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Community: #twentyseasonsandabuttflagonthemoon


OnionAhaiReborn

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Yea, as much as I admit to worrying about what the show will be like without Donald Glover and know for sure that I'll miss his presence, I think Season 5 has been a spectacular success so far, I have trouble seeing why a fan of the early seasons wouldn't enjoy it, and I expect it to continue to be great going forward.


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No TV show in its fifth season is going to be like it was in its first few seasons. Events pile up, characters branch out, call-backs proliferate.



The standard to judge Community by isn't "does it feel just like the first season" but "is it still funny?"


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I actually love this season so far. It's different, but it also feels as if the characters have matured or at least changed to some extent.



There's something new about the show that's hard to describe, and I can understand others not feeling it but I can see S5 potentially becoming my favorite.


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I like this season, but I can't say I think its funnier or better than the first three. Of course my judgement isn't final, since theres 7 episodes to be aired. But of these 6.... they feel like the lower or mid tier episodes from the first 3 seasons. Funny, with a a high re-watch value, but not the best this show has to offer.



The best episode this season for me has been Cooperative Polygraphy, but I'd give that episode a B+.



I'm honestly not trying to go against what everyones saying, its just how I feel. I definitely think this show can survive without Chase and Glover, but I have yet to see an episode that I define as "great" by Community standards (I'll admit, the standards are pretty high).


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Yes I know he's dead but who knows when the movie would take place/how he might appear...I mean he's already appeared in season 5, proving he can be brought back in certain ways/that Chase is on semi-good terms with the show








Pierce is dead and I'm pretty sure Chase is done with the series anyway. They can't even bring over darkest timeline Chase as he's dead there, as well.



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I've been rewatching season 4 the past couple weeks and enjoying it. Definitely not as strong and certainly too far along the sweet-sentimental continuum, but it's still good.



And, DP, I still can't see the TBBT thing. However "subversive" it might be read as being, it still has one of the most annoying laughtracks on TV, with at best superficial character "development" and contrived writing. I suppose that's what makes it a "traditional" sitcom, but I'll still take my Seinfeld or Frasier over it any day if we must go for a multi-cam show with a studio audience.



But do you ever make your point well.


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I've been rewatching season 4 the past couple weeks and enjoying it. Definitely not as strong and certainly too far along the sweet-sentimental continuum, but it's still good.

I generally agree. Season 4 is clearly the worst, but it isn't without it's merits. Basic Human Anatomy and Herstory of Dance were pretty decent. There was only really 1 or 2 episodes I actually hated out of the 13.

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I've been rewatching season 4 the past couple weeks and enjoying it. Definitely not as strong and certainly too far along the sweet-sentimental continuum, but it's still good.

And, DP, I still can't see the TBBT thing. However "subversive" it might be read as being, it still has one of the most annoying laughtracks on TV, with at best superficial character "development" and contrived writing. I suppose that's what makes it a "traditional" sitcom, but I'll still take my Seinfeld or Frasier over it any day if we must go for a multi-cam show with a studio audience.

But do you ever make your point well.

Lol, thanks. That's really all I need. :blushing: (My TBBT take is definitely probably* a subversion of authorial intent, but it's not a deliberate one on my part, so it's all good. The laughtrack is annoying, the characters are stuck, the humor is often crude-to-offensive...that's kind of the point. It's like that old quote about the worst thing about pain being that it's just so boring. When Batman (or Will Graham :leaving: ) fresh off saving some damsel in distress, Is standing at the edge of the roof, all noble and sad and alone, dramatic music playing while the moon rises behind him and the camera takes in the slightly melancholy but ever so masculine set of his jaw...yeah, whatever. When Amy, with her frumpy sweater and unflattering haircut, is reduced to gracelessly begging her oblivious and equally graceless psuedo-boyfriend for a hug with a crude double-entendre as the laugh track dials up to 11, the scene stuck between a fart joke and a cheap Star Trek reference...hey, there it is. That's sad in a whole different, and far more interesting way.)

Er, anyway, point of my post: Community Season 4 - I think I was actually more tolerant of it than most when it was airing. (At least in part because the whole "meta-narrative" of Dan Harmon, irreplaceable asshole genius-auteur, is one I can't stand in fiction. (Die Sherlock die.) Most irrational subconscious viewing influence on a show ever? Probably, but there it is.) But I rewatched a bunch of S4 episodes a while back, and while there are a few semi-decent ones, it really is just not that good. Sloppy writing, no ambition, poor execution and just not very funny, which I think is the cardinal sin here. Community is like the one show I totally and absolutely watch first and foremost because it's just really, really funny, all characterization,continuity and comic critical-observation-of-human-condition and whatever aside.

