Community, the tv show

Somewhere an Onion AV Club writers/commenter just threw up a little.

i think we can safely assume that 24/7

the dig on last nites 30 rock about character growth on sitcoms was p good, this whole increasingly solipsistic and grotesque interest in character 'growth' on sitcoms is horrible this is not what makes shows good you sad ppl

― Lamp, Friday, 16 March 2012 16:39 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

increasingly solipsistic and grotesque interest != not what is happening here btw. 1 part of many points of interest = what is happening here.

I AM NOT ARGUING ABOUT COMMUNITY ON THE INTERNET

coming in and otming a "challops" post about it being a shitty show after a string of threads about people enjoying it probably isn't your best way to approach it then, tbh

speaking of jim rash this thread is more annoying than a gym rash

i'm not questioning that i've enjoyed it in the past, i'm questioning whether maybe it should just be canceled and done because they don't seem to going anywhere or doing anything or recognizing/repairing the flaws in the show.

And

absence makes the heart realize this is kind of a shitty show

I don't have time to find and post a Community 'you're the worst' gif here but just pretend I did.

again, i hate it when people are dicks about something people are excited about so sorry for being a buzzkill. i have gotten a lot of enjoyment from this show in the past and wanted to talk about feeling weird about just feeling meh/disappointment about it now, not trying to be like "you guys are dumb for liking this."

"i am not arguing about..." is not a phrase of denial in my usage, it's like a self-affirmation to try and keep yourself from arguing about something you don't want to argue about.

dude you otm'd a challop

I think a bad episode of community is still better than most tv. I enjoyed this episode. I just don't think i'll rewatch it, mainly because i think if i did I'd find more things that bother me than amuse me.

I hold Dan Harmon to a higher standard, much like I do Sorkin, Whedon, David Simon etc. Dude can create week-in week-out EVENTS of true ability, so when he doesn't and just treats us to nice filler, I kinda want to kneejerk and hate. Maybe it was because the first episode back. They have always been a bit slow out of the gates but I still expect these folks to pull out something special.

its not really that challenging is the thing

lol I hate Sorkin so much, using him as a positive indicator is my definition of "damning with faint praise"

"why couldn't they have reached the heights of the episode of the West Wing where the Republican girl realized 'zomg these Democrats WORK HARD and are PASSIONATE, maybe I should ADMIRE them'"

guys you can like something and still admit its weaknesses. fandom doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing proposition.

I still expect these folks to pull out something special.

Well, the episode prior to this was the Glee/x-mas dealie, preceded by foosball, and before that, "Hearts of Darkness." Granted, anything following that run is going to seem anticlimactic. But to paraphrase Louis CK, will you give them a second? They're going to space!

ha ha come on

Even this amazing run in S2 had that awful episode with Pierce's Asian fiancee in the middle of it.

"why couldn't they have reached the heights of the episode of the West Wing where the Republican girl realized 'zomg these Democrats WORK HARD and are PASSIONATE, maybe I should ADMIRE them'"

― thuggish ruggish Brahms (DJP), Friday, 16 March 2012 16:57 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol this is just the drama version of 'the groom realises that the bride is MORE THAN A MOTHER AND A HOUSEWIFE and that he still wants to marry her AS AN INDEPENDANT WOMAN'

I think Freaks and Geeks is the only tv show to make it through without a shitty episode, and that got cancelled before it had the chance.

I thought Britta the wedding planner savant was hilarious

I also liked seeing Shirley really take the reins of the sandwich shop pitch and show serious potential as a credible fictional small business owner

I also liked Jeff's drunken line dancing

I'd give this episode a solid B

If you view the series as being primarily about people figuring out how to live and interact with one another in a healthy and harmonious way (which I assert is the intended overarching theme), just about every episode is a success.

replaying the same unconvincing emotional beats episode after tedious episode is sorta whats ruined this show. the characters are too thin and uninteresting to sustain it, the whole 'these people realizing theyre a surrogate family' thing is entirely w/e. idk i agree w/ n/a i used to really like this show, i like its structural gimmicks and worldbuilding and when it goes hard on jokes, the absurdity and pastiche. but i didnt really miss the show when it was gone and last nite i looked and realized that there was 7 minutes left of an episode that had already felt like an hour and turned it off, happily.

then the next day at work i went on a msg board and complained about it at length

It is a sitcom ppl. can we lay off looking for structural innovation and worldbuilding please?

after they've been really good at both in the past...not really

lol

i have an extremely low tolerance in picking shows to watch but when i find one i like, i cant imagine just stopping caring. the only one i've really given up on is how i met your mother. even if it drops off a little in quality or places to go, usually i'll stick it out.

eh, I found enough things to laugh at/enjoy in this episode that I didn't particularly mind/care that it was largely played straight

still lolling at Britta's "oh whatever, just take some of this crap and some of this junk and here's your stupid centerpiece"

i looked and realized that there was 7 minutes left of an episode that had already felt like an hour and turned it off, happily.

