Community, the tv show

Funny that the only person that's even intimated at anger here is you. Oh and I'm doing fine, thanks for your concern though.

did anyone else feel like the Hurwitz and Gilligan cameos were almost like a gratuitous acknowledgment of this season's celebration of the return of the show's showrunner/auteur

Harmon's appearance in Arrested Development was obviously symbolising his being cast out from the NBC and Sony families, as he was in the desert. And further, representing the Harmontown documentary, as it showed him having found an ersatz support group/cult that would pay to be abused, and give him a place to do pointless "work".

i don't actually think anyone here is really angry or really pitying you, we just don't seem to be responding to your thing about the cartoon show the way you wanted us to? but i mean that's cool - i mean, i'm not american so i have no idea what that cartoon show is. i'm just confused about whether you are trolling or not, and how we should be responding to your trolling? but its really no big deal, and apologies if i seemed like a dick above.

how we should be responding to your trolling?

Ignoring trolling is usually the way to go, but hey, you guys seem to be having fun w it.

Yeah, I probably shouldn't have taken that so literally. And I guess I'd figured the comparison might not mean all that much to most. Recess first aired in 97 when I was 6 and ilx generally trends a fair bit older than that.

To clarify, it wasn't my intention to troll the thread, genuinely thought that nobody would think I was seriously calling Community sub-par in comparison to Sunday morning Disney.

But you're right its nbd. Apologies for any misunderstanding.

no hard feelings, and glad to quash the beef!
http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4p3ar8wle1rx19c0o1_500.gif

yeah definitely
http://www.geekosystem.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/fistbumpdone.gif

As long as its only distracting for the nerdiest of TV nerds.

by which of course you mean this shows' audience

crickets huh

didn't think this was great. honestly should've been a 2-parter it all felt so rushed and felt like half of it was missing anyway, didn't really do anything for hickey's character. felt sorta halfassed tbh.

cross felt miscast to me

Awful episode. One or two eps of Season 4 were actually better than this. I don't give enough of a crap about Hickey for him to be bringing in one-episode tertiary characters in his orbit as an excuse to re-hash a much better earlier episode, and the writing didn't make it sound as if the established main characters did either. And I love love love David Cross, but, uh, two characters being dicks to each other is sometimes just two characters being dicks to each other even if you give them a backstory. I mean, Fat Neil was less established but the interactions were far more natural, well-paced and the game was a lot funnier.

I thought it was pretty funny, but it also seemed like a misstep and a pointless rehash. In his interview with Sepinwall, Harmon also says as much. Which gives me hopes for season six.

Interesting - I kind of hated the first one and thought this was a lot funnier. Iirc the first one was where they first turned up the meanness dial on chevy's character and kind of ruined him.

yeah i thought it was totally better than the first. jim rash definitely episode MVP.

Honestly I was just happy to see Jim Rash get a load of screen time this episode. This season has been great but the Dean has been criminally underused given he steals every scene he's in.

I would rather he be used sparingly but creatively than for him to be wearing a dress and saying "dean the dean dean dean" in every episode again

Yeah, it was great to see Rash given more to do, and the sword/hug thing was genius. But overall, it felt like they were trying to shoehorn Banks and Cross into a world that they hadn't really grown into yet.

The Dean writing those letters was the best part of a pretty middling episode.

the letters were all time

not as poignant as the first D&D episode but still pretty entertaining

it was ok, kinda meh for me

I feel like I should be excited about this, but I'm actually kind of dreading it:
http://www.avclub.com/article/heres-what-communitys-gi-joe-episode-looks-and-now-202517
http://i.onionstatic.com/avclub/5039/15/16x9/640.jpg

i love the look already. my only request: they do some kind of parody of the absurd movie theme song

they've already done The Professional EVERYONNNNNNNE three times this season, so I don't think it's far out of reach

totally agree that this felt underbaked and missing a third act - doubly bummed because the first D&D episode is probably my favourite half hour of community, and I think the format is smart enough to be revisited, just not as it was this time around (though, on rescreening the first D&D episode the other day, yes, it's the episode where Pierce is broken so he cannot be fixed).

