Community, the tv show

Hm, that last one kind of sucked.

Croup, don't tell me you preferred BBT during s2??

i was kidding

Comparative Religion is really underestimated, I think. It was the first of their theme-episodes that went above just 'copying genre-stuff' (although that was obviously awesome as well). All of a sudden doing the bible with Abed as Jesus was just so weird, and I think it was the first of episodes like Critical Film Studies, Remedial Chaos Theory and stuff like that. At the time, it really seemed like at least an attempt at taking the show to the next level.

Just watched last week's, the Mountain Dew Cool Tent bit was classic Community. This ep much better than the last two.

extremely sweet episode. also, 'dean law'. also abed subplot felt fanservicey, but adorable.

i was kidding

Ha, OK. A lot of people really like that show.

"Comparative Religion" was the s1 Christmas episode, actually. The "Abed as Jesus" episode was called "Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples". I really liked it too but iirc it wasn't that popular here. Love the Pierce subplot in that one!

I laughed many times during this ep, it was a pretty good one.

One of my friends in high school decided that Sophie B Hawkins was her personal hero and style icon (she legit worshipped her and dressed like her for at least a couple of years)... the rest of us were like, 'really? because of that one song?'

annoyed at myself that I totally didn't recognize Brie Larson just because she had black hair

Best ep of the season so far; far more joke landings, and the character development was plausible/consistent with previous seasons, for once. OK, maybe except for Pierce, but it didn't feel forced.

yeah this ep was nice -- good jokes, chemistry between the group members felt comfortable again. also someone from the show has randomly started updating the pierce hawthorne twitter account again.

Two good episodes in a row, definitely. They were in danger of Brittaing "Britta" as a verb so this was a nice way of seeing it off.

ya this was a sweet episode, none of the messiness and offness of the first bunch that had me thinking this season was doomed to failure. "The Colin Farrell of people" is a nice insult to have handy too.

I've decided the Dean is the funniest character.

holy shit, the Dean's costume

yeah, Deanna Reed was next level

OK, that episode was pretty classic.

this show's fine, isn't it? stayed away from season 4 at first (my other half still refuses to watch it for fear of tainting her memory of a show she loves) but have really enjoyed most of the episodes thus far. this latest one was my favourite so far this season...

I'm coming around, but I feel like Troy and Abed are suffering the most from Dan's absence.

worst episode

don't know what show y'all are watching but i have not liked a single episode

This was mostly stupid

Still not as bad as the Halloween episode though

It was pre-empted here for severe weather coverage, but I guess there's no hurry in catching it via ondemand this weekend, eh?

The songs were fucking godawful and the puppet schtick wore thin immediately. A handful of jokes weren't bad, but this episode may as well have never existed.

what's sad is that the show is trying so earnestly to be lovingly reverent of harmon-era community and its fans. the balloon lady was sara bareilles, whose song "gravity" is used in a jeff/annie fanvid that the show has already made of fun of in a previous episode. but the jokes aren't there, and the characterization's become so rote (britta/troy has become just troy complaining about britta). and the high concept here was so artless! "they're doing puppet therapy" leads to...different puppets and musical numbers?

A- at AV Club

this is making me laugh harder than anything in the episode

I was hoping the episode would get better and then Sara Bareillis showed up *sad trombone*

seems like all the critics who hated the inspector spacetime convention episode really liked this one, which I don't understand at all

can we talk about how non-terrible their terrible secrets were?

A- at AV Club

Yeah, pretty baffling, especially considering this was the most blatantly, and vacuously, pandering of any episode this season.

not that baffling when you consider that all of the whining over there was about how the show wasn't mawkish enough

Good point.

The songs were so bad I wondered if the Glee episode songs were actually shitty. Nope, still great. I assume Bareillis wrote these songs, as they bear her stamp of crapulence.

Ya this was not good. Very insubstantial. I liked the puppet designs but the conceit as a whole didn't rly work and something was off about them in combination with the voices.

I thought the songs as songs were alright but they kinda went for long stretches without bothering to have anything resembling a joke? It seemed odd.

lmbo @ how bad this show has become.

"puppet musical episode"

I actually really enjoyed this, I've enjoyed the last three really.

I'm assuming we're at the point in the series where Chevy just checks out completely? Were they supposed to have left Pierce in the woods?

Turned this one off halfway through

Ugh, that episode was all kinds of dreadful. Pastiching something lame like Glee leads to something else lame but which might be entertaining to some people who have that sense of humour. But pastiching something really good (Muppet musical numbers are GREAT) and doing it so lifelessly with no jokes... that's just not going to be any fun for anyone.

I really really really hate singing in sitcoms except when it is being used to rain on Glee's parade.

I have an extremely low tolerance for musicals but a pretty high tolerance for puppets, im hoping i can make it through this.

according to some rando commenter on avclub who might not be trustworthy, chevy agreed to record his lines for this ep as part of his deal to walk early, and this was the very last episode they filmed because of the technical complexity.

mm that's what i assumed to be the case. i recall that he only missed one episode and it wasn't the finale.

In the 'Times Higher Education' this week there's a big picture which is a still from that 's critical analysis of Who's the Boss ep of Community

I thought the songs in this were fine, it was just incredibly saccharine and most of their terrible secrets weren't actually terrible, except of course for the black people, which fuck that

Just watched it. I think it was better than most of s4 so far but still a ways from their peak. I liked the puppet designs and thought the songs were fine but, yeah, it was a bit insubstantial. I liked a lot of the jokes though!

I actually didn't completely understand Troy's secret. He burned down Greendale? That doesn't seem to make sense. I don't think it's necessarily important whether the secrets were legitimately terrible: they were all things that those characters would be embarrassed about. And Annie's was pretty appalling imo!

I think where the episode fell a bit short was in how cheaply the resolution was earned, e.g. Shirley confesses to a pretty serious lapse and everyone just shrugs it off with no discussion or advice.

I was going to say that the songs and singing might have been better than some of those in the Glee parody but at least I could remember those instantly. I can't remember any of these songs after watching the episode.

This was not bad, cos maybe my memory is screwy or something, but i remember them only singing 1 or 2 songs at most.

there was the original adventure song, the boarding the hot-air balloon song, the Jason Alexander song, and the shameful secrets song

fuck if I remember how any of them went tho

except for Chevy croaking about humping Eartha Kitt, which I wish I could forget

Wait was Jason Alexander the woodsman who gives them psychedelics?