Community, the tv show

Ha!!

We made it up to the episode where Troy leaves to go sailing on Pierce's yacht last night, Season 5 was like an immediate uptick again in quality after S4.

Being able to binge these seasons made me realize just how much darker S5 in, and I don't just mean the tone. The color is more muted and everything seems filmed with less lighting or something. I saw a few reddit threads that mentioned it was due to the lower budgets by that point, but that seems to be a weird specific place for the budget to impact.

Back half of S6 is proving to be weird as hell

There was a great ep on Grifting 101 with Matt Berry guest starring, super funny

But we just watched Giant Hand/RV episode which was about as bad as you can get without puppets + singing

I saw a few reddit threads that mentioned it was due to the lower budgets by that point, but that seems to be a weird specific place for the budget to impact.

Production design overall takes huge steps down as the series progresses. It's probably that they were no longer lighting to make sure 43 background jokes were clearly visible on a fifth rewatch, than that they couldn't afford the same bulbs as before.

(Harmon paid props and design staff overtime out of his own pocket on the first two seasons, partly out of appreciation for the incredibly great job they were doing, and largely because his own constant rewriting and rewriting of the scripts meant that they weren't able to do such a great job on regular schedules. In the third year, he stopped doing this and bought a house instead.)

Interesting, that makes sense about the background stuff. Had no idea he paid so much out of pocket.

But we just watched Giant Hand/RV episode which was about as bad as you can get without puppets + singing

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, July 29, 2020 1:05 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

That was where I bailed. I was pretty hopeful up to that point, but this episode just felt so desperate. I never saw any of S6 after that.

the next episode is the final paintball episode though!

yes we watched that last night & it was fun!

Wait, there’s a paintball in season 6?! OK, will revisit.

I’m about halfway through rewatching season 5, and it’s much better than I remember. Jonathan Banks’ reaction to the Meowmeowbeenz presentation is one of my favorite moments of the whole series. And the darkness pointed out upthread is only in the first episode and the Ass Crack Bandit episode.

We just got the Ass Crack episode, was ok.

I ended up stopping my rewatch at the My Dinner With Abed episode, I remember being...not confused...but taken aback by it. Obviously it's very tonally different from the average episode, but also iirc the previews of the episode were focused on all the Pulp Fiction costumes and all the online chatter was dedicated to theories re: what kind of Tarantino homage Dan Harmon was doing to do. Then of course you watch the ep and realize the episode has absolutely nothing to do with Pulp Fiction. Am I making that up or does anyone remember that?

Anyway all that said just makes me think about what the show would have been like if Dan Harmon had direct access to the viewership through twitter...an important part of being self-aware is making sure that everyone else is aware of how self-aware you are.

Am I making that up or does anyone remember that?

I honestly have no memory of those promos, so I went into the episode blind. I believe I shouted out loud, "THEY'RE DOING MY DINNER WITH ANDRE?!" I mean, of all the referencey stuff the show had done up to that point, this was not an expected reference. iirc, Danny Pudi had neither seen nor heard of the film, so he had to watch it a couple of times in preparation.

But TV promos were notoriously misleading. The promos for the Simpsons episode where Bleeding Gums Murphy dies were, "BART GOES TO THE E.R.!" (implying some kind of E.R. crossover).

Harmon did have twitter, but was always very self-aware of the difference between a general audience, dedicated viewers, and the kind of microniche of super-dedicated fans who track down offscreen communication from the uncredited writer of a TV show.

He talked about twitter all the time on Harmontown

he incorporated the term "streets ahead" in an early episode because some Tweeter claimed that Modern Family was "streets ahead" of his "meta-bullshit", so of course he had Pearce trying to coin the term.

I know episode promos are either misleading or totally uninformative (shout out to the Mad Men previews) but they really seemed intent on playing up the Pulp Fiction angle. I guess as I watch less and less TV in the traditional week to week format I forgot that preview promos used to be pretty disconnected from the material.

“Critical Film Studies” has been sold as “the Pulp Fiction episode” of Community. Even NBC, which often doesn’t promote the show all that heavily, has run many, many promo slots for the show playing up the crazy costumes and situations involved in the Pulp Fiction-styled B-plot.

(I tried expanding the comments in this post to find old discussion too and I broke firefox so never mind)

all the online chatter was dedicated to theories re: what kind of Tarantino homage Dan Harmon was doing to do

although it may have come from dumb decision-making in the promo dept, preserving the surprise of the Dinner With Andre-ing is a great result of this tactic

That's very true! That's why it made me wonder about how else the show could have played with/subverted expectations if Dan had been showrunner and on contemporary Twitter (and not 2009-era Twitter which hardly counts) at the same time.

Considering the swirling cesspool that 98% of Twitter is right now, I can only imagine how much worse it would have made the show. Harmon would have gotten in huge arguments with fans eight episodes in and/or canceled in real time for the Chang Drow gag and never would have even finished the first season, imo.

(yes I know the D&D episode was in season two, but still...)

I think he would have gotten through season 1 but by season 2 he and the show would be literally and figuratively cancelled for sure

almost suffocated watching danny pudi's nic cage impressions

I still think the (first season?) "Goldbluming" joke is one of the funniest things ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv6mA0qyOo4

Well there ya go

.@alisonbrie @kenjeong @dannypudi @YNB @donaldglover @GillianA @peacock @SonyTV @CommunityTV pic.twitter.com/ynVqgaPuQD

— Joel McHale (@joelmchale) September 30, 2022

Amusing oops

Lmao just realized he tagged Gillian Anderson instead of Gillian Jacobs

— Preeti Chhibber 🔜 NYCC (@runwithskizzers) September 30, 2022

Hooray!

Will Chevy return tho?

The lack of tag says it all I think.

Ha, good point Ned!

six seasons and no Chevy!

happy birthday jesus

MERRY HAPPY

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/5/5c/Subway.png/revision/latest?cb=20211104122237

https://www.foodandwine.com/subway-change-name-free-food-for-life-7565780

Subway is looking for one true sandwich fan to change their first name (for real) to "Subway." The brave soul who agrees to do so will be rewarded handsomely with a lifetime of free Subway food and beverages. Whether a legal name change is a large or small price to pay for such an offer is up to you.

Jared would do it.

Santa invented Spielberg and microchips