He's baaaaack!
June 10, 2013 4:28 PM Subscribe
Season 4 seemed fine I don't really get the apocalyptic freakouts.
posted by 2bucksplus at 4:31 PM on June 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by 2bucksplus at 4:31 PM on June 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
Wonderful. We only lost one season.
posted by rainy at 4:32 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by rainy at 4:32 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
And Chris McKenna is returning too, which is equally big news. Harmon's the demented madman, but McKenna always seemed to have a better grasp on the show's characters than anybody else, and Harmon's said that Chris had an enormous influence beyond even his credited episodes (which are among the best episodes Community ever aired).
posted by Rory Marinich at 4:34 PM on June 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by Rory Marinich at 4:34 PM on June 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
Season 4 was a letdown. It had all these icky emotional thingies like all over the place. Gross. Harmon'll tone that crap way down and make the smart funny bits smarter funnier bits.
posted by bfootdav at 4:39 PM on June 10, 2013 [5 favorites]
posted by bfootdav at 4:39 PM on June 10, 2013 [5 favorites]
I'm kind of amazed to hear the show is getting another season. Is NBC starting to wake up to the value of a show with an intensely devoted fanbase in ancillary sales, or is it simply that NBC's overall ratings are so abysmal that Community's ratings don't seem so bad?
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:40 PM on June 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:40 PM on June 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
Does this mean Star-burns is also coming back?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:43 PM on June 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:43 PM on June 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
Oh no does this mean I have to go watch all of execrable season 4 now? Plz no.
posted by elizardbits at 4:43 PM on June 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by elizardbits at 4:43 PM on June 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
Dan Harmon Won't "Be a Jerk" About Community: Season 4 and Doesn't Plan to Negate Anything
Wonder how he'll keep the gang together after 4 years at "community college"?
posted by the man of twists and turns at 4:46 PM on June 10, 2013
Wonder how he'll keep the gang together after 4 years at "community college"?
posted by the man of twists and turns at 4:46 PM on June 10, 2013
Yay. Not the darkest timeline after all!
Season 4 was meh. Tolerable by sit-com standards but not magic.
posted by Skwirl at 4:48 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
Season 4 was meh. Tolerable by sit-com standards but not magic.
posted by Skwirl at 4:48 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
Wow. I knew he was coming back, I did not think they'd give him showrunner. (Then again, he probably wouldn't go back without it, so I guess that makes sense.)
He threw out an aside on the last Harmontown that he might do the S4 DVD commentary. That would be fascinating.
the man of twists and turns, he's said he always knew what S5 would be in the unlikely event it actually happened. They've been increasingly off campus since S3.
posted by Lyn Never at 4:48 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
He threw out an aside on the last Harmontown that he might do the S4 DVD commentary. That would be fascinating.
the man of twists and turns, he's said he always knew what S5 would be in the unlikely event it actually happened. They've been increasingly off campus since S3.
posted by Lyn Never at 4:48 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
So glad, the show was still enjoyable but definitely left me a little cold. I really hope the rumored plans for Harmon to record commentary on Season 4 come to pass!
posted by yellowbinder at 4:49 PM on June 10, 2013
posted by yellowbinder at 4:49 PM on June 10, 2013
THIS WAS A SETUP
GOOGLE NEW COKE PEOPLE
POP POP
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:50 PM on June 10, 2013 [46 favorites]
GOOGLE NEW COKE PEOPLE
POP POP
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:50 PM on June 10, 2013 [46 favorites]
Wonder how he'll keep the gang together after 4 years at "community college"?
The same way M*A*S*H managed to make the Korean War last 11 years.
posted by KingEdRa at 4:51 PM on June 10, 2013 [16 favorites]
The same way M*A*S*H managed to make the Korean War last 11 years.
posted by KingEdRa at 4:51 PM on June 10, 2013 [16 favorites]
> Is NBC starting to wake up to the value of a show with an intensely devoted fanbase in ancillary sales, or is it simply that NBC's overall ratings are so abysmal that Community's ratings don't seem so bad?
Less Column A, although there's some value in knowing exactly how many (or few) people in what demos will watch a show week in and week out. A lot of Column B, since everything NBC tried in those slots had equally bad ratings.
Mostly Column C, though -- Sony is so close to a good number of episodes for syndication that they can taste it, so they're offering NBC steep discounts to keep the show on the air rather than try something new. And season 4 didn't bring a ratings uptick, so why not acquiesce to McHale's and fans' demands, and bring back Harmon as well?
posted by frogstar42 at 4:51 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
Less Column A, although there's some value in knowing exactly how many (or few) people in what demos will watch a show week in and week out. A lot of Column B, since everything NBC tried in those slots had equally bad ratings.
Mostly Column C, though -- Sony is so close to a good number of episodes for syndication that they can taste it, so they're offering NBC steep discounts to keep the show on the air rather than try something new. And season 4 didn't bring a ratings uptick, so why not acquiesce to McHale's and fans' demands, and bring back Harmon as well?
posted by frogstar42 at 4:51 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
Wait, does this mean the Red Wedding episode doesn't count?
posted by gwint at 4:51 PM on June 10, 2013 [13 favorites]
posted by gwint at 4:51 PM on June 10, 2013 [13 favorites]
We live in interesting times. But I am very happy to hear this. Who woulda thunk?
Sometimes I think of the alternate universes where certain shows got more seasons. Like the alternate universe where Firefly went on longer, or Wonderfalls, or Joan of Arcadia.
On the other hand, I live in the incredibly unlikely universe where Chuck got 5 seasons, Dollhouse got 2, and Dan Harmon was un-fired AND Community made it to 5 seasons.
Maybe miracles do happen?
