yeah, there are alienating elements to these shows that make them less likely to achieve Wings-like ratings, but if these shows age like SCTV...I'm fine with that.

You don't think a joke that a DVD of s1 of Lost is a metaphor for lack of payoff will resonate less with people who didn't actually watch six seasons of Lost from the beginning?

Tbf, the Bjork and Tim Burton references probably fail to resonate with a lot of people now (see note about my parents).

I think Community is off-putting for new viewers, (Seinfeld probably was too--taking several episodes for viewers to figure out who you were supposed to be rooting for: no one) but it's not really any more of a serial comedy than most other sitcoms--certainly not like Parks and Rec with its season-long story arcs. What do you really need to know about the Community mythos to enjoy that Law & Order parody? These characters are wacky?

How about e.g. "Virtual Systems Analysis" (the dreamatorium episode)? That said, HIMYM is pretty serialized and seems to do OK.

I was just trying to think of reasons why this show lacks the mass appeal of Seinfeld. I think we're actually in agreement there though.

I was just trying to think of reasons why this show lacks the mass appeal of Seinfeld. I think we're actually in agreement there though.

Ha, damn cut and paste! This was supposed to go right under the sentence about Bjork and Tim Burton.

Heh, on two recent occasions, I've tried/struggled to explain the Mackenzie Brothers to people in their early 20s (from the Prairies no less!).

But yeah, no, I never doubted that these shows would age as well as SCTV.

(Admittedly, I never got the Mackenzie Brothers until I moved to Saskatchewan.)

I was just trying to think of reasons why this show lacks the mass appeal of Seinfeld. I think we're actually in agreement there though.

not too sound like a jerk bc i really like community but maybe one reason is that Seinfeld was just a better show in almost every way, and a more groundbreaking show when it aired. community is wonderful imho, but there's just no comparison.

Apples and oranges, really, but we've had that extensive discussion before. For reasons that continue to baffle me, as their similarities seem to begin and end with their shared status as NBC sitcoms.

No, I don't think the two shows are similar at all. I was only comparing them in terms of popular appeal and only because someone mentioned Seinfeld earlier.

(I'm just watching the most recent Community btw and, while it doesn't seem like their best, I don't see how someone could get this without having see the previous episode.)

"just watching... now btw and..."

not to reopen a whole other conversation but community + seinfeld are similar enough (american network sitcoms around the turn of the century) that any comparison seems fair to me.

Well, then, I guess I just disagree that Community is obviously a worse-crafted or less innovative show.

Also, I finished watching. There are references to about half of s2 in this episode! And even stuff like Chang's pre-teen army only makes sense if you saw the episode when it was introduced. I don't see how someone who just dropped in would get as much out of this as someone who follows the show.

well this was a fake clip show.

I think after the last hiatus community just sort of gave up on accessibility (and on a lengthy future).

Ignoring just the basic differences in plot and intentions, they're very different sitcoms. With the very loose exception of season 4, Seinfeld episodes largely stood on their own and could be comprehended by a casual viewer and made the transition to the syndicated shuffle play super easily, as opposed to Community's more insular, more long-form narrative niche. And saying that they're similar because they were both released around the turn of the century ignores the vast changes that have taken place in (network) television in the past twenty years. Networks could probably air nothing else but Mama's Famly reruns if they had a hit on par with Seinfeld in its prime.

well this was a fake clip show.

Remember how Seinfeld didn't do those?

certainly in terms of human history, compared to the differences between community and whatever its greek antecedent in form was, the differences between seinfeld and community are negligible. like yes, one is multi-camera and one is single-camera. one is more heavily serialized. but ultimately the level of serialized episodes in your sitcom in 2012 is indicative of a particular choice and direction that either succeeds in capturing a broad audience or fails to do so. to then claim that they're not being fairly compared bc those very differences put them in separate categories just indicates that you are so attached to that particular stylistic choice that you can't otherwise explain why one succeeds and the other fails.

tldr version: lol ur trying to lawyer me out of comparing two sitcoms to each other, that's silly

You can compare two sitcoms all the live-long day. It's fun to do! Your initial assertion, though, was that the respective levels of success attained by Seinfeld and Community are strongly tied to their level of quality (surely you can acknowledge that quality rarely has anything to do with the success of a television show?) or the extent to which they're breaking new ground. I'm not saying those aren't factors, but my argument is simply that accessibility (particularly wrt casual viewers) and the different eras in which the shows were produced has much more to do with their respective levels of success.

(surely you can acknowledge that quality rarely has anything to do with the success of a network television show?)

Fixed.

yeah if anyone wants to actually argue that community is actually much weirder in comparison to 30 rock than seinfeld was in comparison to friends or cheers feel free since that was the actual comparison. if someone wants to respond that the reason seinfeld was a massive hit (bigger than friends, not as big as cosby) was that it came up in a time when nbc could make a hit out of anything by putting it on thursday (and moving there was when seinfeld REALLY became the huge ratings monster) and that because it was so successful and had built that success on nurturing creative shows that it could allow seinfeld to find its voice and then its audience; seinfeld gestation born from enviroment of success, community gestation born from enviroment of failure. i love community, it's first season was fantastic, this current season is great and i can tell already is gonna be crazily underrated when ppl badmouth it all out of proportion in the future, but only that second season is holy shit hall of fame level greatness. if i was gonna list the sitcoms that led to a show like community even being able to exist on network tv seinfeld would be #2 and simpsons would be #1 and both of those shows had SEVERAL seasons of that holy shit hall of fame caliber, by their third seasons they were just getting warmed up.

jesus christ where is that 'words you clearly can't spell' thread. environment environment environment. fucking hell.

