Community, the tv show

I'm not against 'character development' per se at all, but in community it always seems for the sake of it, at the expense of the exquisite laughs the show is often capable of producing.

This advanced Starburns, and Todd! Also, I thought the troy/abed as detectives thing needed no particular explanation. I mean they love to geek out and play pop-culture roles. So they were clearly psyched to step into l&o characters while investigating the potato thing. I thought this was made pretty evident with their arguments over who got to make the quip, and who got to say "why do they always run". Everything was pretty well explained, I thought.

My less preferred are the ones about how they all love each other.

I hate it when it's over the top, but I love it when it's subtle...like the way Britta looked at Troy at the end of the carney episode.

No character development, layers, anything.

I'd say Starburns' character developed quite dramatically, although his development from this point forward may be somewhat limited.

troy and abed are going to grow a killer stash with the ashes of starburns and when they smoke it he'll appear and help them cheat on tests.

There's not really much that needs explaining, Troy and Abed were doing what Troy and Abed usually do, Jeff is a lawyer anyway and Annie is a ridiculous obsessive tryhard. Any break from reality no matter how heightened is usually grounded by a scene where Jeff is looking at his Blackberry looking bored and occasionally being sarcastic.

I really enjoyed Professor Kane in this one and I hadn't realised I'd missed this show being essentially grounded in the classroom. Maybe they should have picked an actor who could do more than a handful of eps a season, but on the other hand Omar dude.

i'll admit I was already on alert for an episode where they'd just slot the characters in a format, tell jokes, and leave it at that. Slapping on the visual/audio signifiers of L&O non-diagetically just feels easier, less impressive than what they normally do homage-wise.

And yeah, it's not that they haven't done similar things before. I didn't scream "oh hell no!" when someone started singing behind Chang in the paintball episode, but there's a difference between bringing Scarface/John Woo touches out of nowhere in a surreal paintball warzone and going DUN DUN all through an episode.

Def not complaining about the Todd stuff, though

The thing is community doesn't tie itself to some formalistic "mockumentary" pretense or whatever to hang its premise off of. If the characters act out of character, that's one thing, but there's nothing more or less "correct" or "realistic" about the cameras and theme songs and sound effects acting out of character.

i thought this was a little funnier than the ken burns one but that's probably because i've seen at least two law and order episodes

If you scrubbed the L&Oisms out of this week's episode and just left it as proper Greendale shenanigans, not much would have changed imo. The L&O thing was just a bone thrown to the audience.

is there an original of 'why do they always have to run', or is it along the lines of 'let's do the show right here'

clover otm

xp they really did use that line in L&O many times. i'm sure everyone who played a cop used it at least once, especially anyone slotted into the "younger cop" role

didn't Herc or Carver use it on The Wire before or am i misremembering? but ya, it's a pretty common cop show trope.

ya, i seem to remember it as a Wire line.

Matt and s. clover OTM. If anything, this seemed like less of a leap to me than e.g. the chicken finger Mafia episode. Prof Kane told Annie she needed to provide evidence to back up her hypothesis, Shirley said she watched a lot of crime shows, Troy and Abed did their thing. People even kept reminding them that they weren't cops and that the classroom wasn't a courtroom.

I also thought that this episode did show (further) development in Jeff's character: where previously, he would have BSed his way to winning and nailing Todd, now he actually wanted to find justice and truth, if only to preserve Annie. (You could even compare this to the s1 episode where he pleaded Britta's insanity to get her out of a penalty for cheating on a test.)

[/ comma splice]

Dudes, Michael Ironside!

Also, something Dan said twitched something in my head, and whilst searching I stumbled upon this:

http://www.umberhulk.com/

wtf. Someone bought a domain name and made a site just to be a character card of a d&d monster.

The jump to the L&O format didn't bother me at all, as the writers clearly like to do genre exercises. Abed & Troy immediately slotting into the roles of cops b/v it was fun reminds me a lot of the detective/film noir ep of the Venture Brothers, where everyone around Hank was clearly relishing helping him play in this genre universe.

Also, yeah, I like it when they take established characters & demonstrate how they fit into the trappings & tropes of some pop cultural flavor they'd like to dabble in.