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:54 PM on June 10, 2013 [5 favorites]
Sometimes I think of the alternate universes where certain shows got more seasons. Like the alternate universe where Firefly went on longer, or Wonderfalls, or Joan of Arcadia.
On the other hand, I live in the incredibly unlikely universe where Chuck got 5 seasons, Dollhouse got 2, and Dan Harmon was un-fired AND Community made it to 5 seasons.
Maybe miracles do happen?
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:54 PM on June 10, 2013 [5 favorites]
Maybe miracles do happen?
Well, Tebow did just sign for the Patriots...
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:55 PM on June 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
Well, Tebow did just sign for the Patriots...
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:55 PM on June 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
Don't forget an Internet DVD rental dotcom made a 4th season of Arrested Development and everyone was like "meh, kinda sucked"
posted by Ad hominem at 4:58 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by Ad hominem at 4:58 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
My faith has been rewarded. This is... not a place I've ever been before.
Sixseasonsandamovie!
posted by Capt. Renault at 5:00 PM on June 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
Sixseasonsandamovie!
posted by Capt. Renault at 5:00 PM on June 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
Yeah, color me not excited. Community's problems run deeper than Harmon - the first half of Season 3 wasn't great, though the last half was pretty strong.
Also, there's a good chance he's going to record the DVD commentaries for the 4th season which is just not a good practice or good precedent to set.
Eh. Don't mind me. I'm just a grump. If you're excited because a guy's back running the show you like then more power to you.
posted by HostBryan at 5:00 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
Also, there's a good chance he's going to record the DVD commentaries for the 4th season which is just not a good practice or good precedent to set.
Eh. Don't mind me. I'm just a grump. If you're excited because a guy's back running the show you like then more power to you.
posted by HostBryan at 5:00 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
I swear I never heard the term "showrunner" before about 2008.
posted by 2bucksplus at 5:04 PM on June 10, 2013 [10 favorites]
posted by 2bucksplus at 5:04 PM on June 10, 2013 [10 favorites]
Excellent news! Excellent.
Doctor Who is regenerating.
Dan Harmon is coming back to Community.
We finally got to see the Mother.
Arrested Development came back.
Thanks, TVGods. Thanks.
posted by MoxieProxy at 5:09 PM on June 10, 2013 [5 favorites]
Doctor Who is regenerating.
Dan Harmon is coming back to Community.
We finally got to see the Mother.
Arrested Development came back.
Thanks, TVGods. Thanks.
posted by MoxieProxy at 5:09 PM on June 10, 2013 [5 favorites]
It had all these icky emotional thingies like all over the place.
I read comments like this and think that I must somehow have got hold of the cheap Korean knock-off version of the first three seasons of Community. I mean, it is just FULL of "icky emotional thingies." It's a series absolutely in love with the "moment of shit" where we all grow and learn and hug. Sure, some of the time it's sending it up--though even then it is quite often kidding on the square about it.
When Community version 1.0 was good it was really, really good, I don't disagree--but almost every criticism I hear of the post-Harmon era just sounds like the same old inherent problems of the original series.
posted by yoink at 5:11 PM on June 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
I read comments like this and think that I must somehow have got hold of the cheap Korean knock-off version of the first three seasons of Community. I mean, it is just FULL of "icky emotional thingies." It's a series absolutely in love with the "moment of shit" where we all grow and learn and hug. Sure, some of the time it's sending it up--though even then it is quite often kidding on the square about it.
When Community version 1.0 was good it was really, really good, I don't disagree--but almost every criticism I hear of the post-Harmon era just sounds like the same old inherent problems of the original series.
posted by yoink at 5:11 PM on June 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
Does this mean Star-burns is also coming back?
Wasn't there a fleeting scene of Star Burns in front of a mirror in the last episode? I vaguely remember a book with a title like, "How to Fake Your Own Death," or something?
posted by MoxieProxy at 5:11 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
Wasn't there a fleeting scene of Star Burns in front of a mirror in the last episode? I vaguely remember a book with a title like, "How to Fake Your Own Death," or something?
posted by MoxieProxy at 5:11 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
Cool. Cool cool cool.
posted by I'm Doing the Dishes at 5:11 PM on June 10, 2013 [18 favorites]
posted by I'm Doing the Dishes at 5:11 PM on June 10, 2013 [18 favorites]
I swear I never heard the term "showrunner" before about 2008.
It's waaaay older than that.
posted by yoink at 5:12 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
It's waaaay older than that.
posted by yoink at 5:12 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
2bucksplus: "I swear I never heard the term "showrunner" before about 2008."
I still can't help, whenever I hear "showrunner", thinking that it means some young person who goes out and makes copies or buys lattes or does all those other little things.
yoink: "It's waaaay older than that."
Yeah, but I think it came into common parlance more recently. I first heard it in reference to the Walking Dead.
posted by Bugbread at 5:16 PM on June 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
I still can't help, whenever I hear "showrunner", thinking that it means some young person who goes out and makes copies or buys lattes or does all those other little things.
yoink: "It's waaaay older than that."
Yeah, but I think it came into common parlance more recently. I first heard it in reference to the Walking Dead.
posted by Bugbread at 5:16 PM on June 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
Wonder how he'll keep the gang together after 4 years at "community college"?
All of the returning characters will now have cute nephews and nieces that the orginal team will have to come back to mentor. 2 seasons of Cousin Oliver and a straight to Netflix Movie.*
*seriously, they should totally do this, and also, they should have somebody jump an actual shark
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:16 PM on June 10, 2013
All of the returning characters will now have cute nephews and nieces that the orginal team will have to come back to mentor. 2 seasons of Cousin Oliver and a straight to Netflix Movie.*
*seriously, they should totally do this, and also, they should have somebody jump an actual shark
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:16 PM on June 10, 2013
or is it simply that NBC's overall ratings are so abysmal that Community's ratings don't seem so bad?