Jerry Seinfeld was also way popular as a stand up years before the sitcom.

i sort of feel like community and -meta is in this thing where it has to keep outdoing itself just like in comic books the superhero keeps getting more powerful and fighting more powerful villains and the whole thing gets more and more cosmic until eventually somebody needs to push a reset switch. All the things that make it interesting also make it unsustainable.

yeah if anyone wants to actually argue that community is actually much weirder in comparison to 30 rock than seinfeld was in comparison to friends or cheers feel free since that was the actual comparison.

Yeah, Community feels much more of a kind with 30 Rock than Seinfeld did with Friends or Cheers.

Realizing (especially after reading Bill Carter's books) I'd totally read a book analyzing the last 30 years of NBC's Thursday night line-up (cue 'lol tv biz nerd' mockery).

curious what would win a 'current actual hit network sitcoms' poll on ilx? himym out of inertia and memories? how sizeable is the contingent of ppl who'll admit that big bang can deliver an actual laugh (albeit clumsily and crassly) plus the cast is clearly talented enough to deserve better than chuck lorre? modern family (although talk about mystifying declines, a show like that should be able to run thru seven seasons before they show hints of running out of ideas)? would the brits put glee over the top? i've never seen glee but it's a sitcom right? or at least it's half an hour long? sweet jesus would new girl win?

Glee is an hour so really it's a musical/comedy.

xposts galore

yeah that second season every week it was like community was rewriting the rules and you can only sustain that for so long. even the beatles only did it for a couple of years before they went 'fuck it let's just do stuff like 'get back''.

gukbe i want to thank you for just completely confirming finally i will never ever watch an episode of glee.

almost tempted to start that poll just to see if seward and shipley do some sort of carville/begala tag team campaign for the middle

What I really liked about community was when it was a pretty decent straightforward sitcom that every now and then would just cut loose. Now it's this whole *thing*. It's like Harmon wanted to make a cult show all along and was just pretending to be accessible for a bit, and now with every bit of rope he gets, he just uses it to tie the knot tighter. Which makes it sound like I don't enjoy community, which isn't true. But I think they could have cut back on the injokiness and the -meta without killing the show.

yeah that second season every week it was like community was rewriting the rules and you can only sustain that for so long. even the beatles only did it for a couple of years before they went 'fuck it let's just do stuff like 'get back''.

Agreed. The thing about the recent response, though, is that it's been all, "'Get Back' sucks!". And I'm like, no, it actually doesn't, it's just that you've been to the heart of the crab nebula and now you're no longer content with, like, flowers and pretty clouds and shit, dealwithit.gif.

yeah, i mean paradigms of human memory probably made me laugh the hardest and blew my mind the most but i think collaborative calligraphy, the bottle episode, was the best episode this show has had (well, maybe the first paintball) and beyond abed noting it was a bottle episode (and that was much an expression of how his character deals w/ stuff as an injoke) there wasn't much meta about it though it did require a knowledge of the characters, their relationships, etc.

yeah this season hasn't had as many amazing episodes, the efforts at serialization haven't really paid off, the relationships feel clumsier, and the trips back to the well have probably been ill-advised but ppl are acting like it's the tv falloff equivalent of muse sick n hour mess age or something, which it's nowhere near being. i'm trying to remember if ilx went overboard decrying the relative lameness of mr f and the charlize theron plotline on arrested development back in the day.

yeah if anyone wants to actually argue that community is actually much weirder in comparison to 30 rock than seinfeld was in comparison to friends or cheers feel free since that was the actual comparison.

I don't remember late 80s/early 90s TV well enough to make a comparison but I'll bite: what is there in 30 Rock that could have led you to expect something like "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas"? The closest comparison I could think of would be something like the musical episode of Buffy.

off the top of my head the closest 30 rock parallel to abed's uncontrollable xmas would be maybe the episode where kenneth saw everybody in muppet form? what's the friends parallel to bizarro jerry, george, and kramer?

Yeah, there's a certain 'anything goes', 'expect the unexpected' quality to 30 Rock and Community. Most of the '90s NBC sitcoms were pretty firmly grounded in reality, but Seinfeld went in some wacked directions at times.

And they were way ahead of the game with the entire meta season devoted to getting Jerry's Jerry sitcom off the ground.

Ha, well, I told you I don't remember early 90s TV well enough to make that comparison. And apparently I don't know 30 Rock as well as I thought because I don't remember a Muppet episode either! I guess I can't really engage very well in a TV criticism debate. Ask me something about Bartok.

2xpost

(But I have to say that I'm much more willing to buy the argument that there may have actually been a comparable 30 Rock episode than I am to buy that Community is less innovative just because "there's a certain 'anything goes', 'expect the unexpected' quality to 30 Rock and Community".)

