Community, the tv show

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.”

Oh yeah, it was a few years ago.

xp Josh - speaking from my "professional" experience - the cost to license festival screenings / one-time shows is usually far, far less than for theatrical / tv / home video. Most labels would take that easy money for a short-term license for sure, with the artist's permission.

Huh, thanks, that's sort of what I suspected. Re: budget, supposedly "Palm Springs" cost $5 million. Fwiw, "American Psycho" cost $7 million, and I guess that was enough to cover at least one Genesis song and one Phil Collins song, among other needle drops. That was 2000 money, though, with a pretty big indie backing it.

Anyway, odd that "Community" could afford stuff like "Layla" but "Freaks and Geeks" or "Undeclared" can't. I think Shout Factory owns the rights to F&G, who shelled out for F&G music on DVD, maybe they just don't feel like shelling out again.

To be fair, there's probably a huge difference between one use of "Layla" and almost every single F&G episode having anywhere between 4 and 7 classic rock staples.

the songs used in palm springs are not super well-known, besides maybe **spoilers i guess** 'cloudbusting' and 'the partisan' **spoilers over**, probably could be covered by $500k or less of that budget.

Yeah that's why I specifically cited the song from 'Invisible Touch."

since it's being discussed here, Palm Springs was a decent lil movie. Samberg about as good as Murray in Groundhog Day even as they are referencing it as the most obvious touchstone, Miloti quite good also, some groanworthy bits

Yeah, there's some gags thrown for little more than the sake of just a gag thrown in, imo. Like the fork gag. Vibe reminded me as much of "Eternal Sunshine" and "Groundhog," actually, though nowhere near as good as either. Still good, regardless.

re: song licensing, if the owner of the master recording and the publisher have a favored-nations deal, whatever you pay the owner of the master, you have to pay the publisher. In an instance where a tv show wanted "Who Are You," MCA/Universal said, "OK, we want $150,000," which meant the show would pay out $300,000 total. But they also went to the publisher/Pete Townshend, who said, "eh, gimme $7500," and the show got it for (an apparently dirt-cheap) $15,000.

That said, I seem to remember Dan Harmon saying that "Layla" was a huge outlay that put the season way over-budget.

(and I'm not sure how one would negotiate with or even contact Jim Gordon...or, for that matter, if he even still gets money from "Layla." I assume he doesn't.)

We finished S4 over the weekend - I was ok with the averageness of the season for a while but the last handful of episodes were definitely dire. Especially the weird puppet musical about being lost in the woods

Harmon’s return hasnt made me feel like like it’s a ~massive~ upswing in quality, its not like day/night, but i think the jokes definitely at least seem to land better idk

also i have no memory of s5 at all so far, so maybe i peaced out completely during s4 the first time round

Is the Yahoo series on Netflix? I don't remember if I ever saw any of that...

it is.

That's a big part of what prompted our rewatch, realizing that we had never seen the Yahoo season.

The puppet musical pissed me off so much

Like, just remembering it going back and destroying all the good will my rewatch of Community had rebuilt.

McHale: “How much did it cost to buy this song [“Layla”]?”

Harmon: I don’t know the dollar amount. It’s expensive. You got an episodic budget, you get a music budget. I’ll pull a number out of my butt. If you want a moderately well-known song, you pay $50,000 to put it into your episode, basically.”

We skipped a few episodes of S4 and went to S5, and ... the first couple of episodes of S5 still haven't quite righted the ship. But it does seem to be trying.

XP

That sounds about right. In their early days, Blender did an article about putting a film soundtrack together and their source said that a track from a breaking Rock band would be about $25-50 thou*, well-known Classic Rock songs started at $50 thou, a Bowie or Stones song would be $250 thou, and the Beatles were $500 thou. I imagine those prices haven't changed too much in the ensuing 15+ years.

*This doesn't cover labels actively trying to place new songs, like you see on alot of MTV/VH1 shows or sitcoms like IIRC Malcolm In The Middle.

I read a thing once which said that the Stones price to use their songs in a movie was actually pretty cheap - but they would charge a ton if you wanted to then use it on the actual released soundtrack.

I can believe that. I remember hearing "Neighbors" on an episode of Ed, and wondering how that was swung.

I imagine one factor is whether the recording is controlled by the band or Abkco?

“Neighbors” is on Tattoo You, iirc, so it was long after they’d freed themselves from Allen Klein.

But the Stones still apparently have some say in their Abkco-controlled work, or else they wouldn’t be able to sue Trump for using “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”