This, pretty much. NBC has been skidding into last place among the major networks for anything that isn't football or The Voice. It's a slump that has saved other critically-lauded but underperforming NBC shows like Parenthood from getting the axe, as even their comparatively poor ratings look good in the scheme of things.
NYT | Hollywood Reporter | Vulture | Business Insider
posted by mykescipark at 5:21 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
This, pretty much. NBC has been skidding into last place among the major networks for anything that isn't football or The Voice. It's a slump that has saved other critically-lauded but underperforming NBC shows like Parenthood from getting the axe, as even their comparatively poor ratings look good in the scheme of things.
NYT | Hollywood Reporter | Vulture | Business Insider
posted by mykescipark at 5:21 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
Yeah, but I think it came into common parlance more recently
From a quick scan of the NYT archives, they started using it fairly regularly (though with an explanation for those not in the know) in 1995. They have it as two words back then.
posted by yoink at 5:28 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
From a quick scan of the NYT archives, they started using it fairly regularly (though with an explanation for those not in the know) in 1995. They have it as two words back then.
posted by yoink at 5:28 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
Can we have season one levels of Chang back, please? The character has gotten out of control and this would be the perfect opportunity for a reset.
posted by MaritaCov at 5:30 PM on June 10, 2013 [17 favorites]
posted by MaritaCov at 5:30 PM on June 10, 2013 [17 favorites]
The character has gotten out of control
The character has always been out of control.
*puppet* He's not what he seems!
posted by Malice at 5:33 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
The character has always been out of control.
*puppet* He's not what he seems!
posted by Malice at 5:33 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
POP POP
The mere fact you call it that tells me that you are not ready.
posted by drezdn at 5:37 PM on June 10, 2013 [22 favorites]
The mere fact you call it that tells me that you are not ready.
posted by drezdn at 5:37 PM on June 10, 2013 [22 favorites]
huh. i totally though this past season finale was the series finale.
as much as i enjoyed the show, i'm kind of sad that it's not the end. it was already becoming a stale caricature at 3. there were fun bits, and parts of 4 i did like, unless they find a way to unflatten the characters and find some new dynamics within their personas, i can't really feel too excited by this news. also i said goodbye to the show in my head already, so it feels weird to re-embrace it.
i wonder if they'll replace pierce in the group.
posted by fuzzypantalones at 5:43 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
as much as i enjoyed the show, i'm kind of sad that it's not the end. it was already becoming a stale caricature at 3. there were fun bits, and parts of 4 i did like, unless they find a way to unflatten the characters and find some new dynamics within their personas, i can't really feel too excited by this news. also i said goodbye to the show in my head already, so it feels weird to re-embrace it.
i wonder if they'll replace pierce in the group.
posted by fuzzypantalones at 5:43 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
Can we have season one levels of Chang back, please?
Are you experiencing a little...Changst?
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 5:43 PM on June 10, 2013 [30 favorites]
Are you experiencing a little...Changst?
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 5:43 PM on June 10, 2013 [30 favorites]
yoink: "From a quick scan of the NYT archives, they started using it fairly regularly (though with an explanation for those not in the know) in 1995. They have it as two words back then."
Google's Ngram viewer graph (yes, I know, limited to scanned books, so not perfectly representative of Internet communications, plus it doesn't have data post-2008) is a pretty good match to the impression I've had about the term's popularity.
posted by Bugbread at 5:45 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
Google's Ngram viewer graph (yes, I know, limited to scanned books, so not perfectly representative of Internet communications, plus it doesn't have data post-2008) is a pretty good match to the impression I've had about the term's popularity.
posted by Bugbread at 5:45 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
"Wonder how he'll keep the gang together after 4 years at 'community college'?"
Yeah, that aspect of the show has bugged the crap out of me since the beginning. It's like Harmon or whoever has only a vague idea of what a community college is, and that it's basically a crappy four-year university that offers four-year undergraduate degrees, which is emphatically not what community colleges are.
But, anyway, if you can accept that they've been doing this for four years anyway, then it doesn't make sense that they've been going full-time in the first place. And so it could take any number of years to lead up to ... well, whatever degree the show thinks these people will get.
What this inaccuracy represents to me, with regard to how the producers/writers see this social milieu (or, rather, don't see, in a kind of contemptuous willful ignorance), is the one thing that has rested underneath the whole history of the show that has made me hate it a little even when I've loved it.
I imagine this issue has been talked about previously here, but I was away from MeFi during this show's existence until recently. I've been needing to get that off my chest. Thanks. :)
"Yeah, but I think it came into common parlance more recently."
It's coincident with the rise of auteur-style TV producers.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 5:45 PM on June 10, 2013
Yeah, that aspect of the show has bugged the crap out of me since the beginning. It's like Harmon or whoever has only a vague idea of what a community college is, and that it's basically a crappy four-year university that offers four-year undergraduate degrees, which is emphatically not what community colleges are.
But, anyway, if you can accept that they've been doing this for four years anyway, then it doesn't make sense that they've been going full-time in the first place. And so it could take any number of years to lead up to ... well, whatever degree the show thinks these people will get.
What this inaccuracy represents to me, with regard to how the producers/writers see this social milieu (or, rather, don't see, in a kind of contemptuous willful ignorance), is the one thing that has rested underneath the whole history of the show that has made me hate it a little even when I've loved it.
I imagine this issue has been talked about previously here, but I was away from MeFi during this show's existence until recently. I've been needing to get that off my chest. Thanks. :)
"Yeah, but I think it came into common parlance more recently."
It's coincident with the rise of auteur-style TV producers.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 5:45 PM on June 10, 2013
"Wonder how he'll keep the gang together after 4 years at "community college"?"
