|
Was absolutely thrilled with this episode. The tone was so well-crafted, and the characters were able to lampshade so many genre tropes (Abed as autistic savant detective, Troy as blanketed victim, Jeff and Annie in putting-the-pieces-together scene set to classical music, etc.) while staying completely true to themselves. This is in pretty stark contrast to S4, which immediately lost the personalities of the study group whenever they tried to do a concept episode. My only disappointment is that it couldn't have been a full half-hour, because I was incredibly disappointed to find that there wasn't another act to resolve the case, appropriate as the conclusion was. Hooray for Season 5!
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2014 03:34
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 23:26 |
|
|
Senor Tron posted:It's Neil, hence the little D&D callback at the end. In DH's interview with IGN, he talks about the "spiritual successor" to the D&D episode. I'd wager any D&D episode will feature Neil, especially considering the exposure he's gotten in the most recent episode. With Joe Russo back to direct, my expectations are high! The first D&D episode inspired me to try out the game with some friends (though thankfully our DM had experience), and after a yearlong campaign I have a badass level 24 cleric 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2014 05:41
|
|
|
Sakarja posted:
e:fb JesusFists fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Jan 20, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jan 20, 2014 01:22
|
|
|
For my part, I thought it was a very solid, joke-filled episode, which probably won't stand out as one of my season favorites, but judging from my second viewing, will hold up really well in terms of laughs. Fat dogging kept cracking me up, and I think there was some good meta-humor regarding having to quickly change a show because current events throw a pall of bad taste over the material. The bureaucracy plot had good character development for Prof. Hickey, and the guest spots (I especially loved Paget Brewster, who still looks nearly as good as she did 10 years ago in Andy Richter Controls the Universe, but I digress) all contributed to the building of the Greendale world. Of course they would have an iron-fisted, corrupt parking department and a one-person IT "department" that apparently doubles as both mail room and server room! You know an episode is good when you pick up several more jokes on the second viewing because you were laughing through them the first time, and both in terms of script and visual humor, this was one of those for me. In other news, is there any way to save this thread from its growing shittiness? Obviously, the Era of Good Feelings we had for the first 3-4 episodes is over. Of course, there's nothing wrong with saying you don't like an episode, but I think we can all accept it as a given that a third of us won't like any particular concept episode for being too off-the-rails, and another third of us won't like any particular "traditional" episode for being too conventional, so I'm not sure we're adding much thread value by posting a two-sentence "haaaaaaaaaaaaaated it!" Or "this show is just like x now," because no, it's probably not. Aside from that general criticism, the Britta hate from this episode has been predictable and goony. Guys, remember two weeks ago, when Abed revealed he'd been emotionally manipulating Annie with a fake e-relationship, just so she'd cook breakfast? Britta takes things too far, because that's what you do in a sitcom, but her point, which is that if you don't care about spoiling other people, you shouldn't be upset about getting spoiled, is valid. Obviously Britta did not set the whole deaf girl thing up from the beginning, because it was Abed who initially approached her to have her fill out the school census. Besides, the bribe didn't spoil his chances with the deaf girl, who had another reason to interact with him, and as it turns out he wasn't that into her anyway. Oh, and Britta genuinely felt terrible it when she saw the effect of her successful spoiling (I thought cloned Abed was missing original Abed's wild emotionality!), but I guess the damage to our collective sperg-hearts was already done.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 1, 2014 06:20
|
|
|
Victor Vermis posted:You sly dog. What do you think this is, Breaking Bad? Community's ratings and general appeal aren't on that level. We don't rate a Hating-Fictional-Females-For-Being-Unlikable-Is-Basically-Misogyny derail. Are we to save the thread from shittiness by drowning it in a different variety of shittiness? quote:I think a lot of the criticisms are coming from people who were iffy about the season from the start but gave it a chance to get back on it's feet before openly criticizing it. I enjoy this season so far, but I can admit it's not on the same level as the previous Harmon seasons. I trust it will get better, though. Now I feel bad for bringing it up, but...you all learned a lesson! And I gave differently-gendered people a voice! (thread walks away) Now I feel really bad. No, come back! Let's be fat dogs about this?!