People be losing track of arguments itt. For the sake of review, balls' comment and my response:

yeah if anyone wants to actually argue that community is actually much weirder in comparison to 30 rock than seinfeld was in comparison to friends or cheers feel free since that was the actual comparison.

Yeah, Community feels much more of a kind with 30 Rock than Seinfeld did with Friends or Cheers.

No one, afaict, said anything impugning Community's level of innovation. I'd argue that it's hugely innovative, even in ways hardly anyone talks about (yet).

OK, that makes sense. Fair enough.

i'm definitely not arguing community is less innovative, that second season was crazy innovative and daring imo. in terms of 'quality' i might have it neck and neck w/ that concurrent season of parks, second season of 30 rock, first two seasons of arrested development, but in terms of innovation it's doing things i didn't really think tv sitcoms could do, nevermind network sitcoms, that season is streets ahead. every week i pretty much knew what to expect from parks, i pretty much never knew what to expect from community and even when i thought i did - pics of characters in pulp fiction dress leak for example - it would turn out to be a riff on my dinner w/ andre. i can remember the week paradigms of human memory ran 30 rock ran an actual clip show and as clip shows go it was good but coming that same night it was like watching the monkees w/ jimi hendrix opening. i love the monkees but how you gonna follow jimi hendrix?

It occurs to me that it feels as if 30 Rock and Community have had some weird entropic relationship with respect to quality over the past two seasons. Last season, it was like Community was totally Dracula-ing the lifeblood out of a 30 Rock that seemed increasingly on its last legs, while this season it's like they've reached this harmonious symbiosis where neither is thriving mightily at the expense of the other. Just in time for NBC to dump industrial waste into their ecosystem.

Abed's Christmas was cool, but I did see a few pomo claymation Xmas specials around the same time. I think Its Always Sunny had one.

lol that thing where my eyes sometimes can't distinguish between an 'm' and an 'r' and an 'n' next to each other happened w/ yr post and i thought you were bragging about about having seen a few porno claymation xmas specials around that time

lol, that's exactly what i thought - "what? did someone make a thematic followup to Let My Puppets Come?"

as well as I thought because I don't remember a Muppet episode either!

it was about 20 seconds of one episode, not a whole episode

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKpYXkcVJGs

not exactly on the level of abed's christmas, no.

ohhh that fey muppet walk always gets me

Thing is, Community isn't actually that much weirder than The Simpsons or South Park or other shows that have pulled massive ratings and have managed to get away with doing all sorts of weird shit because they're animated. Maybe people a lot of viewers are put off because they come to it expecting something it usually isn't trying to be, I dunno.

simpsons and south park are both cartoons; also simpsons didn't get truly weird until later (season 6?)

seems like shows that are weird off the bat don't succeed? seinfeld's first few seasons are pretty tame, it wasn't until season 4 imo that it really got remotely alienating

was green acres weird off the bat or steady ratcheting up? i'm guessing at first it was somewhat more standard fish out of water stuff and it wasn't until later that it became absurdist (and even then it was just w/ jokes, not things that would assault the viewer like story structure, etc).

ohhh that fey muppet walk always gets me

Seinfeld was basically an insane show, like I saw some of the arc where susan dies from licking envelelops and no one cares, just remarkably brutal

Community is tame by comparison

Yeah, that was some of the darkest network sitcom plotting ever.

balls/blount otm throughout this thread, but

a) s1 of cheers was by no means its best; a great season, but the show got better as it warmed up, certainly until s3 at least
b) muse sick is an amazing and hella underrated album

also i know i have said it before but srsly himym is so charmless and unfunny, it hurts my soul. and mod fam, a great first season but oh my the steam just evaporated from s2 onwards.

the Simpsons comparison is pretty useful because a lot of Community's much-discussed 'weirdness' (at least in the first 2 seasons) was the kind of extended parody and 4th wall-busting that's been old hat for decades but is generally still more the province of animation.

really the 'weird' narrative around the show is the worst thing to happen to it, since it seems to have made both the fanbase and the creative team extremely self-conscious and try-hard about what kind of hijunks they're willing to try/praise

hijinks

otm

muse sick diss may have been targeted trolling. simpsons influence on live action sitcom has been interesting (and strangely belated right? maybe i'm forgetting some earlier clear examples), w/ community it's pretty much straight genre play and fucking w/ format, w/ parks it's w/ filling out the town w/ characters (pawnee as springfield, perd hapley). stevie sadly otm re: himym, though i think the second season is best. it really has become like watching big bang is for me where i know the show is terrible but i like the cast, though dear god i think the jokes might be funnier on big bang. you might be right re: cheers, i think i'm just amazed that they nailed that show so completely from the get go. i used to think that show was pretty much of uniform greatness throughout its run but having watched some of those early seasons again via netflix i'm pretty strongly in the 'diane/coach years are best' camp. also while the joke-a-second latter day model of cheers (which i still love, don't get me wrong) is still present on tv today that earlier more nuanced character driven model of the first few seasons doesn't really seem to exist on tv now, the closest might be parks and i might be just thinking that cuz i know fire joe morgan dude is a huge cheers fan and even there the only relationship that's been interesting to me (well, besides ron-tammy 2) is the andy-april one (which is almost 'what if woody and carla turned out to be the perfect couple?').