Dude I started CC with almost a year's worth of course credit, and it still took me 3 years to graduate.
3 to 5 years is the average window for completing CC.
posted by oddman at 5:52 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
Dude I started CC with almost a year's worth of course credit, and it still took me 3 years to graduate.
3 to 5 years is the average window for completing CC.
posted by oddman at 5:52 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
I was bracing myself for huge Season 4 disappointment, and found myself quite relieved. It may not have been as inventive as the other seasons, but it did okay.
With the exception of that godawful final episode.
posted by moorooka at 5:53 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
With the exception of that godawful final episode.
posted by moorooka at 5:53 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
I could also see our beloved Study Group taking Continuing Education classes at Greendale.
Community College classes don't have to be for credit.
posted by spinifex23 at 5:54 PM on June 10, 2013
Community College classes don't have to be for credit.
posted by spinifex23 at 5:54 PM on June 10, 2013
"Wonder how he'll keep the gang together after 4 years at "community college"?"
People always say this! The average community college student attends school for 5 years. Many have 4 year degrees!
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:55 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
People always say this! The average community college student attends school for 5 years. Many have 4 year degrees!
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:55 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
(Also, the only ones who graduated at the end of S4 were Pierce and Jeff, and Jeff said that he'd be taking a job nearby so he could drop in from time to time. Presumably everyone else is taking it slow and not taking a full course load.)
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:56 PM on June 10, 2013
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:56 PM on June 10, 2013
I may finally get my Twin Peaks homage from Harmon. My much vaunted Twin Peaks homage.
posted by codacorolla at 5:56 PM on June 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
posted by codacorolla at 5:56 PM on June 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
Jeff completed his requirements in the Season 4 finale.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:56 PM on June 10, 2013
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:56 PM on June 10, 2013
Jeff should be forced to teach there.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:57 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:57 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
I read comments like this and think that I must somehow have got hold of the cheap Korean knock-off version of the first three seasons of Community.
Well, was there a makeover episode? Did anyone's dragon-lady mother demolish offer his girlfriend money to stop dating him? Did they ride bikes around the city for no apparent reason? Did they play the same song at dramatic moments all season long? Was there a makeover episode?
posted by maryr at 6:01 PM on June 10, 2013 [7 favorites]
Well, was there a makeover episode? Did anyone's dragon-lady mother demolish offer his girlfriend money to stop dating him? Did they ride bikes around the city for no apparent reason? Did they play the same song at dramatic moments all season long? Was there a makeover episode?
posted by maryr at 6:01 PM on June 10, 2013 [7 favorites]
Jeff should be forced to teach there.
Does seem like Prof. Duncan will be having a busy summer... maybe Jeff can cover for him come fall?
posted by maryr at 6:05 PM on June 10, 2013
Does seem like Prof. Duncan will be having a busy summer... maybe Jeff can cover for him come fall?
posted by maryr at 6:05 PM on June 10, 2013
Clearly, having burned bridges at his old firm, Jeff becomes the college's in-house lawyer.
posted by kewb at 6:09 PM on June 10, 2013
posted by kewb at 6:09 PM on June 10, 2013
The average community college student attends school for 5 years. Many have 4 year degrees!
I can believe five years, given that many people will go part time. But I've never heard of a community college offering four year degrees.
posted by hoyland at 6:13 PM on June 10, 2013
I can believe five years, given that many people will go part time. But I've never heard of a community college offering four year degrees.
posted by hoyland at 6:13 PM on June 10, 2013
"I can believe five years, given that many people will go part time. But I've never heard of a community college offering four year degrees."
Earlier I Googled the matter on the possibility that things had changed over the last twenty years. According to Wikipedia, there's a small number of community colleges that have begun offering 4-year degrees — it says that 14 states have authorized this. It also mentions that some of them which have begun to offer four year degrees have removed "community" from their names for this reason.
I think it's still quite rare.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 6:21 PM on June 10, 2013
Earlier I Googled the matter on the possibility that things had changed over the last twenty years. According to Wikipedia, there's a small number of community colleges that have begun offering 4-year degrees — it says that 14 states have authorized this. It also mentions that some of them which have begun to offer four year degrees have removed "community" from their names for this reason.
I think it's still quite rare.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 6:21 PM on June 10, 2013
hoyland: Well, that's a line from "Curriculum Unavailable" -- Jeff says it to the psychiatrist. But actually, it is true. Community colleges in at least 21 different states are able to offer bachelor's degrees.
Community Colleges Challenge Hierarchy With 4-Year Degrees (NYT from 2009)
2013 Article from Inside Higher Ed on Michigan allowing community colleges to offer 4 year degrees
posted by Saxon Kane at 6:22 PM on June 10, 2013
Community Colleges Challenge Hierarchy With 4-Year Degrees (NYT from 2009)
2013 Article from Inside Higher Ed on Michigan allowing community colleges to offer 4 year degrees
posted by Saxon Kane at 6:22 PM on June 10, 2013
That HIE article included a link to this 2010 policy brief from American Association of State Colleges and Universities that said that (at that time) there were 54 community colleges with approved baccalaureate programs in the US.
I couldn't find more up-to-date statistics, but according to a US government source, in 2001 there were about 1,600 community colleges in the US.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 6:35 PM on June 10, 2013
I couldn't find more up-to-date statistics, but according to a US government source, in 2001 there were about 1,600 community colleges in the US.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 6:35 PM on June 10, 2013
SIX SEASONS AND A MOVIE
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 6:52 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 6:52 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
KingEdRa: "The same way M*A*S*H managed to make the Korean War last 11 years."
