Community, the tv show

Maybe he's a ghost.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/education/edlife/a-new-student-run-breed-crisis-oriented-and-fiercely-competitive.html

Comedy Central is kicking off their Community syndication tonight, and it's the first time I've seen all these S1 episodes since they originally came on. One thing that very clearly fell by the wayside with this show...exterior shots. I'd forgotten how often they did things outside the classroom/study room/people's apartments, something which never happens anymore.

one of my local broadcast stations starting showing it in late night reruns recently. the other day i watched the 3rd episode, and it was kinda jarring how different it was from later episodes, both in how a lot of the characters were portrayed and in how little there was of anyone but Jeff and Britta. i liked the show a lot from the beginning, and it definitely improved from there, but i wish the seams didn't show so much in how it grew in retrospect.

i think that's the norm when it comes to sitcoms, it always feels weird to go back and watch the early episodes where they're still refining the formula and retooling, let alone how often main characters got replaced

the other day i watched the 3rd episode, and it was kinda jarring how different it was from later episodes, both in how a lot of the characters were portrayed and in how little there was of anyone but Jeff and Britta

? That episode is all about Abed. It's actually one of my favourite episodes. Prof Whitman and Abed's Dad are both great.

One thing that very clearly fell by the wayside with this show...exterior shots. I'd forgotten how often they did things outside the classroom/study room/people's apartments, something which never happens anymore.

― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever), Friday, September 20, 2013 10:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This may be due to budgetary constraints. iirc, in the commentary for "Cooperative Calligraphy," Harmon said they were so over-budget that at least one bottle episode was a necessity.

Exterior shots can't be that expensive, especailly on a campus. Local news stations across the world do them daily.

Although, it might necessitate paying a bunch of extras.

in my limited experience with (totally different kinds of) shoots, i would say that doing a scene outside, probably with a dolly, is definitely more expensive and labor-intensive than just setting the scene in the same interior sets where they're probably already shooting several other scenes that week.

when is this show back btw?

new season is 13 episodes and isn't in the fall lineup, so i'm guessing early 2014

although it will almost definitely be back on Thursdays, since that's the only night NBC is running sitcoms in the fall and there are 3 new shows that can't all survive a full season

Has anybody purchased the S4 box? Is it worth it?

welp http://www.avclub.com/articles/donald-glover-shared-a-bunch-of-really-personal-no,104227/

:/

that bums me out. like, not just the content but the motivation behind doing that in the first place. i hope he's ok

he really doesn't sound okay. wtf

sounds like the "I'm rich and famous, smashing mad puss, woe is me" tone of a lot of Gambino lyrics tbh

(nb I haven't really heard a lot of Gambino why bcz ^^)

feel kind of bad for him but also turned off by oversharing

oversharing is for anonymous

Looks like they're offsetting this by bringing back John Oliver for about half the season as well. He's no Troy but Professor Ian Duncan is a much-missed character for me, if only for bro-ing down with Jeff potential.

I just don't even know what the point is without Troy tbh. Are they writing him out? Will he "go visit his aunt" for a few episodes and come back? What about Abed?

season 5 trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-3kFjFbSSE&feature=player_embedded

Meta bit about Zach Braff and what Scrubs did for him was lol.

Ha, yeah. I lol'd plenty at this...but then, I also had high hopes for season 4 after seeing its trailer.

yeah, i liked the meta-Glover joke and the return to Harmon nod. as before, cautiously hopeful

Two big-ass pieces in today's NYTimes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/arts/television/dan-harmon-on-community.html?ref=arts
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/how-dan-harmon-did-or-did-not-get-his-groove-back-at-community/?ref=television

I wonder how they're going to do the whole study group thing with no Pierce and no Troy. Presumably they're going to do something with Chang that doesn't involve the usual lame nemesis/supervillain thing, but I wouldn't be averse to seeing a couple of new characters at this point.

Not only no Pierce and no Troy, but supposedly none of them are students in season 5. In one of those pieces Harmon mentions "contrived reasons" for bringing everyone back to the school.

Given they have a criminology professor this time round, they could have a lot of fun with those contrived reasons.

AFAIK though only Jeff actually needs a contrived reason to come back in the first place?

What did they all graduate at the end of S4 or something? I only watched like the first three episodes.

It was only Jeff and Pierce, right? Jeff had secretly accumulated enough credits to graduate a semester early, iirc.

Jeff's reason is that he'll now be an instructor, but it seems weird if the rest of them aren't students...unless Greendale is like "The Island," and leaving is impossible.

Hey, Luis Guzman did it!

Mad Men promo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BswdZTeTsXY

hahahah

Nailed it!

lol

i lol'd at least a few times tnite

The tonal shift from last season is staggering

def lol'd at the meta joke from Donald Glover

yeah i have to hand it to him for willingly being Zach Braff in that gag

I half want to look up the writing credits to see if he's mentioned because I wouldn't be surprised if he put that in himself

that ep was McKenna and Harmon

yeah performers don't get writing credit for improvs, writing credit is assigned by the staff/showrunner, usually to whomever does the first draft.

first ep was good, clever, and got the job done but the second episode reminded me just how much i loved this show. jonathan banks was hilarious and even though the nicolas cage thing at first made me think 'really? you're going to go there?' abed descending into cage was amazing and it leading up the realization that 'humans are random and pointless' was great, reminded me of the lost burn in the xmas episode from season 2. happy to have it back.

the Scrubs thing was so built into the episode at different points though (and Harmon and Lawrence have done so many shout-outs to each other before) that the line wouldn't be likely to just be thrown in

really sweet that Chevy came back to do a cameo now that Harmon is back btw!

So much could've gone wrong with the casting of Banks, and it all went so, so right.

I'm very happy that this is a show I like again.

so so happy