Community - Season 2, thread 2 [SPOILERS]

[awesome possum]

Just caught both episodes last night and they were great. I don't really see this awful, show-killing drop off that some are complaining about, but then again this is the internet. There are always one or three dozen people out there who hate everything.

If it's just a series of ironic homages without offering any coherent statement of its own

You realize this is a network sitcom, right?

Sheesh.

[drawkcabi]

I missed the first couple episodes of season 2 and held off watching because there are so many gags that are better understood if you watch the show in order, so the episodes I missed added up until it was all of season 2 and season 3 up to now. Thanks to Hulu I got caught up.

My reaction: I am glad there are others out there that see this show has really dropped in quality. It might have something to do with watching so many in a row, but it just seemed to get less funny and less funny every episode from mid season 2 to now.

I didn't know about the change in writing staff but with the last few episodes I kept thinking this show had turned into a live-action family guy with all the non-sequitur gags. I used to like Family Guy too but now I can't stand to watch anything McFarland because he ran the style so far into the ground.

Now Community I can still watch it, it's still funny-ish, but where I used to literally laugh out loud during episodes, now I don't it. I really don't blame the show though or the writers, I really think this kind of series is a live fast, die young sort of deal. Even if they had the original writers working at full potential there's only so much you can do with a show like this that doesn't feel like re-treading familiar territory.

The good thing about Community though is through Abed it is continually self-aware. This doesn't always help with the laughs but it helps keep the audience in on the joke by acknowledging "we know you know we know what we just did". However that can be a negative against the show if it's true that Harmon is letting too much outside opinions via twitter and reddit or whatever color his concept of the show.

I am pretty sure Abed's referenced "jumping the shark" in previous episodes but now I am expecting any time now (probably while in the dreamatorium) to see a crisp visual of Abed or Abed and Troy in water skis, swimming trunks, white tee-shirts, and leather jackets soaring over a couple of great whites.

If it's true about Chevy Chase, I am not surprised. I was pretty sure at season 1 if this show lasted Chase would eventually end up at odds with the other cast members or writers or producers, and odds are he wouldn't last to the end if the show went more than a few seasons. What's good about it is Pierce is set up as a character that the writers and cast can vent their anger toward. I adored the Pierce character in season 1 but by now he's just not getting the funny lines or situations.

I also don't like the dean being in every episode. He's so much better showing up sporadically throughout episdes. One of the funniest bits of this season was the dean and Jeff doing "Kiss From A Rose" but for every scene like that there's a bunch more "do we really need to see what the dean is wearing in this week's episode? scenes that do nothing to make the particular episode better.

Don't mean to be hard on this show, because it is so well done, but after getting up to date the main thing that I feel the need to comment on is that while forgivable, this show is not what it once was.

[drawkcabi]

what does this show have to do with hipsters?

I've seen more reference to hipsters in this show than any other besides Colbert Report.

Britta is a wannabe hipster.

This show is full of irony, hipsters love irony unless they're being told that hipsters love irony, then they deny it. I may have just cost this show several viewers by replying to this post. :uhoh:

[Relic]

I live in hipster central and no one on the show reminds me of the hipsters that reside here. I find that i do not understand people's usage of the word hipster outside of NYC.

[Iskaral Pust]

Relic - understood and agreed about NY hipsters, but Drawkcabi is right about the wider hipster culture, or at least what I've seen of it. Everything is ironic, there is no sincere plot/theme/moral that anyone can be accused of caring about and it's cool to pick on random tidbits of pop culture to briefly, ironically lionize. This show is made for hipsters, while it pokes fun at hipsters, oh the irony!, but at least it was self-aware and thoughtful for a while. Now it just seems to aware of the twitter buzz it generates.

awesome possum -- it had a subtler, more insightful facet to the humor in the first season. I'm not holding it to any standard that it did not set for itself.

[Durckad]

Just caught both episodes last night and they were great. I don't really see this awful, show-killing drop off that some are complaining about, but then again this is the internet. There are always one or three dozen people out there who hate everything.

I hear this complaint seemingly after every fucking episode.

I thought this one was awesome and a good return to form. Even though I liked and enjoyed the prior two, they were definitely a bit weaker than the norm.

I do think that Pierce is really kind of pointless now. It's apparent that the writers really don't know what to do with him, but until he becomes a lead weight, I can deal with him just sort of existing on the sidelines until the writers figure out what to do with him.

[Scion of Valyria]

Relic - understood and agreed about NY hipsters, but Drawkcabi is right about the wider hipster culture, or at least what I've seen of it. Everything is ironic, there is no sincere plot/theme/moral that anyone can be accused of caring about and it's cool to pick on random tidbits of pop culture to briefly, ironically lionize. This show is made for hipsters, while it pokes fun at hipsters, oh the irony!, but at least it was self-aware and thoughtful for a while. Now it just seems to aware of the twitter buzz it generates.

I always figured the show was made with geeks and nerds in mind, not so much hipsters, although I guess the groups are quickly merging together these days. But could you clarify this irony you're talking about for me? Apart from the societal obligation to include the word in the same sentence as the word 'hipster,' regardless of coherency, I don't really understand why people keep using it to describe the show. The wiki entry for irony lists three different types (dramatic, situational, and verbal), all of which could be easily found in any sitcom on TV in the past ten years. Is it the self-awareness of sitcom tropes it works with that makes it super-ironic or something?

