Community, the tv show

I thought the xmas party episode last night was the first one that felt like a S01-S03 quality episode, even though I've not been as harsh a judge as others in this thread.

"I copied and pasted the lyrics to 'War, what is it good for'."
"Good God, ...!"

That was the only line I really liked. The rest of it made me choke on my own rage.

I liked the Dean talking about Rizzoli & Isles. Otherwise meh.

3:30 in and I hate it so far. (The hate started with Annie decorating Jeff's apartment. NOT a fan of this new side of her that's coming out this season.) Inviting Cornwallis to the party isn't helping. I'll watch the rest though. I'll be a little sad if they actually do a bad Christmas episode.

Weird. I guess I'm the only person who liked this one.

It's getting better.

i liked this one too. essentially a bottle episode, wasn't it?

That had the air of being hastily rewritten due to no Chevy. A group dynamic episode without the whole group there doesn't really work. Needed more Dean as well.

The history teacher is rubbish.

'a human version of Scrooge McDuck' made me lol. The rest was weird :(

decided to check out one for the first time in a while and it was the puppet episode due to a few friends of mine raving about it. shit was unwatchable, what the fuck is going on?

show was amazing for 3 years. showrunner was fired. now the show sucks.

Needed more Dean as well.

One more whine: the Dean's crush on Jeff was funnier when it was just something that came up now and then and was not actually a central part of the show.

i was sick of the episodes-about-the-strength-of-the-group-and-their-amazing-friendship thing before this season, this isn't helping, though i can't blame them for relying on it

episode was alright except for not having any jokes

well troy's "he knows my name" made me chuckle

wtf is with abed, holy balls they have no idea what to do with him anymore

"abed has a problem with pop culture references, also you have to mention vague autism problems every once in a while" <-- is how i'd cynically describe S1-S3 abed, never realized how much more there was to him before until they actually turned him into that description

he's just a student of human character with a buttload of self-esteem.

― j., Saturday, December 4, 2010 10:36 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

GREAT character in s1-2 imo. He was already slipping into self-parody at times in s3.

Troy was a better Abed than Abed was Troy, and it was a little frustrating that they essentially shoehorned Troy and Britta's whole relationship into one episode (especially considering it wasn't even addressed, much less acknowledged, in most of this season's episodes). But I dug it, and laughed through most of it (especially the Dean "switching" with Jeff, and needling him with "when Jeff was inside me").

The Dean has been really criminally under-used in this season, especially given he's living next door to Jeff. Given Jim Rash carries even mediocre lines better than pretty much anyone you'd think they'd have done more with him.

I loved the first season, liked the second and third, haven't watched the fourth at all - should I bother?

No. "Herstory of Dance" is the only episode I've really liked.

Watch the Physical Education Education episode, that's very funny and about as Season One as they get.

Best thing they've done with Abed this season was the episode with the two dances. I also liked Troy's reference to his "recent divorce", kinda harking back to the idea of Abed as having ridiculous offscreen adventures all the time.

What kind of braindead asshole pretends to be a different person so that he can break up with his girlfriend by proxy? And what kind of woman is ok with that?

otm. Pierce might be the most likable person in this ep

pierce being abused and underutilized all season = me sympathizing with chevy chase and feeling he's been hard done by, which is not something i ever anticipated feeling.

this episode had some good jokes, but the troy/britta relationship has been so blankly written all season that the breakup felt like bad fanfic. annie's reaction to the dean pretending to be jeff was clownish, as was jeff's plot-driven anger and heartfelt resolution speech. i'm starting to feel the full disappointment of this show's decline, the good really isn't outweighing the bad anymore imo. jim rash was good, tho.

I liked this episode! I did think the Troy-Abed body swap was a bit of a conceptual mess but rather than assholeness I think it's a nice point of progression for Troy, as someone who is basically childish realising that he is basically childish and trying to deal with it. Though I do wonder how Troy and Britta had managed to be together for a year under those conditions.

Even though it was a bit sitcom-y (I suppose I don't really know why I think that should be a bad thing though) Jeff persistently calling bullshit on all that was going on around him was funny, and Jim Rash's Dean-Jeff was great.

I'm kinda wishing they'd made Jim Rash showrunner.