This was kind of on the same tip as the Tarantino episode, except it was based on source material I care about.

lol, I'd forgotten that was also the Dinner With Andre episode. I need to go back and watch the prev seasons.

Btw, what's up with some of the recent episode titles? WTF is "lupine urology" a reference to? And why was the 1984 episode "Digital Exploration of Interior Design"? Because Pierce spied on Britta and Subway when they were in the blanket fort (using analogue gear!)?

"lupine urology" = "Wolf, Dick"

OK, I didn't know who that was. Looked it up now. That's v clever then.

I assume "Digital Exploration" is a heavy petting joke crossed with an allusion to the 1984 parody running through the Subway plot

those are both actually kinda funny

my best guess for 'lupine urology' was the first episode of 'due south' but that did seem highly improbable

This was kind of on the same tip as the Tarantino episode, except it was based on source material I care about.

― Johnny Fever, Monday, April 30, 2012 12:37 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol, I'd forgotten that was also the Dinner With Andre episode. I need to go back and watch the prev seasons.

― Johnny Fever, Monday, April 30, 2012 12:38 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

haha i was gonna say, it wasn't really 'the Tarantino episode' in practically any way besides the characters being dressed as Pulp Fiction characters

http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/467127_350844594976629_279724112088678_947565_1286493043_o.jpg

Also:

http://tvline.com/2012/04/27/community-season-3-finale-may-17-90-minutes/

Well this is Changsteresting….

smdh

as someone who has hatewatched about 800 episodes of L&O, omg

my least favorite thing about it is the writers' apparent inability to end an ep without a sudden homicide/suicide, so the starburns thing was amazing

also how the hell was belzer not in this?

Are there particular L&O episodes/seasons that are good to start with?

The Jerry Orbach years, I would assume

Orbach/(Noth/Bratt)/Waterston/Hennessey was my favourite cast.

No Hargitay, no cred.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMB4xRW58Q4

There's a buncha animated gifs out there for this one, so here's a couple

http://i45.tinypic.com/2vker1t.gif

http://i.imgur.com/BfsYa.gif

I agree that from the original series, Orbach/(Noth/Bratt)/Hennessey/Waterston was the high point

for SVU, I think there's something to be said (aka I luv Mariska Hargity) for every season but the early ones when they were still shuffling the ensemble are incredible

CI is most entertaining when it's the D'Onofrio Crazypants Show

TBJ was super boring

Can you just jump in and watch L&O episodes or do you need to start from the beginning for continuity?

i can't imagine Law & Order: The Blow Job being boring but i never saw it

Can you just jump in and watch L&O episodes or do you need to start from the beginning for continuity?

For regular L&O you can jump in at any point -- there's not much serialization or focus on the characters lives outside of the cases.

SVU is a whole 'nother mess that borders on Days of Our Lives.

Can you just jump in and watch L&O episodes or do you need to start from the beginning for continuity?

Most of the continuity/character progression is in the background aside from the two or three random episodes where a BIG PERSONAL REVELATION happens that makes a character EMOTE for your viewing pleasure; I got into the show mostly through watching random episodes and from being transfixed by Mariska Hargitay on SVU. You can totally watch SVU out of order and enjoy the hell out of it, but watching it in order is like "omg you've unlocked the secret level and can now shoot fireballs from yr eyes, ENJOY"

All the flavors of L&O have similar story rhythms; the main differences between them are:

OG: murders galore
SVU: mostly sex crimes that often involve someone's death
CI: mostly murders, but a good chunk of the episode is told from the criminal's point of view and the payoff of the story is seeing how Crazypants D'Onofrio sticks his crazy into the perp's brain and makes them crack
TBJ: I never watched more than 5 minutes of this because it was so boring but I think it was all trial shit (because Trial By Jury, see? it's FASCINATING watching people sit in a juror's box for an hour! gtfo imo, if you're gonna do that you better give me Cop Rock-esque ensemble numbers otherwise I'm changing the channel)

also lol sd

xpost

Mmm, I dunno, I've sat in on a number of those SVU marathons and didn't feel like I was missing anything by not being a regular viewer. It's been a few years, mind.

yeah i have to say it's kind of hilarious for someone who's never seen L&O to ask about 'continuity' since L&O is kind of the classic 'drop in and watch a marathon of non-sequential episodes' procedural show