Balls you are good at writing about tv

watching the last community, I kinda wonder if this show is just flying through the simpsons quality arc in lightspeed. "hey, we're a great show...woah, it was fun breaking that rule...HEY, THERE ARE NO RULES WE ARE COMEDY GODS...wait what was our thing again?...hello, new showrunner"

granted, simpsons had a bunch of different showrunners in its heyday, but if harmon really is on the outs I'll pleasantly surprised if s4 doesn't get mike scully-ish

the thing with himym is, i wanted to like it. i like the central concept, the shaggy-dog-story approach, the flashbacks, etc. but i find the characters limp and vile. its funny that there's so much "these characters are horrendous" stuff on the girls thread; i think that show's pretty adept at telegraphing that it thinks, say, the weird booty-call guy and the art museum girl always ragging on her drip-boyfriend are pretty unsympathetic, yet it still gives them a depth that keeps them somewhat compelling. but there's something cold and cynical about himym's characters, and both barney and the main character's poon-hound instincts don't ring true - like, they're out to bed women but not out of any particular joy of conquest, but in a notch-on-the-bedpost way. like in the one where the main guy is sleeping with the cobie smulders character but not in a relationship kind of way, and he keeps boasting about it to barney, who's dying inside because he's secretly i love with her... he keeps going about how often he's boning her, but it just sounds empty and joyless. and maybe that's the point, but i can't really give a shit about those characters, and when stuff happens like the jason segal character thinking his buddy might by in gay-love with him because they had brunch together and saw mamma mia, it just seems so vanilla and small-minded. in the UK, channel 4 has blatantly tried to market it as the next Friends but, say what you like about that show, it was pretty good at giving its characters depth and charisma, at least for the first couple of seasons. the moment when rachel kisses ross after watching the video of their prom night is prime rom-com material imho, and i can't imagine himym ever pulling off a moment like that. the big bang cast do great stuff with tepid material though.
you're dead right about cheers being on the button from day one - the pilot episode is like a masterclass in subtle and entertaining exposition, in how it introduces the characters. there's some real clunkers in that first season, though, and for me the show hits its peak in the intensity of sam & diane's relationship - the moment when she slaps him and he slaps her back is electrifying - and i think frasier really sets the show alight (though his own sitcom soon devolved to tiresome french farce imho). i don't know, i'll fuck with all eleven seasons of cheers tbh, i can't think of a sitcom that developed its characters so well, and stayed so sharp for eleven seasons. rebecca doesn't quite work at first, but the minute she's revealed to be as damaged and broken as the rest of the show's characters, she becomes awesomely entertaining.
that's all ot, obv. community rules though.

maybe with the girls characters, its not that they have a depth, but the show has more of a remove from them than himym. we're not supposed to think its characters are likeable, necessarily - though they aren't irredeemable, as the scene with the dancing to the robyn shows - but himym seems to genuinely think ted (that's his name, ted; such a non-character) are Likeable And Charismatic Characters We Will Identify With, and i think that it fails at this really badly. it also has a tendency to be mawkishly shallow and clumsy a la Scrubs when it tries to play for Serious Moments.

Ted has about as much actual likability and depth as Harry Potter

Ted has always been the weakest link.

Seinfeld was basically an insane show, like I saw some of the arc where susan dies from licking envelelops and no one cares, just remarkably brutal

Community is tame by comparison

Well, the Seinfeld people had the motto "no hugging, no learning", right? A big part of Community's appeal is that it is basically the opposite of this. Community's strangeness is of an entirely different sort (and, yes, The Simpsons is a good comparison).

who's the strongest one, though? jason segal is a likeable enough chump, i guess. that's pretty weak sauce though.

(xp)

I think you will find that there's not a lot of Ted love even among fans of HIMYM. He's a pretty universally-acknowledged drip. And I definitely have some reservations about Barney but mostly to the extent that the character's loveable presentation might validate any real-life PUA creepers. But that's a risk you take anytime you present a creep as a sympathetic protagonist in fiction.

I kind of like Ted! Maybe I am also a pretentious saddo douche! His random hookups are supposed to feel empty and joyless. That's the point: he's killing time, trying to fill a void while he's desperately searching for the one (who, until now, was Robin in his heart). With Barney, there definitely was a joy of conquest imo: see all the bizarre challenges he tries out (e.g. convincing a girl that she needs to sleep with him in order to avoid a climate change catastrophe 40 years in the future), his black book and bro code, etc. This has faded though. There was also always an element of desperation to his character too.

(xposts)

Well, yeah, Barney is genuinely evil.

Also, Jason Segal's character is not supposed to be sophisticated and broad-minded! He is a superstitious Midwestern rube.

true, but i think the thing w/barney is that he *isn't partic sympathetic: he's priapist-as-one-note-joke, like the doctor in scrubs who never met a dick joke he couldn't drop into inappropriate conversation.

okay i need to stop ragging himym, this is the thread for gr80 and whiney to high-five as shows that commit the unforgivable sin of being liked by ilx's cornier fux have their future's threatened.

xp segal's quite likeable playing that character, i don't disagree. i think his wife is appallingly irritating though.

I think Lily's a pretty strong character.