If it survives, he should definitely be a main writer. I gave up a couple of weeks in, but checked this out for his writing, and liked it a lot.

pierce being abused and underutilized all season = me sympathizing with chevy chase and feeling he's been hard done by,

Ganz and Bobrow have said that Pierce would be written into his own side-stories / lock himself into a trailer / etc so frequently, so that Chevy couldn't disrupt the whole week's work for the rest of the cast and crew.

That was not a bad episode at all. If only the other writers this season knew how to use Jim Rash as well as Jim Rash.

dean-jeff was amazeballs. i liked the overall premise too -- playing with "doing a bit" vs. the not-so-hidden subtext in a decent way. felt very confident in the relationship of community to genre as something that's not just from outside, imposed by writers doing gags, but also drawn directly from how the characters operate within and relate to broader culture.

the throwaway gag about 'murder mystery dinner' or whatever was also cute.

That episode actually made me angry.

Yeah the mistake was folding the body swap in with the breakup. It was funny enough in its own right, but Troy and Britta as a couple has never worked in any context.

Troy doing Abed was much funnier than Abed doing Troy, which I put down to writing as much as performance. Abed did a much better Troy in the gay disco episode. The Dean doing Jeff was amazing though.

Character growth (or whatever it is) needs to be more than everyone realizing they are friends and they have to stick together at the end of every episode.

The Troy/Abed/Britta thing is super disturbing. Maybe Britta got involved in that mess in the first place because she knew there would be a bunch of chances to flex her psychiatric skills.

I'm putting it down as weak writing, which yes has been popping up over the course of the show. It is still a funny show, I still like the characters (as characters, not as fictional people), etc. But I can't tell sometimes if the recent stories are just dumb or MEANT to seem dumb because meta. No, it's the former.

For instance, Annie and Shirley are super smart nerdy Valedictorians, yet they spend this whole episode not doing their work and trying (in vain) way harder to get the rest of the study group to do the work for them. Pierce's bit at the end shows how that assignment wasn't supposed to be necessarily a group project, cos he did all the work and they are all saved and get good grades. Again i guess you can argue Annie and Shirley aren't really super smart, it's a Community College LOL, dumb old Leonard was Valedictorian ahead of them, etc. but again it's just more difficult to take those characters or their arcs seriously.

Character growth (or whatever it is) needs to be more than everyone realizing they are friends and they have to stick together at the end of every episode.

Especially when there's so little to build up to it or back it up, which was related to what I was getting at re the puppet episode. Troy's explanation of how he weaselled out of breaking up a relationship that we barely saw any evidence of inspired that Winger speech about commitment? Really? And Britta's totally OK with it? The stories weren't so lame before.

And you're right about Annie and Shirley. Annie used to have a lot of integrity about work and studying! It's getting really hard to care about her character.

"is related"

I don't even think Big Bang Theory or Modern Family get this weak about basic writing.

xp ime valedictorian has never been "the smartest" or really the most anything, it's always been the person who really wants to be valedictorian and has spent their entire time in school primping up their credentials, so that part makes sense to me

no, valedictorian is the person with the highest gpa? which just sort of happens if you work hard to get good grades?

They keep bringing up that they got a C+ on that last thing.

fuck this show -- *totally* unrealistic portrayal of community college grade point averages

That's not anyone's criticism, though.

This was mostly funny, although it's super telling that Abed impersonating Troy had more chemistry with Britta than actual Troy.

Dean was episode MVP

xp yeah but highest gpa doesn't mean smartest

is that the normal standard/definition for valedictorian? i always thought it involved an application process and stuff

Dean was episode MVP

It was a really good acting performance but I'm pretty burned out on his obsession with Jeff - and this was an especially weird way to express it.

xp yeah but highest gpa doesn't mean smartest

It doesn't have to but Annie's character was previously established as smart, hard-working, and pretty honest.

I swear that episode last night was very reminiscent of an episode of My Little Pony. This is what happens when I watch an episode of Community now.

I had a hamburger the other day and suddenly I'm not cold all the time.

that one was sort of vintage. i'm getting used to laughing once per episode.

Yeah, one real banger per ep this season. Yogurts-burgh is up there, too.

They gave Britta a Kieslowski reference.