Who's Martian Manhunter? I guess Chang since I don't see him anywhere else? Doesn't look like Chang though.
This episode was a little on the weak side but not quite as terrible as the various reviews implied. I thought the Abed sitcom crap was absolutely horrible. I get what they were trying to do but any other imaginary Abed worlds have been far better realized and Abed is far more nuanced than the hit you over the head sitcom tropes they dragged out in his little day dreams. I don't believe for a second that Abed's happy place would have a laugh track for example.
I liked this week's episode a lot. I thought it was cute. Then again, I have a weak spot for Also, I have bad taste. One doesn't relate to the other. The only thing i have to complain about is Britta/Troy's relationship. I do like it, but it worrisome that a lot of last season and even up into the last episode, all they did was bicker (Troy is the one who called Britta the "AT&T of people", remember.)
I don't think the show is horrible or unwatchable, but it's definitely off. It reminds me of the time I baked cookies and forgot to add the salt. You wouldn't think salt is a critical ingredient in cookies, but they aren't the same without it.
Yeah I probably will stop watching this. It just felt off, and I choose to preserve my memory of Community rather than cling to its zombie.
I thought the premiere was fine enough, but last night's episode was really lacking. Its plot was just... really, really generic, and rather than bad jokes it just felt like there were barely any jokes at all.
Yeah, I'm not sure if my mind is trying to find faults with the show to confirm the narrative that it's not the same after Harmon left, but last night's felt off as well. The early part where they were in the study room doing the exposition dump felt really poorly directed. Like they were just reading lines at a table read. That said, the almost-so-quick-you'll-miss-it joke about the date on which Pierce built the panic room felt like old Community and got a good laugh out of me.
I've only watched the first episode of the new season, and am likewise done now. Not terrible, but only a couple chuckles, and things just felt off. The Community I knew would have leaned harder into the Inception riffing, or the Hunger Games elements, and not let them just rest at the lazy level of "look, there's a reference!" Abed's happy place would have been a much more entertaining fusion of all sorts of things. I don't know what exactly--a blend of Inspector Spacetime and Kickpuncher and Cougartown and a wandering cameo by a Rankin-Bassed claymation someone, something--but it wouldn't have been generic laugh-tracked sitcom. Etc. It had a real good run, though.
I just assumed the laugh-track-camera-sitcom at the beginning was mainly intended as a wink at the audience -- ha ha you thought we'd ruin your show. It worked a little better in that regard, but not good enough to warrant going back to it throughout the episode since the only thing good in those sequences was Fred Willard.
Of course that's what it was. You'd have to be willfully looking for unfavorable interpretations to see it as anything else. I disagree. The reason Abed is so TV-obsessed in the first place is that TV shows are predictable, abide by established conventions, and are unchallenging, meaning that he can cope with them much more easily than he does with real life. What embodies those values more than a schlocky three-camera sitcom?
I wonder if we aren't enjoying the show as much because we know that Harmon left and that fact is nagging at the back of our heads as we watch the episodes. How much involvement did he have with all the scripts?
Fair points on sitcom happy place. I do think past seasons Abed would have had a more interesting formulaic sitcom, though. Compare to Abed telling a halloween story some season ago--he's intensely aware and comfortable with predictable tropes, but plays with them. Still, pedals set to back. I think I'd be able to tell something was off even if I didn't have knowledge of Harmon's departure rattling about in my skull, but it's my brain saying that, and brains are not to be trusted on such matters.
Thoughts while watching episode two: - Not your fault, new showrunners, but nice Halloween episode. Thanks NBC. ;) - Troy and Britta are in a relationship? I know they sowed the seeds last season but did it actually happen at some point? - The dean as the ring girl is good. Also: nice abs, bra. - I love Britta's Halloween costume every year and this is no exception. Adorable! - Pierce's paintings are great. - I had to think about the Do The Right Thing joke. That's a good thing. - "Pierce's Ideas For Ladies" and everything in it is gold. - I giggled at "I hate reference humor." - "He's hiding the indoor swing and I'm the child!" - Cougartown! - "Too cool for after school specials." Man! I'm stopping calling out individual jokes now because a lot of them are good. - Ok I lied: "Ghosts can't go through doors..." is a tremendous callback. - Sweet moment towards the end between Troy and Britta. Also, she does know about Inspector Spacetime, so something's pretty weird or that other report is wrong. - Good moment at the end with Jeff and the boxing gloves too. - Troy and Abed bit at the end is fairly classic. I don't know guys, this one felt pretty good to me. The premiere was definitely a little off but I would probably have bought this one as an episode of old Community.
Britta said that she has never seen a full episode of Inspector Spacetime. So it's not like she hasn't heard of it but rather she never bothered to watch it despite suggesting it to Abed.