Even stuff I liked at the time, like Chang's arc or the clever body switching episode were pretty meh on rewatch, and the bad is just bad, not even bad-for-Community. The episode with the Germans or the whole Troy/Britta arc are just ill conceived and I had blanked a lot of the Jeff's Dad stuff from memory entirely. I think that the season jumped on doing these heavy, obvious character-centric things (Pierce's dad stuff too, and even Shirley's family, though I think Shirley is underused even in Harmon-times) is kind of a sign of how badly they were fumbling with this world and this type of humor. They just kept trying to reduce the wild, anarchic brilliance of it to that standard, tedious daddy-issues and relationship-issues stuff that Community usually kept in the background or even made into gags. Suddenly it was soooo important that Jeff Find His Father or Abed Deal with Troy Being in a Relationship. Meh. Screw that. I'll take even the bizarre mess of the stoned puppets episode over all that. At least they tried on that one - and failed miserably, admittedly. But they tried.

* tbh, Mom makes it all a bit fuzzier, since it seems to be doing overtly exactly what I see TBBT doing covertly, with much heavier subject matter. Mom is one weird cookie of a show.

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I'd say TBBT is essentially Two and a Half Men with the trappings of geekdom, and I'm fairly sure that the subversion is unintentional. :P



All the same, I think the problem with season 4 derives from an attempt to be more "character-driven", except it was done in a very straightforward and very earnest fashion. An extremely overly earnest fashion, such that even ideas like Troy/Britta or the Jeff's Dad stuff were simply not executed well. It could have worked, but it's like they took the most basic storylines and told them in the most matter-of-fact way possible. Though I did like seeing Gilbert again.


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I've never seen 2.5 Men, but I heard someones someplace defend it - but only the first few seasons. At some point it has just become unwatchable, they explained, because it was reduced to nothing but "two grotesques filled with fury, spite and self loathing capable of nothing but hurting one another to a laugh track." I guess my problem is I would watch the hell out of that show. :leaving:

All the same, I think the problem with season 4 derives from an attempt to be more "character-driven", except it was done in a very straightforward and very earnest fashion. An extremely overly earnest fashion, such that even ideas like Troy/Britta or the Jeff's Dad stuff were simply not executed well. It could have worked, but it's like they took the most basic storylines and told them in the most matter-of-fact way possible. Though I did like seeing Gilbert again.


I think the show did some perfectly good-to-excellemt character driven episodes, Jeff's dad and all. Abed had some good stuff, as did Troy (the sublime Troy's Birthday episode) they just weren't so...sappy. They were about character issues, but not about solving character issues. Part of the problem the cheesiness and easiness of that, part of it (at least for me) was the attempt to impose that kind of...temporality, and sense of before and after on a narrative that had never been particularly fussy about those.

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Wait, how did I miss that someone made an Inspector Spacetime webseries? And now they have a kickstarter to make a movie or a second season or something of the sort? Which there is a sort of prequel thing out to? Which is cute and ok, but begun to be a little too much for me, until the Doctor from Voyager showed up and made it way, way better?


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  • 2 weeks later...

On the Farscape thread I suggested, perhaps a little too strongly, that Farscape and Community were fundamentally the same show. I'll back off from claiming that they are the same, but there are some interesting parallels between the two shows. I'll freely admit that I have been influenced by Datepalm's reading of Community as well as the discussion thereof in this thread.



For a Love of the Genre: Farscape has been described as a sci-fi show for people who love sci-fi. It's very conscientious of sci-fi tropes, making both indirect and direct references to them; the show embraces them while also subverting them. Community performs a similar role for the "sitcom" genre. Pop culture references abound as sitcom, movie, and other television tropes are labeled, adopted, openly parodied, and subverted.



The Uncharted Territories: Datepalm and others in this thread have noted how utterly surreal the setting of Greendale Community College is. It seemingly exists on the periphery of ciivlization, as it engages in explorations of the weird in an isolated but open setting. Farscape is set in the weird and alien realm of the "Uncharted Territories," which we learn is an intentional misnomer of the Peacekeepers.



The Breakfast Club Ensemble: Farscape and Community both feature the Breakfast Club ensemble of a surprisingly diverse crew of people, racially and culturally, who are thrown together, but who would otherwise not normally freely associate with each other. These characters, while mostly well-intentioned in regards to the mutual survival of the group, can be extraordinarily self-centered and selfish in their actions. Nevertheless, despite their moral failures and shortcomings, they gradually begin viewing themselves as a pseudo-family. This is obviously not unique to these two shows (e.g. Firefly), but it is key. There are some interesting parallels between the two, in regards to their characters. Despite their pseudo-family status, the characters really only see their togetherness as a temporary and necessary arrangement until they can achieve their primary goals and split ways. Moya and the Study Group acts as the vehicle that keeps the group together. The necessity of their unity is frequently stretched, questioned, and tested.