Ha xpost I actually like her much more on this than on Buffy.

maybe i'm being harsh on her, have only watched a few himyms tbh, as the show really grates on me, and maybe she charms over time.

(Marshall is a Midwestern rube who also graduated from Columbia's law school, mind you.)

Really, HIMYM is another show like Community that I like a lot but which seems like it would have little-to-no appeal to a casual viewer.

With, y'know, jokes that pay off two years after the fact and whatnot.

i think the only characters i like on himym are robin and marshall. i like segal, smulders, and obv nph. i've kinda turned on allyson hannigan, though it's probably just due to awful writing. still agree w/ this ruling mind you: http://www.theonion.com/video/fcc-okays-nudity-on-tv-if-its-alyson-hannigan,14215/

i still watch HIMYM out of residual loyalty as well, but at the top of its game i would put it up against most sitcoms easily

i feel like there was a turning point w/hannigan where they just kinda turned her into a nagging meme machine, i don't put that on her though

HIMYM doesn't really get enough credit for being consistently playful and inventive with odd running jokes and storytelling devices and meme-y things that lead to offscreen websites etc. which i get, because it's also a laugh track show with some very well trodden young-folx-in-love-in-NYC themes, but still. also don't really understand people's beefs with the character, which seem to rest on the assumption that half the audience is sitting there going "YEAH dude I AM TED"

with the characterS

I should also note that most of my distaste towards Ted is residual distaste towards season 1 Ted, who was (largely intentionally) pathetic. He's eased up a ton since then.

30 rock seems like a much more clear parallel to the simpsons that any of nbc's other thursday night sitcoms, both in its progression as a show and in its joke style

himym is unbearable now, so bad im not really even sure i can tease out exactly what makes it bad -- that being said the first 3-4 seasons i found to be as good as any sitcom out there, and at least as daring as community, just in less obvious ways.

i still don't feel like the simpsons is a good comparison for any of these shows because it's animated, which gives it a lot more leeway in being "unrealistic" and it because it's been on for like 20 years we're forgetting how gradual that change was from slightly edgy to LISA NEEDS BRACES to the hot mess it is now

with HIMYM they go back and forth with ted going from tolerable to horribly annoying, it's just really hard to maintain this sympathy for him that show expects you to. i mean, it tells you bad it is when it's often easier to sympathize with Barney, who is pretty much a sociopath slowly becoming human(?), than Ted, who's a mostly genuine dude but not as openly self-centered as Barney

but yeah, feels like HIMYM swung from being unwatched to moderately successful and back to underrated in recent years, mostly because the last few seasons have dragged like The Office does now. i'm not looking forward to the next TWO seasons (sigh) but i guess i'll watch them anyway

but Marshall and Robin never lost a step IMO

One of my quibbles with HIMYM is its persistent homophobia tbh.

mostly because the last few seasons have dragged like The Office does now - let's not get carried away here

this past season of the office has been like this past colts season where sure you could've seen a dip coming w/o their main guy but WOW

One of my quibbles with HIMYM is its persistent homophobia tbh.

― raw feel vegan (silby), Saturday, May 12, 2012 4:26 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

idgi

if silby is referring to himym creators squeamish and persistent refusal to let smulders and hannigan lez up i totally agree

maybe they'll wait til the last episode like they did with Scrubs

Yeeaaaaahhhh, the 'homophobia' distaste baffles me a bit. Might need you to unpack that one.

Also just generally baffled by people who think HIMYM has gone severely downhill. Its peaks and troughs have been barely perceptible (and I've seen the entire series, like, twice through at this point, so it isn't just that I'm misremembering). Assuming they were ever onboard, I'd have to assume that people's current distaste is more about them outgrowing the show and/or its intentions.

hey, whether the show started wheel-spinning or i just got tired of its "hey remember that heretofore unacknowledged cute name we have for something" quirks, I knew there were plenty of other viewers in the sea when I dumped it, and I don't appreciate the implication that I never really loved it in the first place.

Maybe "homophobia" is overstating the case but HIMYM (like, to be fair, 90% of everything) takes a really stereotyped, easy, lazy approach to queer characters and queer-related humor. Which I find particularly annoying or distasteful when the rest of the show is significantly smarter. Eg. the stereotypical gay folks who acquired Lily's painting for the frame. That's the main instance I remember.

so yes apologies for ruffliing feathers by alleging homophobia. Really it's just depressing laziness.

I'm scanning through, croupier, but I can't for the life of me figure out who or what you're responding to.

Also: yeah, silby, while it's very likely that we'll look back at recent progamming's treatment of homosexuality with the same pained expression that is currently induced by some of the casually insensitive-to-offensive representations of race (and women and rape and, yes, homosexuality) from the '60s-'80s, in this case it's probably more that sensitive portrayals of homosexuality probably aren't at the forefront of a creative team who work for an almost 100% heteronormative show (and, yes, laziness).

I'd also think NPH would veto anything outright insensitive, really.

it's probably more that sensitive portrayals of homosexuality probably aren't at the forefront of a creative team who work for an almost 100% heteronormative show (and, yes, laziness).

yeah, that's true, but that doesn't make it any more watchable. the gay-panic of the episode i mentioned earlier left a bad taste in the mouth.

what are you guys talking about? did nph bash some gays?