Too bad. You missed the credits gag, which apart from being the funniest, most complex, and most layered joke the show has ever done, also focused and expanded on the intense neuroses of one of the characters to such an intense degree that I literally wept. It's no exaggeration to say that you will find every episode from this point forward to be utterly impenetrable without the understanding that this gag brought.

lol

hahahaha

you will find every episode from this point forward to be utterly impenetrable

just like the rest of america amirite

just to clarify, i don't mind when community plays straight. the only episodes that really had me clawing my face was the "model un"/"detective chang" two-fer, which just went too far down the Family Guy path for my taste

I basically have zero time for complaints and critiques someone who couldn't make it through the whole thirty minutes of the thing they're critiquing. Even my ADD ass thinks that's pretty sad.

You missed the credits gag, which apart from being the funniest, most complex, and most layered joke the show has ever done, also focused and expanded on the intense neuroses of one of the characters to such an intense degree that I literally wept.

Peel back some of the layers for us, please.

I wept just reading your description.

(Goddamnit, I have to stop ILXORing on a phone. It's making me look like I don't understand basic sentence construction.)

Peel back some of the layers for us, please.

― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Friday, 16 March 2012 17:20 (14 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ice cream
more ice cream
a cone
more ice cream
another cone
a drip tray
the table the machine is on
the floor
the concrete layer
dirt
crust
upper mantle
mantle
outer core
inner core
god

The ice cream looked like poop.

One thing I think a lot of people are missing is that this ep wasn't supposed to be some big comeback or anything, it's just the next one in the queue. It was probably all put together before the hiatus and was supposed to run in January. As January shows go, it was very January indeed.

last night I was all 'yay community's back'
I show up itt to be all 'omg you guys it's back yay' only to find it barely alive and vivisected
just like old times
love you guys so much

god the problem here is that people actually listen to dan harmon when he talks. he's a stupid person who is apparently obsessed with character development and themes and circle formulas, and he never stops talking about them so everyone comes to expect those areas of the show to be strong points, and they aren't. the show fails there, but it doesn't matter because the show itself does not care about those things, it cares about funny jokes and clever concepts and "worldbuilding", and that's all it needs to be good at. because it's a sitcom! todd vanderwerff can write way too many words about how brilliant the writers are with each character's growth, but everyone knows that that shit doesn't actually resonate and it's not why the show succeeds.

that is true, except for where it is false

Holy shit, they did REALLY well in the ratings bcuz Big Bang Theory wasn't on: a 2.2 in the demo!

literally two minutes later...

hey. dan's not stupid

thank you!

oh, wait...

;_;

Anyone who thinks Dan Harmon is a stupid showrunner deserves awful television forever.

Funniness aside (I liked it & laughed throughout, but sure there have been better episodes), this ep was surprisingly accessible -- a nice comfy sitcom plot and then a kind of "taster" for each character's comedic strengths. NBC's been doing good promotion for the show for the last two weeks, so I think it was a good ep for potential new viewers to catch. That's enough to suppress my inner urge to worry about whether or not the show's in its prime/better than Parks and Rec or whatever.

http://www.tvline.com/2012/03/ratings-missing-premiere-community/#more-311765

NBC’s Community returned from its too-long hiatus to 4.9 million total viewers and a demo rating of 2.2, delivering increases of 36 and 47 percent over the comedy’s most recent outing (on Dec. 8 ) and a 14-month, non-sports time slot demo high for NBC.

i'm interested to hear from some of the big proponents of the show (afaict, deric and vegemitegrrl in particular) if you see any weaknesses/flaws in this show. i promise i am not going to be a dick about your responses, i am just curious.

The biggest flaw/weakness is that there are too many main characters.

You see some of the same type of character bloat/water-treading in BBT these days, where now that they have seven characters to revolve around, it seems like someone is likely to get shafted in a given episode (ironically for BBT, the character this has been happening to the most often is... Leonard, although Raj is a close second in that he's already at a disadvantage because he was secondary from the get-go and now he's the only one not in a couple).

Community has similar issues juggling all of its characters and making sure they all get their due, although it does a better job of doling out storylines around the group in order so the level of neglect isn't as high; still, you had Shirley receding into the background up until last season's mixology episode where she got a strong B-story that brought her out as more than just "the two-faced Christian one". (The foosball episode that rekindled the Shirley/Jeff pairing also helped tremendously.)

Aside from that, I think it's a dependably reliable situation comedy with unmistakable flashes of brilliance and one of the better ensemble casts currently on prime-time television; oftentimes I think the cast chemistry elevates the scripts.

^ otm, especially re: character juggling. Chang seems to be awkwardly shoehorned into Wacky Situations this season. The whole security guard thing isn't hitting for me, and much of it seems forced. I vastly preferred it when he was a snarky dick who hated his job, and elevated scenes with little more than an "Aww, snap!"; now he's a snarkless dick who aspires to do well at his job.