It's a little more difficult for Community because each season is tied to a sequential year. I don't remember M*A*S*H referencing what year of the war they were in.
posted by Mitheral at 6:54 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
It's a little more difficult for Community because each season is tied to a sequential year. I don't remember M*A*S*H referencing what year of the war they were in.
posted by Mitheral at 6:54 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
I read comments like this and think that I must somehow have got hold of the cheap Korean knock-off version of the first three seasons of Community. I mean, it is just FULL of "icky emotional thingies." It's a series absolutely in love with the "moment of shit" where we all grow and learn and hug. Sure, some of the time it's sending it up--though even then it is quite often kidding on the square about it.
I agree that Harmon-era Community was full of sentiment and heartwarming moments too, and I don't get what show people were watching that didn't have a gooey heartwarming center. But Season 4 tipped over into over-saccharine sentiment. I didn't hate Season 4 like a lot of other fans did, but I did find it lacking, and one of the main ways it was lacking for me was that easy dip into sentimentality. The other seasons seemed to maintain an edge and a darkness to counterbalance the sentiment.
Anyway, Community in general is just a perpetual surprise. I've been ready for this show to be cancelled since season two, and now we've managed to limp into a season five, and the once-fired Dan Harmon has returned. Six seasons and a movie just doesn't sound so out there any more.
posted by yasaman at 7:21 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
I agree that Harmon-era Community was full of sentiment and heartwarming moments too, and I don't get what show people were watching that didn't have a gooey heartwarming center. But Season 4 tipped over into over-saccharine sentiment. I didn't hate Season 4 like a lot of other fans did, but I did find it lacking, and one of the main ways it was lacking for me was that easy dip into sentimentality. The other seasons seemed to maintain an edge and a darkness to counterbalance the sentiment.
Anyway, Community in general is just a perpetual surprise. I've been ready for this show to be cancelled since season two, and now we've managed to limp into a season five, and the once-fired Dan Harmon has returned. Six seasons and a movie just doesn't sound so out there any more.
posted by yasaman at 7:21 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
A couple of months ago I did an experiment in which I overlaid the laugh track from an episode of The Big Bang Theory on that week's episode of Community. I was afraid to do a human trial on it without some basic safety tests first so I set it to play on a timer and left the room.
When I came back my houseplants were dead, the TV didn't work anymore but was almost white hot and the sofa upholstery smelled so bad that I had to get rid of it. So I'm not going to upload it for you.
posted by George_Spiggott at 7:36 PM on June 10, 2013 [5 favorites]
When I came back my houseplants were dead, the TV didn't work anymore but was almost white hot and the sofa upholstery smelled so bad that I had to get rid of it. So I'm not going to upload it for you.
posted by George_Spiggott at 7:36 PM on June 10, 2013 [5 favorites]
Season 5 will be uneven, just like Season 4 was uneven and Seasons 1 to 3 were uneven. Only the people who ignored the bad parts of the first three seasons and ignored the good parts of the fourth season will ignore the bad parts of the fifth season, and the people who ignored the good parts of the first three seasons and ignored the bad parts of the fourth season will ignore the good parts of the fifth season. And despite having made some not-very-awesome episodes of Community in his time, Harmon will be blamed for nothing and credited for everything by the small sliver of accidentally insufferable superboosters who make it really, really hard to like him sometimes even if you admire much of what he does.
And it will continue to be a show capable of remarkable feats of invention, with fans divided into a large majority who agitate lovingly and appropriately and a smaller minority who don't realize that they express their enthusiasm in a way so unpleasant that they drive off potential new viewers.
In other words: a season of Community.
posted by Linda_Holmes at 7:40 PM on June 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
And it will continue to be a show capable of remarkable feats of invention, with fans divided into a large majority who agitate lovingly and appropriately and a smaller minority who don't realize that they express their enthusiasm in a way so unpleasant that they drive off potential new viewers.
In other words: a season of Community.
posted by Linda_Holmes at 7:40 PM on June 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
SIX SEASONS AND A DEGREE
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:40 PM on June 10, 2013 [6 favorites]
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:40 PM on June 10, 2013 [6 favorites]
Linda, season 4 had more meh than seasons 1-3 and less WOOO! But it was still OK. I mean, the Sophie B. Hawkins dance was funny!
posted by Mister_A at 7:51 PM on June 10, 2013
posted by Mister_A at 7:51 PM on June 10, 2013
I never saw the show until about the fifth episode of season 4. I actually enjoyed it a lot. Though something did feel a little off about Jeff's shmoopy "what did we learn this week" endings, but I'm probably contaminated by having read a few forum threads like this one. And ditto on the Sophie B. Hawkins dance, mainly for Abed's sitcom trope, even if the real "...and the girl I really wanted was right in front of me the whole time" theme was if anything even more cornball than the mock trope.
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:07 PM on June 10, 2013
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:07 PM on June 10, 2013
RonButNotStupid: "Does this mean Star-burns is also coming back?"
No. Dino Stamatopoulos said in interviews that he's done with the character and is not considering ever reviving it. He's a writer and actor and said he felt limited by Star Burns, who was more of a joke by Dan Harmon than a full-fledged character, or anything that he could have a hand in creating or developing. Not that he didn't have fun with it, but Star Burns is one-dimensional and doesn't have a lot of potential that hasn't already been covered.
posted by krinklyfig at 8:14 PM on June 10, 2013
No. Dino Stamatopoulos said in interviews that he's done with the character and is not considering ever reviving it. He's a writer and actor and said he felt limited by Star Burns, who was more of a joke by Dan Harmon than a full-fledged character, or anything that he could have a hand in creating or developing. Not that he didn't have fun with it, but Star Burns is one-dimensional and doesn't have a lot of potential that hasn't already been covered.
posted by krinklyfig at 8:14 PM on June 10, 2013
HE WILL NOT BE COMING BACK AS STARBURNS BECAUSE DAMMIT HIS NAME IS ALEX
posted by NoraReed at 8:18 PM on June 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
posted by NoraReed at 8:18 PM on June 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
If anyone is really interested in what's going on from Dan Harmon's perspective, he runs a podcast / live show called Harmontown
Warning: a good portion of each podcast is Dan and his buddies playing D&D, and he's often drinking and on the way to getting pretty drunk. It can be entertaining and interesting, but sometimes it's just chaotic and Dan bloviating through a vodka haze, a lot of which is him seeking validation. It can loose its charm after a while, but I find it worth listening to since Harmon's creative output is also discussed.
