Community, the tv show

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

I never actually said it was as ambitious Dan, just that Community wouldn't be able to do what it does so well without Buffy in the first place.

Well, more like it wouldn't have been given a chance without Buffy IMO.

I haven't watched that many episodes of HIMYM because I don't think it's funny so I can't really remark on how it tells stories. I do know that the episodes I've seen have basically been sub-"Friends" with a reverse "Wonder Years" narrator; I'm willing to believe the show is more than that, but I haven't seen it.

Well, actually the microdate with Sarah Chalke was awesome and clever, and the whole thing that spun out of that with the movie written about Ted was great, so I do see where the show is doing shit that is above and beyond; my problem is that most of the time I don't think it's funny.

its ok if you dont find it funny i wont be mad

wait what's so ambitious about himym? i've seen two episodes and thought it was just NPH braggin about straight sex (~irony~) with a lovable doofus and his girlfriend from american pie

It's the ongoing narrative; the central conceit of the show is that it's an older dude reminiscing to his kids about his life as a young(ish) man in NYC, his circle of friends, and the events that led him to meet their mother. Some of the stuff they do to advance that overarching story is actually quite cool but you won't really see it without watching a series of episodes (and even then, you have to catch the right ones).

well the entire narrative arc of the show is pretty interesting/ambitious--a multi-camera sitcom told entirely in flashbacks w/ a definitive endpoint being constantly deferred--but tons of episodes (in s2/s3 it felt like nearly every episode but its less frequently now) the narrative structures of each individual episode are done in pretty "ambitious" (i feel weird about this word but since were using it) ways--flashbacks w/in each episode, trick reveals that change the nature of the story, chronological, uh, weirdness

xp dan is right but i think the single episode narratives are just as ambitious as the big overarching story

ha that feeds into my "have to catch the right episode" point; I've seen some funny fantasy sequences but nothing I thought especially remarkable

i guess this is all driven by their script director and theres a whole word they use on set for the narrative trickery

yeah i mean if you dont find it funny the other stuff wont convince you

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.

― Tina Tina Cheneuse (DJP), Friday, December 17, 2010 12:36 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark

i dunno, the way the show had no status quo at all was pretty amazing - i mean ffs one of the seasons was set in the 70s! that's ambitious.

sure, but compare that to, for example, the last season of Roseanne (or really, the way that show changed from season to season, and the way it ended)

yeah Community is totally ambitious by sitcom standards, as is HIMYM.

(again, I'm not saying LOST wasn't massive in scope, it just happened to be massive in scope in a way I'd seen before and was slightly less impressive as a result)

enh, i think LOST was ambitious not just because of the scope, or the narrative weirdness, but because it was a show, marketed to mainstream america, that was like a comic book/sci-fi/soap opera/action movie fever dream. shows like that are usually obsesso backwaters like star trek and dr who and the finale was a fucking national TV event

yeah Lost was definitely ambitious in storytelling AND production scope, but probably more in the latter. you knew it was going to be a big deal from the pilot on out, whereas Community's been growing the beard gradually.

yeah I am underselling LOST somewhat, partially because the ending was a letdown

i hate lost

yeah probably best to leave Lost alone...Abed said it all.

growing the beard! my favorite of television tropes!