I'm scanning through, croupier, but I can't for the life of me figure out who or what you're responding to.

you just sounded like you were defending a dumpee more than a tv show - it's not the show, it's the viewers that changed, assuming they were ever really on board. i think it's actually a pretty valid metaphor, as some people commit to shows for their natural life, and others play the field (which isn't to say they cut and run!)

And it is valid. I'm not condemning anyone for moving on, and if it makes it easier for those who've moved on to go on about how HIMYM started letting itself go or made blatant attempts to attract a newer, younger demographic, well...that's all just part of the healing process.

Barney's brother is a happily successful gay man fwiw.. Larger character than frame buyers at least.

Ohhhh, yeaaaahh. I was trying to remember if there was a recurring LGBT character (besides Lily) and I came up short. Yeah, he's portrayed totally sympathetically. Like a non-damaged, gay Barney (or a black NPH).

Also just generally baffled by people who think HIMYM has gone severely downhill. Its peaks and troughs have been barely perceptible (and I've seen the entire series, like, twice through at this point, so it isn't just that I'm misremembering).

yeah same here, imo show has had a mild inevitable slide in overall quality over the years but not as much as most shows that last 7+ seasons.

I was trying to remember if there was a recurring LGBT character (besides Lily) and I came up short. Yeah, he's portrayed totally sympathetically.

This is what I don't get. I would have thought HIMYM is better than most shows, e.g. Modern Family in terms of its portrayal of queer characters. And yeah, Lily's bisexuality has come up several times.

I'm generally on Deric's and some dude's side wrt the quality of this show but the last few episodes have been making me wonder. I'm not sure how I feel about the whole Barney-Quinn thing. And I think it was actually a good decision for Ted to avoid Robin at this point! I was really disappointed when his recent revelation was that he should in fact reignite a close friendship with someone he had been love with for years and who had just recently rejected him.

(Caveat: I've seen the whole series minus those last few episodes you mention, so I will concede that it's possible that the whole thing inexplicably went down the tubes in the past couple of weeks.)

yeah i think i've missed more episodes lately than usual but the second half of this season has definitely been one of the more pronounced dips in the show's run

I'm just generally not feeling the whole "Barney falls in love...again!" thing this season. Like, if they're gonna do it for real this time and make it stick, fine. But even factoring in character growth, this particular character is only gonna fall head over heels so many times in a row before it becomes completely unbelievable and actively irritating.

The thing with How I Met is that there have been some occasional awesome reveals, like the first robin sparkles thing, and a few others. But usually it doesn't live up to those at all, and especially in the last few seasons I can't think of anything nearly that good. So it's not that the show has gotten considerably worse, just that it doesn't seem to hit the same really great high notes that balanced out the schmaltz. I remember the jumping across the roof thing really getting to me though, actually. That's actually what I enjoy about it -- the life lessons of a certain age and whatever are handled pretty well. Having dreams, giving up on dreams, dealing with getting older and settling down, etc. Sometimes it doesn't do a great job, but every now and then it seems much more forthright and direct about how people handle this stuff than does nearly any other show on TV (which, I'll grant, is an insanely low bar, but still...)

dumb college ted will always kill though.

Pretty much the entirety of my current complaint with this past season is the feeling of wheel spinning and throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks (Marshall and Lily move to Long Island! Or, no, wait, no they don't! Barney's in love with this girl! Or maybe it's this girl! Orrrrr maybe it's this girl!). As if they haven't done as much pre-planning as usual and they're pretty terrible at making it up as they go along. That's just more a complaint about the overarching narrative, though. Overall, the individual episodes are still fine.

the barney/nora thing was good, they prob abandoned that too soon

Well-said, clover. Those elements are a lot of why I like the show, too. However...

But usually it doesn't live up to those at all, and especially in the last few seasons I can't think of anything nearly that good.

Maybe it was just a personal thing (and much different than the kind of surprise that HIMYM usually provides), but the 'Marshall's dad' storyline kinda kicked the legs out from under me. At least in part because they summarized about a year and a half of my life via a three-episode concentrate of Marshall coping with the situation.

the only episode from this season that really struck me as prime himym in every way was at the japanese steakhouse w/ ted telling the story about victoria and the bet between marshall/lily and barney and i can't remember robin's storyline off the top of my head, something w/ work maybe. there were a few other ones that were good but that's the only one i could imagine someone holding in comparison w/ pre-bubble himym. w/ the exception of the one 'date' ted had w/ stella that was 3 minutes long (and that might be just cuz they played a big star song) i think i've dreaded every minute of every big ted relationship since robin and that's alot of airtime. they somehow screwed up the (first?) robin-barney relationship and that should've been a gimme, how the fuck did they make that duller than robin-ted??? marshall-lily they have only occasionally seemed to really have an idea what to do w/ lately and while marshall has had some good storylines i can't really recall the last time lily had a compelling storyline that was her own, and the problem w/ ted is the central dilemma w/ the show and they haven't solved it yet. clover otm about what still works about this show though.

otm re: Japanese restaurant/Victoria ep. That was quality as all get it out.

Don't forget re: HIMYM the first ep of this season was Barney's wedding so it makes sense they plAy up a few diff romances to keep us guessing who it'll be. Not sure if wedding is season finale anymore though?

FFM!