|
|
#
¿
Feb 1, 2014 09:05
|
|
|
To me, CBS getting Thursday Night football seems like more than marginally good news. With Fox presumably running Idol, and ABC probably trying to imitate them again, Community wouldn't have any network competition (on those nights) for comedy, assuming they get renewed and placed on the fall schedule. And anything beats going up against BBT, right?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2014 22:39
|
|
|
I feel like half the people in this thread watched a different season 4 than I did, because I found most of the episodes so painful to watch that I spent most of the air nights after the show drinking heavily to try to remove the plots from my brain. That's not an exaggeration, and I don't want to start (or continue) a fight, mostly because I just realized, I think, why there's never going to be any reconciliation on the topic. For me, Community is the best showcase of the humor of Dan Harmon (Rick & Morty is rapidly rising, but it's really only half-Harmon), now my favorite TV comedy writer, and I suppose more broadly one of my favorite modern comic minds. His grasp of good story structure, his reflexive questioning of social mores and obligations, and his loving insane insistence on actual character development in a sitcom while still swinging for the fences conceptually all compelled me to seek out more of his stuff - Harmontown, Laser Fart, etc. etc. For those of us who know his work, Community is Dan Harmon, from each of his characters to his (as I see it) beautiful overarching theme of attempting, and often failing, to become a more complete, less selfish human being. For me, his absence could be felt palpably in every episode, and I'll go out on a limb and guess that many of those who share similar feelings as myself about S4 share a similar affinity (whether they realize it or not) for the Harmonness of the show. So, all this is to say that it's OK to be a Community fan without being a Dan Harmon fan, but I think the last several pages of mystified back-and-forth are probably the result of everyone focusing on the symptoms of their hatred or acceptance of S4, rather than the cause, which I posit boils down to either love of or ambivalence to Harmon's unique style.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2014 03:33
|
|
|
After the first viewing, the live-action ending seemed rather forced and stereotypical to me, or to paraphrase an earlier comment, like it had been run through a "Family Ties" filter, especially the closing joke and group laugh. Once I watched the second time, though, I realized why the study group was so heinously over-guffawing over Jeff's weak "eighteen eighty-nine?" line: Their close friend, whose mortality they had never considered, partially because Jeff so carefully managed his image and apparent age, had just recovered from a near-fatal experience. Jeff making a trademark sarcastic remark, even an incredibly lazy one, represented a return to normalcy, and their overdone laughter was a product of their relief, an excuse for catharsis. Unfortunately, that kind of overdone closing laughter also happens to be the trademark of cheesy sitcoms, where the only dramatic tension was whether the Beav was going to pass his math test or whatever. And after eighteen minutes of very tongue-in-cheek, satiric material, most viewers probably weren't emotionally ready for a scene that, apart from Ken Jeong, wasn't supposed to be funny, because almost killing oneself, even somewhat accidentally, isn't funny. Classic Harmon move, though. So, that one tarnish cleared up for me, I quite liked the episode. Did anyone else notice, though, that Duncan was the one current Save Greendale Committee member not around Jeff's bed? Christ, even the new guy showed up. I know, it was probably due to John Oliver's time constraints more than anything else, but I'd be rather surprised if it doesn't get a mention before the end of the season. For the record, I'm 28, just old enough to catch the end of the original run when I was like 6-7. Had just enough background to get most of the references, though some of the more obscure character stuff definitely went over my head. I think I still would have enjoyed it nearly as much if I'd only seen the PSA parodies, though.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2014 05:19
|
|
|
swickles posted:Series is going to end the same way Roseanne ended. Its all just a bunch of Abed's tv scripts written to cope with the death of Pierce and Jeff, Britta being jailed, Troy being lost at sea, and Annie's suicide.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 7, 2014 01:58
|
|
|
Did anyone see the Reading Rainbow kickstarter livestream with Donald Glover and Levar on the boat? I just found out about it right after the project ended, wish I could have seen, would have totally paid another  for a little more Troy / Levar magic.Irish Joe posted:lazy trolling
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2014 21:59
|
|
|
I wouldn't look at keeping funding equal to the fifth season as "being cheap about it" - for moving from a broadcast network to a fledgling online content provider, not cutting the budget is probably the best scenario we could reasonably hope for. To me, pledging to fund the show at the current levels is a serious commitment for Yahoo. We'll probably never get back to the beautiful outdoor shots of the first two seasons, which is a shame, but I think we can mostly agree that many of Community's strongest episodes rely heavily on the characters' interactions, and very little on expensive production - e.g. the bottle episodes, D&D, My Dinner with Abed, Chaos Theory, etc. Besides, Dan Harmon has produced quality work with much smaller budgets before, so I'm confident it'll still be funny.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2014 13:48
|
|
|
Lord Of Texas posted:Pierce was crude, petty, unapologetic, and just tried way too hard to be relevant. He got an extremely Pierce-like send-off. A " heartfelt" ending for Pierce would have been awful. Harmon and Chase actually get along pretty well, according to Dan on Harmontown; the "feud" was pretty much entirely a tabloid creation. They yelled at each other because they have similarly big egos and Chevy can be a huge baby, but they understood each other because Dan can be too [goddamnit, here I was going to link the clip of Dan running through the Community writers' room with only a diaper on, but apparently he thought better of that being on the Internet and has since removed it].
|
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2014 04:07
|
|
|
Chand0X posted:http://tvline.com/2014/07/25/community-season-6-donald-glover-returns-try-yahoo/
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2014 21:03
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 23:26 |
|
|
Crindee posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRxaYlDxdKI Bang, like 15 posts up, but it's all good, assuming your name is the throwaway AD G.O.B. quote that it makes me think of. The interview was good, and I loved that it was about 3x as long as the average Speakeasy interview, because Harmon is hella verbose.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 27, 2014 11:36
|
|