That seems ok to me. She suggested it because she had Britta'd the situation by giving him a show that only had six episodes and she found out that it had been on for fifty years or whatever. But she wouldn't watch that show herself, would she?
This episode was better I think but it still feels off. I think the characters are somewhat softer, Jeff and Britta are far less sarcastic and don't play off each other the same way, Shirley isn't nearly as passive aggressive as before and Pierce's racism and chaos sowing seems to be replaced with simple mischief. In general the banter, sniping and genuinely clever remarks are cut way back. I don't see these characters getting into an "Annie's Pen" type situation again, which is too bad.
The AVClub put it best: It's like the characters have been reset to their season one personalities, except for Winger because he's dealing with his father issues. But everybody else - Annie especially - feels like they've just forgotten about the last two seasons of character development. I liked that episode way, way more than the first one, but it's still not the Community I want. Truly, the darkest of all time lines. That said, the joke where Troy realizes that Pierce built his panic room the day that Do The Right Thing was released was hilarious.
I don't see it though. Britta is still Britta, desperately trying to therapeutize everyone. Shirley never really had much of a character developed beyond angry mother with a dark past, and it was referenced a few times here. Troy is acting a bit more mature, taking charge of the group when they got to Pierce's house, and even Pierce seems a bit more human at the end with Gilbert. I quite liked the episode, it felt more season 2 in quality than the ridiculously meta hijinks that 3 was capable of and for that, I'm somewhat grateful.
I didn't enjoy the second episode so much. The problem with this past episode, as I suspect will be the problem for the remaining ones, is that there's a little bit of Insane Serial Killer Dressed Up in My Mother's Skin and Trying to Convince Me That He's Actually Her going on. There are very noticeable problems. Abed hasn't had much to say or do because nobody wants to fuck him up, and that means they don't know what to do with him. Troy still sounds like Troy because Donald Glover can fix that for himself, but the only two other characters that the new people seem to want to play with are Britta and Jeff, because those are the two characters with the easiest-to-understand concepts. I think that even if I didn't know that Dan Harmon had been fired, I'd have the distinct impression that something weird was going on, and that makes it hard to evaluate what is essentially a new show in a continuity with which I am familiar objectively. I can say that the show that is now is competent. It is not a bad comedy. I have seen bad comedies, and this shit isn't Work It. If this show somehow gets renewed and goes for a couple more seasons, I can see enjoying it as much as I enjoy any other comedy, once I'm given enough time to forget the third season. It's just that I know that I'll almost definitely never get something like this again, and it makes me sad, which is weird, because the line makes me cry: So I'll keep watching it, and I'll keep telling people that while it is certainly not the same show, it is still a very competent, probably in the neighborhood of good comedy (I'd put it in about the same class as Happy Endings, which seems appropriate), because all of the people involved with it are trying their best and they deserve some success, but it's hard for me not to see all the differences that keep showing up as flaws.
You guys are crazy, that was a great episode! The look on Troy's face during the indoor swing scene was worth the so-so first episode. This show was always resetting the characters depending on the story they want to tell. It's kind of like if you try to go watch Scrubs season 1 and then one of the later seasons. It's like it's not the same show, but it's still fucking awesome.
On a recent CBB Gillian Jacobs said that they knew there was a chance of their schedule being shit up, but that they didn't care. So we've got Thanksgiving, Christmas and Valentine's Day episodes to look forward to.
Inception? Seriously - this is not an unusual thing to do with a marginal show that barely got brought back in the first place. See also the utterly unkillable Rules of Engagement on CBS. A little ways into the season, NBC decided that they were doing so well that 1) they didn't want to do the incredibly awkward pairing of Whitney with Community; 2) Wednesday comedies were already getting a little bit weird, so some sort of juggling would have to happen; and 3) would rather have a relief pitcher that they knew could perform to fill in for something, particularly on Thursday, where 30 Rock was going to go off the air regardless of what anybody said. To their credit, Community is handling this in exactly the right way - they're ignoring it. I mean, christ - how many Christmas episodes of Mad Men have we gotten that took place anywhere in the vicinity of actual Christmas? None that I remember (though I started a couple of seasons in, so maybe they hit the mark earlier in the run), and I know that I have seen at least one Christmas-related episode of Mad Men. If it had been any other shitty year, instead of the NBC comeback event, there's a decent chance it would have gone right ahead when it was originally scheduled, but this way, it's coming back to a spot where it's not going to be expected to win and has clear, established standards for success (basically, if it doesn't do as good as 30 Rock, this is the last season). Catastrophic success and failure both have weird consequences for networks. Think of it this way - the reason why we got all of those episodes of The Mob Doctor that nobody wanted is entirely because Fox had already scheduled it for a January start instead of leaving it floating, so they couldn't pull it back into the Fall season without ruining millions upon millions of marketing dollars and strategy. You could have ended up with Community squatting atop Animal Practice on Friday, failing miserably, had NBC not gotten creative with things.