Mordy! I owe you a reply. Busted. :O

lol, no worries. i just messaged you not ten minutes ago and then saw you posting so i thought i'd throw up the FFM-signal

i can't believe they've been teasing out this wedding since the beginning of LAST season

imo the worst possible way to watch HIMYM is like it's Lost or something and actually live in suspense about 'the mother' or any other long term memories. i'm sure there are people that can even take the fun out of the Slapsgiving countdown.

memories=mysteries

so apparently Community will be airing on Fridays. After Whitney.

"...."

?

So Whitney and Community on Friday. Parks and Rec after the Office on Thursday. Thursday 10pm is Rock Center with Brian Williams.

lol community's getting the chuck deal. i'm not sure i get the whitney move - it seems like either you believe that could be a hit w/ proper retooling in which case you keep it on a night ppl actually watch tv on (or just keep it where it is) or you believe this show has very limited growth opportunities but it has a loyal audience and helps yr brand w/ critics and certain demos in which case you put it on fridays, and the move seems to indicate nbc doesn't hold the former view and nothing i have heard seems to indicate they should hold the latter view. parks and rec should've been on after the office it's entire run.

MONDAY
8-10 p.m. – "The Voice"
10-11 p.m. – "REVOLUTION"

TUESDAY
8-9 p.m. –"The Voice"
9-9:30 p.m. – "GO ON"
9:30-10 p.m. – "THE NEW NORMAL"
10-11 p.m. – "Parenthood"

WEDNESDAY
8-8:30 p.m. – "ANIMAL PRACTICE"
8:30-9 p.m. – "GUYS WITH KIDS"
9-10 p.m. – "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit"
10-11 p.m. – "CHICAGO FIRE"

THURSDAY
8-8:30 p.m. – "30 Rock"
8:30-9 p.m. – "Up All Night"
9-9:30 p.m. – "The Office"
9:30-10 p.m. – "Parks and Recreation"
10-11 p.m. – "Rock Center with Brian Williams"

FRIDAY
8-8:30 p.m. – "Whitney"
8:30-9 p.m. – "Community"
9-10 p.m. – "Grimm"
10-11 p.m. – "Dateline NBC"

SUNDAY (Fall 2012)
7- 8:15 p.m. — "Football Night in America"
8:15-11:30 p.m. — "NBC Sunday Night Football"
SUNDAY (Post-football/Winter 2013)
7-8 p.m. – "Dateline NBC"
8-9 p.m. – "Fashion Star"
9-10 p.m. – "The Celebrity Apprentice"
10-11 p.m. – "DO NO HARM"

The best bit is Thursday at 10pm, which appears to be them deciding no-one will ever watch NBC at that time ever again.

I'm picturing a show where Brian Williams is teaching kids how to play Sweet Child o Mine on the guitar

I would watch a show with Brian Williams doing the schtick he does on 30 Rock.

For all I know, every single new show they're adding to the lineup could be fucking wonderful...but it doesn't matter, because no one even watches NBC anymore unless it's football, singers, Donald Trump and/or people losing weight.

weird they're not putting a single new show on thursdays. Up All Night is the only show of the 4 I can't imagine every potential TV viewer hasn't already decided whether they'll watch or not

also do they know they've got two single-cams about tv showrunners followed by two mockumentaries about bureaucracy

lol. kinda telling, isn't it?

many xps, NPH just tweeted that tonight's hour-long HIMYM season finale will reveal Barney's bride. There it is!

by the fall NBC will be begging Brian Williams to retool his newsmagazine so that it's primarily about his daughter masturbating

allison william's father is such a tool

^^

the trailer for revolution isn't half bad? out of all the crap abrams has produced since lost, it seems like the closest thing to lost, in that the pilot might be really good and the rest of the crap show will be intriguing enough to foster an annoying cult fandom. but NBC probably would've killed for lost's numbers so

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwfCRAtkYEI

also, PIRATES: http://www.avclub.com/articles/nbc-decides-you-might-also-like-a-show-about-pirat,74028/

See...based on the trailer, Revolution looks like high-concept done right (using the concept as backdrop, not foreground). I mean, that's something you can get a lot of mileage out of without having to constantly tease ill-developed "reveals" that ultimately disappoint. The less you have to rely on clicking puzzle pieces into place in order to propel the narrative, the better off you're gonna be. But it's entirely possible that I'm wrong and they'll actually go that highly-devalued route and crank out one convoluted season before turfing out. Time will tell.

many xps, NPH just tweeted that tonight's hour-long HIMYM season finale will reveal Barney's bride. There it is!