I enjoyed this ep. My gf had never seen the first, so we watched that one before this, and I really did think that one was a great example of using genre jokes as a way to highlight character interaction.

https://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/t1.0-9/s640x640/1488686_10152301645868184_1921312675_n.jpg

i laughed at a lot in this episode - some of the best abed and dean bits of the season - but making the plots revolve around hickey is a real cousin oliver thing to do.

not even a dis on breaking bad dude - you just can't take a long-running show centered around a group dynamic and make it all about the new guy until he's actually part of that dynamic.

but that's what they sorta did with Fat Neil!

nah that episode was pretty central in the pierce arc of the season

hickey's been around for ten or so episodes and had several plots working around him and his relationship with members of the group

yeah, that's quite a bit for a cousin oliver, and then to have one where he works out his shit with his son while actors who've been on the show five years watch, it's a bit much. again, i laughed plenty, but focusing your attention so aggressively on The New Guy is a danger zone.

clay otm, plus this episode gave lots of opportunities for everyone to shout things and generally be funny, but I admit I could be overly generous with that

like, the plot was literally "new guy has cliche beef with son, everybody helps new guy" with only dean's boner for jeff getting any attention as far as the ongoing group dynamic goes. lots of funny shit, but that's pretty thin and uninvolving for a community episode.

Yeah, it was a funny episode, but the beef between David Cross and Hickey was so slim and vague I didn't care, and also the episode seemed to be missing a third act.

Why does it matter for how long Hickey has been part of the group? He's a human being, they help him. We invest in him because of the writing, the performance, and because, again, he's a human being.

It seems pretty 'be less like real life, more like a tv-show' to me.

harmon had said it's his least fav. ep. this season

Ugh how hard is it to grasp that someone can find an episode funny but still note that focusing episodes of a long running show on a new character has traditional pitfalls to the degree that its one of the better known "TV tropes"

Also he's not a human being he's a sitcom character it's not sociopathy to suggest audience members might care less about his ish

I still don't think Hickey is as well-drawn a character as any of the others (compare him to, say, S1 Pierce), which may be why building an entire episode around him was a) necessary and b) still felt a bit off in terms of tone.

Like he's a slightly odd character, he worked brilliantly with Abed but the fit with Annie didn't work at all.

Still prefer him to Pierce x1000

Pierce had *a lot* of genuinely hilarious one-liners though.

like that goofy post-credits scene where he's arguing with his family over a cemetery plot was more character revealing than most episodes Pierce was in

Hickey is way more well-drawn than Fat Neil, as Nhex pointed out.

People upset at the plotting of this last episode, did you see the one with the stolen books? The one that made very little sense by it's own internal logic? Where they find the books and then start threatening each other if they snitch and then halfway through just decide not to care about them anymore? They do this every other show, it's pretty much embedded in the show. TV/movie/pop culture conventions often win out over the characters' motivations making sense.

The study-group trying to do something past their own interests has been a common theme of the show. Really, if Community is a show about the joy of 'community', then it has to be pretty open to new people. Otherwise, it just seems awful. I've written upthread that I think they should replace all the characters, ER-style, and just keep the show at Greendale forever. I love the new dynamics.

(also the human being stuff was a reference. Hickey is most definitely a Human Being, though he doesn't seem too proud of it)

I kinda wondered if episodes centered on the ensemble being goofy would be brought up as proof it's normal for an episode to be centered on a new character while the ensemble acts goofy. I thought its already been noted that the last d&d was really more about pierce than fat Neil though.

In a sense, the comparison point for fat Neil would be hickey's son, not hickey

Meanwhile, six seasons and a movie...?

Chris Elliot!