Community, the tv show

you are correct

show about college kids playing gi joe characters postponed for show about college kids throwing orange balls around

thought this was fun. premise was kind of a stretch, it's obv they just wanted to have fun lampooning shitty an 80's toy tie-in cartoon and needed an excuse, but I'd be lying if I said I cared. Hearing Cobra Commander say "I LOVED HIM!" made me guffaw.

also loved the fake commercials

That was awful right? Or is it just because I never watched/played with GI Joe?

Thought this was hilarious. I never saw an entire GI Joe episode, but I remember the ads and the PSAs -- who knows, maybe I would've hated it if I didn't have any reference points.

i watched an insane amount of gi joe, owned a ton of the toys, and was a devoted reader of the comics so i enjoyed it but i breathed a sigh of relief that there was at least a framing device. laughed at every 'i have 3 kids' but that's the second time at least this season they've gone meta w/ shirley on that front and maybe it's time to actually fix the problem instead of just acknowledging it. agreed it's probably a low for a harmon episode, this is the best version of what ppl who hate community think community is like. that a comparison to robot chicken came to mind is a bad sign. that i actually prefer the robot chicken short i'm thinking of is something i'm gonna have to assume is indicative of something wrong w/ me and not community.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW3dg9VURMU

Or is it just because I never watched/played with GI Joe?

Me neither, but I watched enough toy tie-in cartoons in the 80s to 100% get all the jokes (this must be the most squarely aimed at my generation episode yet of a show which is generally aimed very squarely at my generation indeed).

The coda got the most laughs out of me. Very clever.

Maybe they still make cartoons like that, I dunno. The only kids' cartoons I watch are the ones that are actually for grown-ups.

i'm just surprised they actually shelled out for a GI Joe license and it was approved!

love that Robot Chicken bit btw. FUMBLES!

The best joke was when everyone was expressing shock that Jeff was 40 and Shirley was all "well we all knew that" because of the implicit callback to the foosball episode.

the suppressive fire thing made me LOL cos I was always the asshole kid who was bummed at watching cartoons cos "how intense can being shot at be when the bullets never hit anybody".

esp when I could just play Double Dragon and dome people with baseball bats

*watching these types of cartoons, that should say

This was entertaining. I never cared about GI Joe as a kid cos army stuff was too mundane, I was into wizards and dragons and ghosts. Also talking cat people and giant robots made of lions.

Really great production job on this! They even had accurate film grain and other animation artifacts! But I really couldn't get into the story. Maybe I missed lots of past references to Jeff's alcoholism, but the whole real world premise felt like it came from out of nowhere, and was there to lend weight to a pretty flimsy premise. Is this the first time Jeff has drank himself into the hospital? Feels like his drinking has never interfered in any other way, and now it's suddenly he's trying to kill himself w scotch. Maybe I'm wrong.

GI Joe was not mundane army stuff lol

he was taking weird anti-aging drugs he bought from a street vendor or something, not just alcohol. but yeah, flimsy. the ads were the most hilarious part, so spot on.

i thought this was p fun! and I liked that it was really simple and flimsy... that's what made it work with the cartoon, even the wrap up in the hospital was super-cheesy and dorky like a cartoon wrapup. the psa at the end was great.

hat-muffs dude was my favorite

balls otm, esp that's the second time at least this season they've gone meta w/ shirley on that front and maybe it's time to actually fix the problem instead of just acknowledging it.

hat muffs -- was that just throwaway odd/silly, or reffing something specific?

The double-level meta to Jeff's character reducing Shirley to a caricature because he doesn't want to acknowledge that they are peers along with the show not knowing what to do with Shirley almost saves it.

Sometimes this show is like going to see a band that has an obviously great taste in music and not a song goes by that doesn't remind you of something you love but in the end the cleverness of their influences doesn't really add up to anything memorable.

I guess *zing* meta commentary right there, I've falled into DH's plan all along, and besides I'm his target audience, been watching since the beginning. Just feels like sometimes he gets careless about hiding the seams.

the premise was a bit flimsy so I wouldn't put this in my upper echelon of Community episodes, but it brought the LOLs.

also I'm glad to see feminist/pseudo-political Britta back in full force...after how they mangled her a bit last year.

Did it bring the lols? For me it was just an example of a concept overwhelming the jokes. But then I felt the same way with the animated xmas ep. But yeah, there were very few jokes in this ep, no? Less than usual.

