Community, the tv show

"ugh, observational humor about generational differences---how pandering! i expect so much more from NBC"

i love this show but some of you are getting a little overdefensive here. history mayne's right that it can way be too sappy, and the sappiness is really uneven from episode to episode - some eps are just joke-a-thons and others are all feeeeeeelings and it would be nice to see them get a good mix of both in all the episodes. but ultimately i just want them to be funny.

the episodes do vary wildly in tone, but i dunno what sitcoms people are watching where this show doesn't qualify as a daring but reliable, audience-intelligene-respecting jokeathon. So if you ignore this to make incoherent complaints about "emo" you might be asked to pin those down.

it's hardly reliable! you just agreed that it varies wildly in tone!

anyways you can love something but still admit that it has flaws. this is one of my favorite shows on right now but it's hardly perfect.

huh, two "hardly"s, something freudian going on there

i said it's reliably funny. even the episodes that contain feeeeelings are also smart with a shit-ton of jokes.

also anybody acting like Abed's shtick is getting tiresome better not still be repping for HIMYM.

haaaaaaa

i dunno if 'meta' has that much currency, but ehh it felt like playing to the twitter-gallery.

tbh, this entire show plays to that gallery

this weeks's HIMYM was funny and last week's community wasn't -- there weren't many jokes so far as i'm concerned. or to put it another way, HIMYM has done things looking at why barney is barney without being wack, community failed that test. of course there've been less-funny HIMYM eps, but not *as* less-funny.

still like community -- liked the ep in the bar the other week

People who are tired of Abed's shtick, I'm curious when you got off board? Did you like it in the bottle episode (with the charts and him being sarcastic + upset)? I didn't really love the Jesus Abed episode, but how about last season when he made the movie about his parents using Britta + Jeff, did you like it there?

"still like community -- liked the ep in the bar the other week"

ha this was one of the sappiest episodes of the season!

"People who are tired of Abed's shtick, I'm curious when you got off board?"

don't you mean 'when did you get off the bus'?

i don't mind this show trying to pull at the heart strings a little bit, but I'd stop watching if it devolved into a Friends-like who's-fucking-who soap-com. I do prefer the episodes with the jokes, though. It's a really hot and cold show - seems like they are searching for a winning formula.

and who gives a damn about a tweet?

Abed is one of the most consistently funny characters on television IMO, and I've been a fan of that actor since his butt-dialing commercial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ2ScWMi1dA

ha this was one of the sappiest episodes of the season!

my recollections of it are: annie's ludicrous texas accent, abed getting hit on and not knowing it, jeff and britta lols, and shirley being revealed as a former hellraiser and some unfunny pierce shit. what as troy up to? well, almost kissing annie i guess.

Asking why Abed is Abed is sort of like asking why Latka is Latka (Taxi)

The Jesus episode was kind of boring but I like Abed's shtick. Makes for some good jokes. Plus I would hang out with him and Troy in real life

britta the failed hipster is probably my 'fave character' on this show

Asking why Abed is Abed is sort of like asking why Latka is Latka (Taxi)

EXACTLY -- that's why i don't want an ep about abed

have we done a community character's poll?

I think they're all amazing characters, which is something I never thought I'd say after my first viewing of the pilot.

himym is not emo it is garbage, but i have said this already

is this (/any american tv) on any time soon? or does obligatory christmas episodes mean the end for a while?

yeah i think pretty much every show ran its Xmas episode last week or earlier and won't have anything new til january

HIMYM has done things looking at why barney is barney without being wack, community failed that test. of course there've been less-funny HIMYM eps, but not *as* less-funny.

ahhh, "wack." thank you for clarifying.

also there hasn't remotely been any kind of Origin Story of Abed like there's been for Barney

anyhow, the risk of wackness aside, I hope they never find that "winning formula" - there are networks worth of shows with catchphrases, repetitive formats and quirky supporting characters who dominate every episode. I'm really grateful for a show that leaves you wondering what the next episode will be like, deepening characters while going whole-hog into genre parodies. I can see how that isn't necessarily what people go for in a sitcom, but I think that's what makes it exceptional.

there are networks worth of shows with catchphrases, repetitive formats and quirky supporting characters who dominate every episode.

wait-a-second

community, in it short life, has repeated the 'jeff realizes he isn't too cool for school' plot more than a couple of times -- say what you like about HIMYM but it's not repetitive (ok, there are a few 'ted's new date is a disaster!1!!' eps but still), the narrative style they use is pretty unusual

imo abed is becoming 'that quirky supporting character'

ok, no catchphrases, but sometimes not enough jokes either

i agree it can be amazing

I didn't say "community is less repetitive than HIMYM" - a show I enjoyed for years in part because of its eccentricity before they ran out of plots and became a shrill burlesque of itself - though if you're going to complain that Community is all over the map you don't get to call it repetitive too.

and yeah, abed is clearly its potential fonz, but he's nowhere as far down that path as barney.

Abed is hardly Kramer or anything, he's as often the straight man or voice of reason in a scene as he is the crazy one

this thread kinda needs an abed

this thread needs an enema

this thread kind of needs a bed

to go to sleep in

hee hee

PERMANENTLY

or a til-January hiatus

ok, no catchphrases, but sometimes not enough jokes either

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

ok i assumed that clip would just be 2 minutes of "thats nice"

it does however prove why community is by far the best show currently on television

<3

watched the Claymation episode OnDemand last night; I thought it did a good job of translating the Community sense of humor into the heartwarming Christmas story framework

also the baseline concept for the episode was fucking great

Storytelling-wise, I can't think of another show in the past 10 years that has been this ambitious.

(at least)

DAN DON'T YOU KNOW THAT EVERY TV SHOW CREATOR HAS AMBITION AND THUS YOU CAN'T USE IT TO JUDGE THE QUALITY OF A TV SHOW!?!?!?!

sorry, carryover from the Kanye thread

lol

Storytelling-wise, I can't think of another show in the past 10 years that has been this ambitious.

― Tina Tina Cheneuse (DJP), Friday, 17 December 2010 17:26 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

could have never happened without whedon giving buffy a new sister, or making a silent movie episode or the episode of angel where they turned into puppets

although I think there have been plenty of more ambitious shows in the past 10 years, the problem is that most of them have been bad or failed to live up to their ambition (LOST for example)

was buffy in the past 10 years? when did they stop making it?

2003

oh right, Whedon

Yeah he was also super-ambitious but he also had the advantage of working with a storytelling framework that allowed for random supernatural shit left and right; the direct lineage to comic book tropes lessened a lot of the impact of the stories he told for me (plus overall I didn't connect with or care about the characters if I wasn't actively watching the show; I would enjoy it while it was on, but once the episode ended I think the only time I ever wanted to tune into the next one was the season where Willow lost her shit and pulled that dude's skin off, and that desire lasted 5 minutes).

I'd argue that LOST's ambition was more in production scope than in storytelling; that was an attempt to do labyrinthine comic-book stories in a television drama (again, comic book familiarity hurts the show's scope for me) as opposed to what's happening in Community, which is a series of genre pastiches that weave into an overarching narrative re: the characters and their relationships.

himym is super ambitious in its narrative structure(s)! esp considering its not one-camera

not the same kind of 'ambition' as community but no less ambitious