John Crichton = Jeff (+Abed as coping mechanism): Both Jeff and John act as the reluctant anchors for the group. Their lives were disrupted as they were thrust from the civilization they once knew to a new and unfamiliar one, but they only desire to return "home" they once knew. But I would also suggest that John Crichton is also Farsacpe's Abed. John Crichton uses pop culture references as a means of coping with the insanity of the reality that surrounds him. Abed uses pop culture references as a means of coping with the insanity of the reality that surrounds him. The viewer tends to be more sympathetic to Crichton, because we perceive his universe as "alien" while Abed's universe of sorts is considered "familiar" and "normal."



Aeryn Sun = Britta: The overly serious one who is not easily amused nor displays much of a sense of humor. They are still stuck in their own life habits and moral attitudes despite also trying to become something more.



Ka D'argo = Troy: The tough guy with a secret soft side. Probably the weakest link, in terms of correlations.



Chiana = Annie: The young vivacious flirt who has some sexual tension with the male lead despite having something akin to a sibling-like relationship of an older brother/younger sister.



Zhaan = Shirley: The pious pacifist, who tries diffusing group tension, though occasionally reveals a much darker side.



Rygel = Pierce: This is the crotchety, old and deposed patriarch. They are frequently lambasted for their insensitivity, crassness, and selfishness. They are viewed as childish by most, which often causes them to be underestimated by foes. Oddly enough, they are often in the company of the pious pacifist character.



Bialar Crais = Senor Chang: These character initially act as the central antagonist of the group, but eventually, and reluctantly cast out of their authority through revelations of fraud, they become peripheral, and distrusted, quasi-members of the group.



Pilot = Dean Pelton: Mostly heard on the inacom, and occasionally guides the group.



Scorpius = Perhaps also Dean Pelton: The image of Dean Pelton dressed as Scorpius freaks me out a little. But let's be honest, this Community video comes straight out of the Crichton & Harvey catalog.


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Woot! Awesome comparison.





John Crichton = Jeff (+Abed as coping mechanism): Both Jeff and John act as the reluctant anchors for the group. Their lives were disrupted as they were thrust from the civilization they once knew to a new and unfamiliar one, but they only desire to return "home" they once knew. But I would also suggest that John Crichton is also Farsacpe's Abed. John Crichton uses pop culture references as a means of coping with the insanity of the reality that surrounds him. Abed uses pop culture references as a means of coping with the insanity of the reality that surrounds him. The viewer tends to be more sympathetic to Crichton, because we perceive his universe as "alien" while Abed's universe of sorts is considered "familiar" and "normal."







I'd take it a little further, even, sociologically - I don't think it's entirely random that they're both male, straight, white, young-but-not-too-young. They're even both blondish, have those traditional J-names and a bit of a similar American, mid-west sort of vibe. On the one hand, they're the audience stand-in, 'default', un-marked identity, thrown into a new world full of 'marked' people. Everyone else at Greendale is not-Jeff in some way, but virtue of age, race, gender, orientation, etc. Crichton is literally - very, very literarlly - surrounded by, uh, um, people of color. On the other hand, they're also both coming from a kind of break in that identity/ideology of straight-white-male. Jeff's been revealed for a fraud and his professional identity - pretty much the only one he has - has been taken from him. Chrichton is shown to be a distinct break from his father's type of astronaut, and his father's type of masculinity (IIRC from the Farscape pilot, it's actually Chrichton Senior who's having an identity crisis.) Then they're both plunged from professional, confident rational worlds - of law, of science - which are mostly inhabited by other white men and governed by their logic, and into much more fraught, shifting, irrational environments where they're not typical, but also not in charge. To use Scalzi's metaphor, they're not longer in the easiest difficulty setting, and they have to carve new identities and new purposes on someone else terms, like everyone else.

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Is Farscape the show Abed talks about with Paul F. Tompkins in Mixology? And if I read that comparison will Farscape be spoiled for me in the event that I ever decide to watch it?

That's right. I would avoid the section on Bialar Crais/Senor Chang, but otherwise I don't think there's anything spoiler-ish in the comparison that you wouldn't get from watching the first few episodes (Chiana doesn't get introduced right at the beginning but I don't think it hurts to have a knowledge of her existence).

ST

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I had a dream about Community last night.



It was a Christmas episode and the ghost of Pierce was narrating it. At the end of the episode, they entire group got together and sang "Hark the Herald Angel" (I know Britta's and atheist, Jeff's and agnostic, etc. it was a dream).



Anyhow, Pierce, upset he couldn't be a part of it in the non-ethereal world played "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" over the other characters' singing, though their lips were still distinctly singing the other song. So then he switched to showing clips of Christmas scenes from other sitcoms like Happy Days, Everybody Loves Raymond, Bosom Buddies, and others while keeping the "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" soundtrack in the background.



These are the dreams I have people. :uhoh:


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