Community, the tv show

That stuff happened while Harmon was still head btw.

o rly

Yeah, I haven't denied that. I'm not a Harmon partisan. I've even said that the first two episodes of s4 were better than the worst of s4.

I fell asleep during this. I don't feel bad. The Not-Kroll German was laaaaaaaaame

Yeah, bringing back the Germans seemed lazy enough, but without Kroll? Shit smacked of desperation.

I was kind of bummed that they didn't have Kroll, the other guy was pretty lame.

the editing felt really weird on this one, the scene with abed and the one german guy talking about the game they play felt very weirdly shoehorned in. the jokes were broad and weak -- prof complaining he was fired for getting caught with a coed and annie pulling her cardigan closed? that's like the tritest college joke ever. pierce gets electrocuted? that's the joke?

Those were weak, and the Lactaid joke sucked too, but I liked e.g. "You were just following orders". I even laughed at the "Real World" joke.

"Hogan's Villains" joke was good too. But this is probably OTM for the most part: http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/telefile/2013/03/community-alternative-history-of-the-german-invasion-review.php

oh I will admit to laughing at "the German version of The Nanny."

Franlein, no?

I laughed at one bit of this, which was Pierce getting butthurt about not being able to be the Hitler of the group, otherwise this was pretty bad. Pierce getting electrocuted is probably exactly the sort of gag that Chevy wanted in the show all along. I was sort of pro- bringing the Germans back but WW2 gags are just lazy (crucially the fussball episode avoided them) and the guy playing their new leader was just bad.

Ken Jeong is an amazing comic actor but if they can't figure out better material for him than simply inserting the word 'Chang' into everything he says then they might as well bin the character. He was funny up until the end of S2 but they've totally lost their way with him by now.

An Oxford professor who is reduced to teaching at Greendale is hilarious in theory but didn't work that well in practice. Also, British people don't say "co-ed", ESPECIALLY fusty old Oxford history professors. It's kind of annoying because they totally nailed the Britishisms with Professor Ian Duncan (RIP), even when they were lol-Britishisms, so this just smacks of laziness in the writing.

Britta and Troy as a couple are not funny, and it prevents the group from laying into Britta like the good lord intended.

current show is this weird mix of straining fealty to previous seasons of show and betrayal of previous seasons of show.

The straining is the irritating part, you can tell the writers are trying to write for the nerds while simultaneously broadening the comedy. So there's this nudge-nudge kind of meta comedy for the nerds, like Pierce coming in and ruining Inspector Spacetime, or the digs at mainstream comedy in the first episode. But the original Community didn't dig at mainstream comedy, it loved it. And it did great broad comedy - ie any occasion when Jeff got kicked in the fact/beaten up/had his head bounced off the table.

It's weird because I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the approach per se, the problem is the scripts aren't funny enough. Most of the actors are doing their best though - Alison Brie, Danny Pudi and Joel McHale in particular are still carrying their lines well enough to make the show watchable.

^^ otm. We grumbled at the co-ed thing too. Dumb.
I did like this ep though, esp 'Hogan's villains'.

I wondered about "coed" too. I can't even imagine a Canadian professor using that term tbh.

Do Americans even still say "coed"?

American newscasters do.

I laughed a lot at this episode but I was three beers deep when I watched it. I thought the Real World joke was wonderful regardless of inebriation, though.

So what is the British English term for a student you get fired for having sex with?

if they can't figure out better material for him than simply inserting the word 'Chang' into everything he says then they might as well bin the character.

V. OTM.

not british but i think it's "student" xp

A "Bird"

its "newsie wewsies"

funny episode

"Hogan's Villains" was a my favorite quickie joke of the whole episode. I thought this one was slightly better than the three that came before it. I dunno why. The jokes just seem better at Greendale instead of off campus. Still a far cry from the show's peak, though.

I thought the whole thing was pretty funny and reading the handwringing about the study group being called Nazis online was even funnier. Like, it's been pretty apparent for a couple of seasons now that the study group en masse has an antagonistic relationship with the rest of the school; many of the members have friends outside of it but no one at the school aside from the Dean appears to have any time for them as a group.

i feel like the show treads a line of "your awesome TV friends who you love to spend time with would be kinda dicks IRL" that is very familiar in the post-Seinfeld age, and that it's pretty silly that anyone would take offense at it.

are they editing in awkward pauses for laughter now, or am I just laughing less?

i totally understand if people who watch 10 sitcoms each week think this is one the 15 best sitcoms on tv, but it really does remind me of bob camp-era ren & stimpys

woops, meant to use the number 10 twice, didn't intend to make a further dis

PUPPET EPISODE

http://25.media.tumblr.com/0eff09698455529388e9793185aa9d7d/tumblr_mj96q3hxcc1r2igm4o1_1280.jpg

So next...
Troy and abed are bronies
Changam style
Pierce gives a TED Talk

Man, when you are reduced to ripping off an episode of Angel that's pretty weak sauce.

tbf, that is possibly the best episode of Angel, so if you're gonna rip one off...

Yet the claymation episode was a mind-blowingly brilliant and original idea.

mostly because it was a Claymation Christmas episode

so actually the show is using the company that did the puppets for angel, if that helps anyone deal with that conflict at all.

really the most upsetting thing for me here is learning that Angel had a puppet episode

it's fantastic.

Was a really good episode iirc

You rc, was written by Ben Edlund

Not a bad episode, and Jeff's half-brother was pretty funny. But what the hell, are Troy and Britta suddenly no longer dating?

thought that was weird too

I'm really bored by this show now and it makes me sad.

I'm watching this and man the guy from Workaholics is a lucky sonofabitch to get so much work. He's a horrible actor.

He has a certain amount of buzz right now. He'll go away soon.

I thought he was decent, in a fun, unrealistically over-the-top kind of way. Never seen him before/in Workaholics, though.

He's in Workaholics, this (and future?) ep of Community, a Sim City commercial, and probably a couple other places I can't recall.

I know people who LOVE Workaholics. I think it's just bad tv. Not because I'm a prude or too highbrow for it. It's just not good. In this guy's defense, he's probably the least objectionable of the three stars.

he was also in Pitch Perfect

yes, I saw Pitch Perfect

Didn't find this very funny at all - Jeff's dad and brother felt poorly cast and a wasted opportunity. The Abed-Shawshank Redemption strand was really strained. Britta was good in this one though.

I'm losing patience with the show in general by the point, but I am totally ready for Pierce to ride off into the sunset now because Chevy is carrying his lines worse than anyone right now. The rest of the cast are still great to watch even when their lines aren't very funny.

Chevy had one really awkward line reading last night. I can't remember what it was, but I immediately thought he must have been asked to do another take but probably/dickishly refused.

Thinking back to a character like Vaughan, or Pierce's dad, and how great the minor details of those characters were, and they conspicuously failed to do anything like that with Jeff's brother. Like, he vomits sometimes? Is that the sum total of the humour in the character?