Community, the tv show

He's definitely more of a Jeff, though.

iirc he imagined himself as the Jeff, but came to realise how much of an Abed he is

(though all the group are intended as aspects of his personality, and he had Feelings about Britta being disparaged by real people due to the degree he identified with her)


yes, you can absolutely skip S4, although one character from the Sophie B Hawkins dance shows up for a few seconds in a S5 episode

The scenes between Abed & Jeff were some of the best moments of S1 and 2, i wish they would have done more with their friendship

a shipping perhaps

They never knew what to do with Chang after he was no longer a Spanish teacher.

Yeah, the Chang dynasty and Greendale coup stuff was garbage.

They leaned on Abed so heavily because he was the best character through which they could insert the pop culture references and meta narratives.

I also think Pudi was possibly the best actor. Imo, though, when they leaned on him, they started trying too hard to play up his 'quirks', veering into Sheldon Cooper territory. It really did feel like they were trying to play to the social media fan response by s3. It stopped being a quirky funny show about students studying at a community college and became more about idk going hard on whatever 'concept' generated the buzz last time or something.

I feel like Pudi was the first one who fully enveloped his character. in the early episodes, the other actors are definitely game, and are surprisingly close to what their characters become fairly early on, but Pudi was pretty much already there from the jump, whereas the others had to sand off a few rough edges.

Maybe it's harder to watch as a binge vs weekly; I would just sigh super loud every time it was a high concept episode on one idea, lazy bullshit. I honestly thought maybe they were centering on Abed because he was the only actor showing up and memorizing his lines on time.

Well, there was a lot of fan enthusiasm for both Abed and the high-concept episodes. Really don't think that e.g. doing a claymation introspection into the emotional state of an detached student with divorced parents was just cutting corners for the sake of cutting corners.

*a detached

that's why i think the binge probably isn't the best way of watching some of it. It gets very gimmicky back to back. I did like the paintball, buttcrack and D&D episodes though.

I loved the high concept episodes, personally, though I liked when they balanced them with more "grounded" (relatively speaking) eps since the writing and acting was sharp enough to carry almost anything.

but I didn't binge the show, I pretty much watched it in real time from the middle of Season 1 on, so not sure how I'd feel about watching more than 2 eps in a night. I hate the concept of binging though. once I sit through ANYTHING for more than a few hours, I need a break, and it starts to diminish my enjoyment.

even the metal cruise I went on this year that was one of the best times of my life, there were definitely breaks in my schedule, lol

like my favorite episode is still the Christmas ep with Anthony Michael Hall, which was relatively grounded, just because the scenes with Hall and McHale about made me pee

We usually watch 1 or 2 episodes a night while we eat dinner, feels like a better way to dole them out

My favorite is the Christmas claymation; and a close second is the Law & Order parody episode about the murdered yam

does abed ever do anything actually wrong, such that the group needs to bring him back into line? i don't think weird counts

certainly everyone else does

freaking out ever so slightly that this is 11 years old and even the youngsters are now in their late 30s

we went through about one season a week until I dropped off in season five ( I still catch glimpses because spouse is slogging through season 6 which looks terrible). But netflix is the only tv/platform we have besides 'random streaming'. I think i may just really subconsciously dislike claymation.

"Mixology Certification" was the first ep I saw and still my favourite (maybe tied with "Remedial Chaos Theory"). I wish more of the series had that tone.

does abed ever do anything actually wrong, such that the group needs to bring him back into line? i don't think weird counts

He was (deludedly and unintentionally) vandalizing property at the start of the claymation Christmas episode, which prompted the whole therapy session.

the only real wrong thing that he did was alienate his girlfriend in the episode where they played the VHS game to determine who would get to be the new roommate to replace Troy.

Also made out with Annie in a rain of paint and then blew her off when he was out of character in the second paintball episode.

also used mustard gas on some of his Spanish classmates in that one ep

well shit. my mistake, abed's an asshole

serious answer, though, no, he was about as pure as they came, though he occasionally upset people due to his aloofness, which usually wasn't his fault. i.e. the person at the bar that kept buying him drinks and Abed wasn't interested in him.

or the ep where he starts burning everyone but he was 'programmed' to do so by the ladies of Spanish club and he quickly relinquished his power.

I definitely know a few Abeds irl

this watch of community led me to sympathize with the whole Brie Larson is a terrible actress thing. because omg she is terrible in Community.

sophie b hawkins is better in it than brie larson. Chevy Chase is better in it than Brie Larson.

Does she appear in anything other than the role of the library clerk in "Herstory of Dance"? Or do you mean Alison Brie, in which case, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

who are the best actors named after cheese

she had a follow-up episode with Abed in Season 5 ("VCR MAINTENANCE AND EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING")

yeah she was in two episodes and that was right around when i became disinterested so I had assumed (wrongly) she may have reappeared again.