Ah, another episode that I absolutely loved (as did a friend) which everyone else will hate, at least according to A.V Club.
I laughed a few times, which is more than I can say about the opener. What's sort of fascinating to me with these Harmon-less episodes is how strong the actors are. Even when the writing is failing them, they are still talented enough to pull off some great moments. Abed especially has been hurt the most by the transition - not surprisingly, as Abed's character is a real tightrope walk - but Danny Pudi is still able to pull good stuff out of it, like he did at the end of this episode. Honestly, I didn't hate this as much as I was expecting. Perhaps the AV Club and other sites were overstating how awful it was. But it still feels like, if I may put it in the nerdiest gaming terms possible, a Community expansion pack handed off to different developers.
I actually really felt tonight's episode. Other than that I expected a plotline about Minerva and it was kind of odd to me that that didn't happen, it was generally funny and clever and even the Britta line that everyone didn't like because continuity seemed to make sense, as in-context it was more an "ugh, there are fifty years of this" type of thing that genuine ignorance.
I enjoyed the cameos of Matt Lucas from Little Britain and Tricia Helfer. I liked Shirley's jab at Americanized version of British shows that are dumbed down for the audiences. Did they explain Annie moving out to another apartment?
I was thinking this was really good until the scene on the couch with Jeff and Annie. That became a standard "what have we learned from these hijinks?" sitcom trope scene that old Community would have undercut in thirty different ways. Also, Matt Lucas looks like a shaved Joss Whedon, which was creeping me out.
Ok I just started watching this week's episode, and the first line from a major character is Britta's infamous "oh wow... there are fifty years of these, huh?" And it's sarcastic. You'd have to be a lower-functioning autistic person than Abed to not understand the tone of Britta's voice on that line, and barring that you'd have to be willfully trying to paint the show in the worst possible light to represent that as Britta not having heard of or known anything about Inspector Spacetime before. Edit: pretty good episode overall. Less jokes and more FEELS than last week, but still some good laffers. "I told you before... I don't care about Inspector Spacetime" was awesome.
I'm sure The Big Bang Theory's handling of a nerd convention would have a lot of forced humour about stereotypical nerd stuff and canned laughs. I like Community in that they don't trash geek/nerd culture in order to get a cheap laugh. They managed to do a 22 minute Dungeons & Dragons episode that was smart, funny, and not insulting to D&D players, despite NBC not wanting to do it.
Blah Annie and Jeff. Go back to when it turns out he's like her father, show! Otherwise I really liked this episode. There were some hilarious lines and Pierce bowing at the end? Awesome. And yeah, anyone that thinks Britta's line broke with canon wasn't listening. Also: Luke Perry! And ahahaha they listened to Pierce! "I hate you."
This episode was closer. It's still palpably off (example - Lucas constantly using the term "neurotypical" felt like they were really shouting something that the show wouldn't have before - I mean, if you want to steal something from an actual guy, you were welcome to take subomegulloid), but it was less off than the past two have been. I think part of the issue is that Guarascio and Port really seem to like Britta kind of a lot more than Harmon ever did. She's certainly spending more time in the middle of everything than I remember her doing before. I'm a little bit torn about that, since, on the one hand, Gillian Jacobs is perfectly welcome to marry me and support me in a life of never-ending leisure with her fancy Hollywood salary and also maybe throw some sex at me every now and again because I really like her and I think that she's been the best sport that anybody could possibly be with this show (whatever Harmon had in mind for a secret plan, I definitely got the feeling in the pilot that she was supposed to be the female lead) and deserves as much time to show off as she can get, but on the other hand, Britta is supposed to be The Worst, and having The Worst on screen so much strains that particular hitch of her character. But it got better. At a minimum, the way that the episode handled Abed wasn't a complete disaster, which it easily could have been (Harmon did a lot of writing for Abed, and this felt a little bit like Kenneth on 30 Rock after Glover left for this show, and since I think Kenneth eventually got close enough to where he was originally, this is a very positive sign). It was a perfectly cromulent episode of an above-average sitcom (though "average" for sitcoms is pretty goddamn abysmal), and I think I'm warming up to it again. I am slightly confused about the living arrangements in the apartment, but I think I may be forgetting some details from last season, because it's certainly possible for both bedrooms in a unit to have windows, but I thought one of the bedrooms was the Dreamatorium, unless that got decommissioned at the end of possibly my favorite episode and I've just forgotten.
The Dreamatorium got decommissioned and Troy and Abed moved their bunk bed in their. The thing that confused me is that Britta entered Annie's bedroom but wound up outside of the apartment.