Also, his twitter feed
I follow both. You guys are slow on the uptake. This news is days old!
posted by krinklyfig at 8:22 PM on June 10, 2013
Warning: a good portion of each podcast is Dan and his buddies playing D&D, and he's often drinking and on the way to getting pretty drunk. It can be entertaining and interesting, but sometimes it's just chaotic and Dan bloviating through a vodka haze, a lot of which is him seeking validation. It can loose its charm after a while, but I find it worth listening to since Harmon's creative output is also discussed.
Also, his twitter feed
I follow both. You guys are slow on the uptake. This news is days old!
posted by krinklyfig at 8:22 PM on June 10, 2013
The same way M*A*S*H managed to make the Korean War last 11 years.
That's not much of an achievement since the Korean War hasn't ended yet.
Similarly, I think Community could just mimic real life and do a show about them dealing with their student debt for the next couple of decades. Just call it Community: Still Paying.
posted by srboisvert at 8:22 PM on June 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
That's not much of an achievement since the Korean War hasn't ended yet.
Similarly, I think Community could just mimic real life and do a show about them dealing with their student debt for the next couple of decades. Just call it Community: Still Paying.
posted by srboisvert at 8:22 PM on June 10, 2013 [3 favorites]
As far as how season 4 fits in, Harmon said he hadn't watched it as of last week, but he was going to and pretty much do a "spiritual reboot" for season 5. More details on the latest Harmontown podcast.
posted by krinklyfig at 8:28 PM on June 10, 2013
posted by krinklyfig at 8:28 PM on June 10, 2013
But Season 4 tipped over into over-saccharine sentiment.
Yeah, my problems with season 4 are as follows:
1. It is frequently saccharine...
2. ...at the expense of consistent characterization. Annie had worked for 3 years to stop idealizing men as pieces in her imagined doll house (often without them realizing the emotional significance they had attained in her mind, cf. her breakdown over Troy and her discussions with Jeff in s. 3 about how they both need to mature before they can be in a relationship). I mean, she has a huge wedding scrapbook, and tends to slot people into these perfect, unattainable futures, but she's also struggling against that tendency. And one of the first episodes of season 4 had Annie doing exactly that, creating a mental doll house, except overtly and with the support of an unknowing hotel clerk.
3. The jokes aren't as funny and didn't land as often. Something consistently felt 'off' about the timing. Jokes that did land felt like they should have been part of a greater whole, but weren't.
4. It pandered. "Do you want more Inspector Spacetime!?" the producers yelled at the pre-season Comiccon. "Do you want the Darkest Timeline!? Do you want more paintball?!" And those produced extremely weak episodes.
The 3rd season wasn't perfect either (too many pop-culture homage episodes, the entire Dictator Chang storyline), but it felt like it was expanding in scope (of subject, of approach) and aspirations instead of the contraction of season 4.
Let's take the Thanksgiving episode for instance. At least in every episode, there was an emotional anchor to why it had become a pop-culture homage (even Basic Lupine Urology, not my favourite, had the central conceit of Annie's ambition and Neil's love for Vicki). Why the hell did Thanksgiving turn into Shawkshank? There's no cruel warden. No horrible scene with the family eating turkey and trying not to kill each other. The entire thing is a shortcut: oh boy aren't family dinners terrible, they're almost like prison. What's a famous prison movie? Shawshank.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 8:39 PM on June 10, 2013 [10 favorites]
Yeah, my problems with season 4 are as follows:
1. It is frequently saccharine...
2. ...at the expense of consistent characterization. Annie had worked for 3 years to stop idealizing men as pieces in her imagined doll house (often without them realizing the emotional significance they had attained in her mind, cf. her breakdown over Troy and her discussions with Jeff in s. 3 about how they both need to mature before they can be in a relationship). I mean, she has a huge wedding scrapbook, and tends to slot people into these perfect, unattainable futures, but she's also struggling against that tendency. And one of the first episodes of season 4 had Annie doing exactly that, creating a mental doll house, except overtly and with the support of an unknowing hotel clerk.
3. The jokes aren't as funny and didn't land as often. Something consistently felt 'off' about the timing. Jokes that did land felt like they should have been part of a greater whole, but weren't.
4. It pandered. "Do you want more Inspector Spacetime!?" the producers yelled at the pre-season Comiccon. "Do you want the Darkest Timeline!? Do you want more paintball?!" And those produced extremely weak episodes.
The 3rd season wasn't perfect either (too many pop-culture homage episodes, the entire Dictator Chang storyline), but it felt like it was expanding in scope (of subject, of approach) and aspirations instead of the contraction of season 4.