STFU SPOILERS

I can't even think of a pretend-science reason for electricity to stop working on the whole planet.

like unless all electricity in this show was being provided by some sort of glowing cube that some guy found and the electricity wirelessly transmitted to everybody and everybody who knew other ways of generating electricity died then the cube got sad and turned off

because otherwise uh no point in ever revealing why the electricity turns off, the right move is to just treat it like magic, there's even a special amulet

next 1,200 posts itt will be abt revolution

I mean come on do electrons stop moving but only in copper wire

does static electricity still exist in revolution?

what about covalent or ionic bonds

a world without ions is a world without acids or bases, that'd be even more problematic, everything wld have a pH of 7, your saliva wouldn't work right anymore, stomach couldn't digest shit, now that's a show I'd watch, people crapping out entire unmolested porkchops

I can't even think of a pretend-science reason for electricity to stop working on the whole planet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPym09LQfnc

strange how this show would be more plausible in a fantasy setting where the magic went out instead of the electricity and everything went all freaky crossbow-punk on them.

also strange how in this world i can watch a youtube video of home camcorder footage of a computer screen playing a pirated stream of a television show, my head hurts

not to mention that most of the tv show footage in question is of a diegetic film projection, so there's like five nested screens here, I might die over here

You're angling for a consulting credit on Revolution, aren't you, silby? I'm onto you...

next 1,200 posts itt will be abt revolution

― of family bonds and individual triumph. Narrated by Tim Allen, (zachlyon), Tuesday, May 15, 2012 3:10 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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So this Revolution is pretty much a rip-off of SM Stirling's Emberverse series then?

yes, that seems to be a likely scenario

30 Rock had a good run, it's for the best. This season was by far the worse.

Nah.

under control, off the money.

You know how you could tell shows were NBC shows just by looking at them for the past few years? Heroes, The Event, The Cape, Harry's Law, etc etc? I was watching the Revolution trailer and, even though I knew it was an NBC property the whole time, it didn't look or feel like one. Maybe they've at least turned a corner here.

They downloaded a new Final Cut filter, iirc.

hey, hey - Harry's Law at least recruited the old Boston Legal editing and music team

this has been the best 30 rock season in several seasons

Revolution looks a bit like Jericho--which also a bunch of 1776 jive mixed in with the disaster/sf--but probably done better.

looks pretty low budget and bad for a network show, imo, especially comparing it to something like Fallen Skies

First thing I noticed in the Revolution promo was how crisp and new their clothes looked, supposedly after 15 years of no electricty. And then I couldn't un-notice it. I know it's possible to continue with fine tailoring by hand or water/animal-powered looms, but it's not fucking likely everyone would continue to do that as they struggled to survive.

try explaining that to an nbc suit

So Community apparently isn't alone: The Office will also be getting a regime change, although apparently not coupled with the complete overhaul which had been discussed.

You guys can breathe easily now: Rules of Engagement will be back for a seventh season.

i saw the Revolution promo in the theater before The Avengers and i thought it was gonna be a movie

Also: holy shit, my interest in reading a book about the history of NBC's last few decades has apparently retroactively spurred the universe (and Warren Littlefield) into action.

i'd much rather hear about the failing years of the past decade tbh (The Office/30 Rock on)

So Community apparently isn't alone: The Office will also be getting a regime change, although apparently not coupled with the complete overhaul which had been discussed.

It can't get much worse at this point, a change might improve it slightly.

So Community apparently isn't alone: The Office will also be getting a regime change, although apparently not coupled with the complete overhaul which had been discussed.

with the showrunner and one of the most senior writer/exec producers leaving, it would be hard not to have a "regime change"

Paul Lieberstein is doing the Dwight Shrute spinoff.

xpost

Um.......yeah? I don't understand your scare quotes.

well we've already discussed itt Lieberstein leaving, and Kaling's series got picked up weeks ago

https://twitter.com/SenJohnMcCain/status/226074304410968064

RIP

http://c0014394.r32.cf1.rackcdn.com/x2_d80304e

I hope he's not actually playing John McCain but a fellow city council member with a maverick past.

I've forgotten the finale but doesn't Ben take the DC gig?

yeah spoilers or whatever but they're filming in washington d.c. right now, there's pictures of andy and april right outside the white house

rip something

http://gawker.com/5941190/amy-poehler-and-will-arnett-are-separating-so-go-home-and-break-up-with-your-boyfriend-because-love-is-a-lie

aw man

:(

I saw that yesterday. Makes me genuinely bummed out.

they've made a huge mistake

maybe they'll work things out and get back together

Why do celebrities get married at all? At least there are no kids involved. Oh, wait ...

yeah anyone who is married for nearly a decade and has kids and then breaks up because they are unhappy together is a real monster

Unless the divorcing parents are complete assholes to each other and around their kids, kids in divorced families turn out okay for the most part.

They did last a pretty long time, I admit that. It just seems that celebrity marriages often don't even meet the modest margin of the 50/50 national average or whatever. Kids in divorced families do generally turn out OK. Celebrity kids, on the other hand ...

This was Arnett's second marriage, I guess. The third Mrs. Arnett should get something good in writing first.

it'd probably be impossible to quantify but i do wonder if divorce rates ARE higher for celebrities or if you just get a skewed impression since splits get so much more press than long happy marriages.

First, you must establish measurable criteria for celebrity.

Everyone that's been divorced twice is a monster, I'm glad they are finally getting called out on the carpet, don't stop speaking out Josh

tbf will arnett IS a monster

http://www.officialpsds.com/images/thumbs/The-Missing-Link-psd27995.png

Just look at him....I pity those kids

i had a feeling and i just checked -- it was oct of last year that kim and thurston announced that they were splitting up
does this have to happen once a year or something? geez.

Susan Sarandon & Tim Robbins split in 2009. Who was it in 2010?

i stopped believing in love when eva longoria and tony parker couldn't make it work