I thought it had plenty of lols, certainly moreso than...than another recent episode I can't remember offhand that was largely lol-free but still good, a la the episode where they spent Troy's birthday in a bar.

I thought all of the Cobra commander's lines were hilarious, as were Jeff's questions about cartoon life, and the subsequent answers (e.g., characters had never seen anyone naked or gone to the bathroom).

the only eye-rolly part for me is making Cobra Commander say "for realsies", but I for real laughed out loud at his anecdote about Destro asking him about painting his face all in chrome...

this one was written by Starburns. I feel that in his episodes the concepts overwhelm because he doesn't care about the characters

Sounds like his other shows tbh

My god, the pathos of the Dean trying to commit suicide by vending machine.

I actually thought that every actor played an absolute blinder in that one. The scene at the end with Duncan and Hickey was so great.

Dazzling episode.

Is all the Subway stuff a swipe at Chuck and the series-extending Subway product placement?

or I guess it's the same product placement deal Chuck had, except Harmon got to make Subway into a villain instead of having characters showing up with footlongs all the time.

subway was big brother in the 1984 episode a couple of seasons back

huge lol at starburns cranking the dave

Dave!

That was hilarious.

Skunkthorpe

I felt sad during the scene with britta and jeff (which was awesome, btw), because it *did remind me so much of the series at the start - the chemistry between the two of them, the 'will=they/won't-they' thing the series comprehensively outgrew - and it made me feel sad that this season, while better than the one that preceded it, has been patchy, and feels like the end, and that the show had *so much potential - and often fulfilled it, mind - but that it seems to have been limping along since halfway through the third season or so, and it didn't have to be that way, and if Chevy or Dan Harmon hadn't been so assholish, and if Sony or NBC had had more luck with the show, and Donald Glover hadn't bolted, it could have maintained that level until the end. which may not be true, but i felt a pang of "if only" in that moment.

I pretty much think Seasons 1-3 were impeccable, and agree that this year has been better than 4 but not perfect.

I'm ok with them hanging it up after this. It's not going out on top, but it's going out a lot better than it would have after Season 4. This is the type of show that always had a finite shelf life re: quality control, and part of me had wished they were gonna wrap it up after 3.

still, can't complain given the number of lols it gave this year.

also yeah Glover leaving hurt. Pierce being gone wasn't even a thing really - they essentially had a "Pierce episode" without him even having to appear! But removing 1/2 of Troy and Abed left too many gaps, although I was pleasantly surprised that they still managed to churn out some great episodes afterwards.

i feel like its a show that needs 20+ episodes a season to make sense, so half of them can be whacky conceptual episodes, and the other half can develop characters and move the "plot" along. this season feels like there were another 12 episodes that i missed, which explain who hickey is and what's going on. 13 episodes is too short. it almost feels like they haven't 'earned' wildcards like the the GI Joe episode, like this season was all sprinkles and no ice cream.

but yeah, it's glover's absence that hurts most. it makes this season feel like the aerosmith album they cut while joe perry was out of the band.

pretty sure the good money is on another half-season pickup

After this season, they're 3 episodes away from the 100 required for syndication. I can't imagine Sony not picking it up for at least a shortened season.

yeah, i'd heard as much. i wish they'd get a full season though - like, it seems like this season is ending just as they're getting into their flow.

100 required for syndication

This is not a magic number in 2014 (or 2012). They're already in syndication.

tv by the numbers has it as a tossup but i can't imagine they don't get a final season, esp as it'll be a useful thing to send out to get slaughtered by football on cbs

S4 is actually quite a lot funnier than the second half of S3, which really did feel like they were overstretching themselves for the first time.

i feel like its a show that needs 20+ episodes a season to make sense, so half of them can be whacky conceptual episodes, and the other half can develop characters and move the "plot" along. this season feels like there were another 12 episodes that i missed, which explain who hickey is and what's going on. 13 episodes is too short. it almost feels like they haven't 'earned' wildcards like the the GI Joe episode

This is OTM though, and Troy is irreplaceable. I still wouldn't bet against him reappearing at some point though, even if it's only as a special guest.

agreed, this show actually could use more episodes to split up the wackiness/serious episodes more evenly

that Jeff/Britta scene got me pretty good, too, to my surprise. damn, Britta <3

xpost I didn't find anything in ssn 4 as funny as the 2nd half of ssn 3