Let's take the Thanksgiving episode for instance. At least in every episode, there was an emotional anchor to why it had become a pop-culture homage (even Basic Lupine Urology, not my favourite, had the central conceit of Annie's ambition and Neil's love for Vicki). Why the hell did Thanksgiving turn into Shawkshank? There's no cruel warden. No horrible scene with the family eating turkey and trying not to kill each other. The entire thing is a shortcut: oh boy aren't family dinners terrible, they're almost like prison. What's a famous prison movie? Shawshank.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 8:39 PM on June 10, 2013 [10 favorites]
HostBryan: "Yeah, color me not excited. Community's problems run deeper than Harmon - the first half of Season 3 wasn't great, though the last half was pretty strong. "
The entire cast and writing staff wanted him back. I think it says a lot when the people who are directly involved in the creation of the show publicly call for the show's creator to return, even though the show has been on the chopping block for years. I think the best outcome is what happened, Chevy Chase leaving the show and Harmon, et al, returning.
posted by krinklyfig at 8:42 PM on June 10, 2013
The entire cast and writing staff wanted him back. I think it says a lot when the people who are directly involved in the creation of the show publicly call for the show's creator to return, even though the show has been on the chopping block for years. I think the best outcome is what happened, Chevy Chase leaving the show and Harmon, et al, returning.
posted by krinklyfig at 8:42 PM on June 10, 2013
krinklyfig: "HostBryan: "Yeah, color me not excited. Community's problems run deeper than Harmon - the first half of Season 3 wasn't great, though the last half was pretty strong."
The entire cast and writing staff wanted him back. I think it says a lot when the people who are directly involved in the creation of the show publicly call for the show's creator to return, even though the show has been on the chopping block for years. I think the best outcome is what happened, Chevy Chase leaving the show and Harmon, et al, returning.
posted by krinklyfig at 8:43 PM on June 10, 2013
The entire cast and writing staff wanted him back. I think it says a lot when the people who are directly involved in the creation of the show publicly call for the show's creator to return, even though the show has been on the chopping block for years. I think the best outcome is what happened, Chevy Chase leaving the show and Harmon, et al, returning.
posted by krinklyfig at 8:43 PM on June 10, 2013
I have no idea how that ended up a double comment. I just edited it and the double appeared ...
posted by krinklyfig at 8:44 PM on June 10, 2013
posted by krinklyfig at 8:44 PM on June 10, 2013
I have no idea how that ended up a double comment. I just edited it and the double appeared ...
That's the alternate timeline comment. You can tell by the italics which is like a text goatee.
posted by srboisvert at 8:47 PM on June 10, 2013 [8 favorites]
That's the alternate timeline comment. You can tell by the italics which is like a text goatee.
posted by srboisvert at 8:47 PM on June 10, 2013 [8 favorites]
Ah, the darkest timeline ...
posted by krinklyfig at 8:47 PM on June 10, 2013
posted by krinklyfig at 8:47 PM on June 10, 2013
Also, your second comment cut off my arm.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 9:27 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 9:27 PM on June 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
So I wrote a whole essay on the relationship between Dan Harmon and Community a few months ago, and while I'm saving it for release on an upcoming blog project thingie, the gist is this: what Dan Harmon understands that seemingly nobody but Dan Harmon can replicate is that at the core of Community is a strong, fierce cruelty, not towards its characters but from them. The original conception of every character except for maybe Britta is that they are fiercely selfish, willing to hurt each other for their own self-gain, and even their early probes at being decent people aren't real kindness, but Machiavellian varieties: it's "I'll pretend to be nice to you, I'll pretend not to screw you over, and that way we can still be friends."
This is important for two reasons: first off, it made the show fucking funny. Harmon is simply funnier than all his other writers, and you can see that in how quickly Megan Ganz went from an acclaimed "concept" writer to a shitty writer period without Harmon editing her. Look back to even the first episode, and you'll see that the best jokes all come from a pretty mean place: the "shark week and Ben Affleck" monologue is only funny because Dan Harmon hates Good Will Hunting with a passion, and the contempt he feels for that movie underlines the very fact that he finds a joke like that funny. It's raw and it's great, which is why I'm baffled at all the people who found season 1 somehow lacking or "sitcom-ish". Harmon got his start in online video, and that Internet mean-ness comes through early and often.
But second off, it gave the show its emotional core. It shows its characters hurt, and not just hurt but hurt by each other. Hurt over petty things, over big lies, over pretty much anything it's possible for one person to hurt another person over. And at all times the study group held together not because they liked each other, but because they needed each other. It's an emotionally honest note that sounded loudly from the start: we don't love people for their best traits or some such bullshit. The best in people is tied inextricably from the worst in them. And boy did Community know that.
I am positive, speaking as somebody who's watched the run of the show at least a half dozen times, probably more, that the first season of Community is the strongest, even as the second one was the most ambitious and the third was the zaniest. The first season's the only one with anything like a coherent arc—every character moves from an interesting start to an interesting finish, having changed substantially along the way, yet the finale sets things up so that nearly all of them are facing a new conflict going into the next season. And it's because the characters were so powerfully conflicted to begin with that this works. It's also what made the earlier gimmick episodes work so well—the world could go insane, but the gang stayed strong throughout it, taking on whichever roles they seemed to fit best in. It both revealed nuances within the group and critiqued the genre it was parodying, in a similar "the best is also the worst" kind of way. The most satisfying cliches are also the oldest and most worn-out, and if you can embody the one while making fun of the other, you've got damn good TV.
Season two has probably the best episodes of the entire show, but you can see major cracks forming along the way, right from the start. Plotting is much looser, because the show spent so much time on gimmick episodes that required Enormous Drama that it couldn't deal with subtler character developments along the way. Annie wants to transfer! Wait, no, now we're not gonna bring that up ever again. Whoops. But SPACE! And they tried doing the thing they did with paintball sex and add plot twists in a gimmick episode that kept on mattering past the episode, but it got less and less satisfying each time because the twists were uniformly absurd. The worst plot arcs in season two? Well, "Shirley might have Chang's baby", and "Pierce is the arch-villain", and "Abed is hallucinating, and the whole paintball finale, and really any other time where the writers tried to make character developments matter past the episode where they were arbitrarily revealed.