I loved the episode. The second I heard the music in the first few minutes I knew we were in for a good ride. While I thought they wrapped up the Troy-Abed feud to quickly (it would have been interesting to see if they had the ability to pull off a much longer arc without it getting stale), almost everything else in the episode worked great for me.

[Slurktan]

If it's true about Chevy Chase, I am not surprised. I was pretty sure at season 1 if this show lasted Chase would eventually end up at odds with the other cast members or writers or producers, and odds are he wouldn't last to the end if the show went more than a few seasons. What's good about it is Pierce is set up as a character that the writers and cast can vent their anger toward. I adored the Pierce character in season 1 but by now he's just not getting the funny lines or situations.

I also don't like the dean being in every episode. He's so much better showing up sporadically throughout episdes. One of the funniest bits of this season was the dean and Jeff doing "Kiss From A Rose" but for every scene like that there's a bunch more "do we really need to see what the dean is wearing in this week's episode? scenes that do nothing to make the particular episode better.

You are right about the dean. It's similar to the Chang stuff. He was damn funny in season 1 when he was just an angry spanish teacher.

The thing I find hilarious about the Chevy Chase stuff is that he's... well right. The show is not particularly funny anymore. His character in particular is given nothing. So while Chase is a douchebag and such, he is right to be calling out the writers on this one. He's kind of like the Jose Canseco of Community.

[drawkcabi]

You are right about the dean. It's similar to the Chang stuff. He was damn funny in season 1 when he was just an angry spanish teacher.

The thing I find hilarious about the Chevy Chase stuff is that he's... well right. The show is not particularly funny anymore. His character in particular is given nothing. So while Chase is a douchebag and such, he is right to be calling out the writers on this one. He's kind of like the Jose Canseco of Community.

Agreed. In season one Pierce was the hopelessly out-of-the-loop old guy which made him grumpy and insecure about his age. For some reason they've focused on the grumpiness lately and while it's still acknowledged that Pierce hates to be excluded they never do many jokes about the reason he's being excluded because he's totally lost, he's just being excluded for being a jerk.

I really liked the father-son dynamic between Pierce and Jeff in season 2, I hated that they showed Pierce's dad was still alive and put Pierce in the son role, it just felt like such a misuse of the character and rearragnement of the relationships that Jeff becomes redundant in the equation except for his exhausted schtick as looking out for one of his own for a less funnier father-son story.

[Morpheus]

I don't see the big drop off.

The poorest Community has ever been was for the first half or so of season one. I remember tuning in sporadically and not finding it all that remarkably funny, I probably wouldn't have cared if it had been canceled mid-season, I think the chicken finger episode may have been the first that showed it had potential to be an excellent comedy. I think there has been a lot of excellent stuff this season, a few really weak episodes (the Halloween episode comes immediately to mind), but nothing as mediocre as its humble start in season one.

[Reposado]

I don't see the big drop off.

The poorest Community has ever been was for the first half or so of season one.

This is true. Troy may not be the best character on TV anymore, like he was in season 2, but for most of season one, he did absolutely nothing funny. They radically changed his character after the first bunch of episodes and for the better.

The last third of Season one, all of season 2 and the fall run of season 3 was fantastic. There were was no steady dropoff during this time. there were highlight episodes, and there were weak ones along the way.

Has there been a dropoff this spring? Sure, but it was three episodes. It could be the start of a trend, or it could be a blip. With the last episode representing a significant improvement, I'm wagering on blip for now

[WaterDancer626]

"Hey were you in 'The Cape?'"

"...No..."

That alone made the last episode amazing to me. That and the Changlorious Bastards.

I really enjoyed Season 1 because of Chang and the later part of the season because of Troy. In Season 2 the Dean brought it. From what I have seen of Season 3 it does seem like something is different, the Dean and Chang are nowhere near as awesome as they were in the previous seasons.

[DocStrange]

Dean arriving at their apartment, "Boys Night!"

Abed: "I need help reacting to something"

Pierce asking Chang what he wanted to do next and him blurting out "Russian roulette" cracked me up as well.

[Datepalm]

That was them back on track, as far as i'm concerned, even if the ending was sappy. Troy is so nice he's embarassed about it, aww.

[WaterDancer626]

That was them back on track, as far as i'm concerned, even if the ending was sappy. Troy is so nice he's embarassed about it, aww.

I thought it was hilarious when Annie read the message and she was like WTF at Britta. Also, John Goodman's braided ponytail had me laughing really hard, out of freaking nowhere.

Side note, anyone else miss the City College Dean? I am already starting to miss the two Deans interactions with one another, especially when the City College one whispers into Peltons ear.

[Howdyphillip]

I just watched Pillows and Blankets on Hulu... My DVR jumbled my recording of the show last week, and I missed it. I am so glad that I went back and watched. This episode was perfect for me. The war documentary style filming was absolutely brilliant. I think that this is my favorite episode of the entire series.

[Sir Thursday]

While there were some nice moments in this episode, it fell pretty flat for me. It goes back to a complaint I've had about a lot of this season of Community - whereas in previous seasons they could do character development and humour at the same time, in this season it seems to be mostly either/or.

ST

[Reposado]

I'm a day late on this week's ep, but that was fantastic in every way. Especially Allison Brie, who had one of the funnier subtle performances in a long while. Her laugh, when she's the third to laugh? still not over it.

[peterbound]

Great last episode. Happy with everything in it.

[TheEvilKing]

After my long ass rant higher up in the thread, I have to say this episode was one of the best in a while.