I like Alison Brie. Except her Franco.

XPS

https://cdn.britannica.com/80/133580-050-24B4147B/John-Cleese.jpg

someone did tell me this thread was heavy on Alison Brie horniness but I didn't read the backlog.

the whole internet was heavy on alison brie horniness back then

Don't think that ever actually stopped

https://i.gifer.com/X11u.gif

Jeff's pants went to regionals

Abed destroying Professor Hickey's drawings and wanting to go to his Kickpuncher screening in costume without apologising or making amends, just because it was what he wanted to do in the moment, was not exactly right

also, planning to murder his entire friend group while wearing a fake beard may have been an example of him being in the wrong

I forgot all about the former

Abed: Motherfucker With Dark Secrets

UK people - this is showing from S01E01 on 4Music (freeview 29) on sunday from 22:00 (it's been on all4 for a while, i think. don't know how complete that is though)

(takes a couple of episodes to find its feet)

FWIW there are plenty of episodes I've watched five or six times but I don't think any of those occur after the festive Glee Club episode halfway through season three, which is the series' last straight-up classic I think. It's still funny after that but it loses something in its tone, a bit of the heart goes, and that's in large part down to the treatment of Abed's character.

He's at his best when he's slightly weird, obviously a vector for all sorts of pop-cultural adventures, but also the sanest one in the group. The weirder they make him the less funny he gets and it's a sign of a show starting to overreach itself and lose sight of what it's really good at - anything involving the Dreamatorium, Inspector Spacetime, Chang taking over the college or the Air Conditioner Repair School falls flat.

The multiple timelines episode is a masterpiece but it's also kind of the show's undoing. But there are still great episodes later on - the Jeff/Shirley fussball episode with Nick Kroll as the dickhead German guy really sticks in my mind, Jeff and Shirley is an underrated comic pairing in the show generally.

just watched the 'abed recreates goodfellas with chicken tenders' episode and i really wonder how much it cost them to use 'layla'

iirc their most expensive licence ever was the two-note "dun-dunn" from Law & Order

I wonder how these music licenses are all negotiated. I watched "Palm Springs" over the weekend, and it's packed with music that probably didn't cost *too* much, like John Cale, or Patrick Cowley, or Gene Clark. But then there is a long sequence set to the "The Brazilian," by Genesis, and I thought, huh, how was that worked out? On one hand, it's an instrumental, on the other, it's an instrumental from "Invisible Touch" in a low budget film. Hmm. It seems like there used to be more conflicts with music licensing in TV and movies than there is today. Maybe labels and artists have a little less sway these days, or recognize the value of getting a song placed in a show or movie?

Palm Springs in particular got the biggest signing deal ever at Sundance, so they were probably able to pay any licensing costs after the fact

Freaks and Geeks still probably one of the craziest given how much classic rock was in that show that had to be negotiated for home release

And why it will never be on a streaming service, according to Apatow. Which reminds me, I still need to get the Blu-Ray before that becomes prohibitively expensive.

Wait, I've watched Freaks and Geeks on Netflix Canada.

xxpost Yeah, that's the one I was thinking of in particular. But Palm Springs ... they got a pile of cash after the fact, but you can't just screen a film with unpaid for music in it before you get picked up for distribution, can you? There's that story of Peter Bogdanovich's "Mask," where he included a bunch of Springsteen in it, but apparently there was a misunderstanding and the studio realized the contract wasn't secure, so at the last minute replaced Bruce with Bob Seger, which iirc Bogdanovich only learned of at the premiere. It took over 20 years for those music rights to Springsteen to get resolved, and that was apparently *with* the artist's blessing.

it's a lot easier to negotiate sync licenses as income from recorded music shrinks.

palm springs was an indie film but had a decent-sized budget. there was a making-of article in the ringer last week and it explained that once samberg/lonely island got involved after the script stage, there was a budget increase. probably enough to buy the rights to some songs.

I think it was on Netflix at one point, because I swear I watched an episode years ago, but apparently it's not on any streaming service now and unlikely to be anytime soon:

Judd Apatow is clearing the air about one of his beloved shows, Freaks and Geeks!

Freaks and Geeks is an American teen comedy-drama television series created by Paul Feig and executive-produced by Judd that aired on NBC during the 1999–2000 television season, but it isn’t available for viewing on any streaming service.

It helped launch several of its actors’ careers, such as James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel and Busy Philipps.

Amy Kaufman, author of the New York Times best seller “Bachelor Nation,” took to Twitter to direct the question to Judd himself: “Is it actually possible that ‘Freaks & Geeks‘ is not streaming anywhere and is also not available for digital purchase anywhere??? @JuddApatow”

Judd responded on Twitter, revealing that the unavailability is due to music copyright: “The music needs to be cleared for Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. If it isn’t, your DVD will be all there is.”