In the process, the show also ruined its strongest characters. Britta, who was an interesting mix of passionate and naive, couldn't just be the character trying to figure out her place in the world – that would make her too much like a lead! So instead she got massively nerfed and the show started seeing just how stupid it could make her look, since you can only bring up serious issues in a comedy if you have a) pathos or b) a seeming brain disorder. Shirley, whose earlier episodes saw her dealing with the realization that her path to religious faith was not the only one that led to morality, and who even got a great episode involving her struggling with how few people seem to have faith the way she does anymore, got increasingly pigeonholed as the angry black Christian woman. Troy went from being narcissistic ex-jock to just being a goofy lovable guy, and while he is wonderfully lovable, the writers pretty much stopped knowing what to do with him. It's hard to write a character that has no flaws, which is why the third season had to resurrect an old dead joke and make him the Air Conditioning Messiah. And Abed, who was great in short doses as an outsider with a strange perspective on the study group that revealed their absurdities through his own, increasingly became the heart of the show, less out of any conscious plan than because making Abed the heart meant more excuses for parody episodes.
For the most part, though, that worked in season two, though it ruined half of the non-gimmick episodes and it led to a thoroughly lackluster finale. In season three, though, we went in with a series of characters whose dimensions had been reduced, a bunch of gimmick ideas so specific that they pretty much warped the episodes they were in, and a couple of season-long arc ideas that were easily the worst things the show has ever done. The gimmick episodes that paid off – for me, those are Remedial Chaos Theory and the Halloween episode – were tantalizing reminders that the show, at its best, uses gimmick to reveal emotional depth, and in some ways were among the best that Community's ever done. Remedial Chaos Theory in particular was a virtuosic construct that lets us get a crazy amount of character revelation precisely because of how it's built. But then you had the Law and Order episode, which was a complete throwaway (though funny), and the video game and the Ken Burns episodes, each of which were so obsessed with their own conceits that the only thing resembling "character growth" you got from them was this saccharine oversweetness that feels like the antithesis of what made Community great in the first place.
In some ways I think season four handled character development better than the last season-and-a-half did, because it fucking developed its characters. My friends and I all loved the Inspector Spacetime episode, not because it was funny (funny was too much to ask from this season), but because it contained multiple whole discussions between characters where they talked shit out like adults and tried to get a grip on each other. Still far too sweet and not nearly enough bitter, but it hit a note that Community under Harmon had given up on hitting. At the same time, it hit the gimmick notes SO much that it made it more apparent just how weak a show based on gimmicks really is. Yet that was kind of satisfying for me too, in the sense that it wasn't doing anything bad that Community hadn't already been doing badly. But it was done so terribly that it revealed just what a downward spiral the show'd been on as-is. And it also revealed just how important Dan Harmon is to making this show actually worth watching.
So while I'm glad that Harmon's returning, I'm much gladder that McKenna is returning as well. I think that some of the most interesting character dynamics have popped up under him – he wrote the Valentine's Day episode where Britta drunk dials Jeff, the one with the high school douchebags, and the conspiracy episode, which in my opinion is the perfect Community episode the way Last Exit to Springfield is the perfect Simpsons episode. It's not that it does any one thing staggeringly well, it's that it does every single thing that makes Community good at once. If just one more episode that good comes along, then it'll have made this new season worth watching.
Community's always been a mess of a show, and every season it's a different kind of mess. (I think that the first season isn't a mess at all, but other people hate it, so hey.) Hopefully season five is so burnt out by the excesses of the last 2.5 seasons that it tries to get its shit together, instead of just aiming for the most madness at once the way three did. We had a season of that, it's cool that it got made, but maybe it would be nice to have a show trying to be a good show again, you know?
In some ways, the season four finale was the perfect representation of all the things Community wished it could be but never was – that it found a way to combine paintball with the alternate timelines with unnecessary shipping between Jeff-Annie and Britta-Troy was magnificently awful. All those things have a common thread: they were all great the first time they happened, and fans loved them, and then they were brought back as fansterbation with the one thing that made them interesting, the fresh novelty factor, completely removed. Community gets worse the more it gives a shit about its fans. With luck, a year away has given Harmon enough juice that he'll be able to cut new paths and create something new but good, and not succumb to the idiotic fan adoration that's his seeming Achilles Heel.
(Fans of Doctor Who will have to explain to me whether it's fans that made Doctor Who so shitty, or if it was just a shitty show from the start. Another possibility is that it's good when Stephen Moffat's not in charge – I've only seen episodes from the Moffat era, and Moffat is a known shitheel – but it always feels to me like Doctor Who fans and Community fans are irritating in the exact same ways, no?)
posted by Rory Marinich at 10:22 PM on June 10, 2013 [36 favorites]
This is important for two reasons: first off, it made the show fucking funny. Harmon is simply funnier than all his other writers, and you can see that in how quickly Megan Ganz went from an acclaimed "concept" writer to a shitty writer period without Harmon editing her. Look back to even the first episode, and you'll see that the best jokes all come from a pretty mean place: the "shark week and Ben Affleck" monologue is only funny because Dan Harmon hates Good Will Hunting with a passion, and the contempt he feels for that movie underlines the very fact that he finds a joke like that funny. It's raw and it's great, which is why I'm baffled at all the people who found season 1 somehow lacking or "sitcom-ish". Harmon got his start in online video, and that Internet mean-ness comes through early and often.
But second off, it gave the show its emotional core. It shows its characters hurt, and not just hurt but hurt by each other. Hurt over petty things, over big lies, over pretty much anything it's possible for one person to hurt another person over. And at all times the study group held together not because they liked each other, but because they needed each other. It's an emotionally honest note that sounded loudly from the start: we don't love people for their best traits or some such bullshit. The best in people is tied inextricably from the worst in them. And boy did Community know that.
I am positive, speaking as somebody who's watched the run of the show at least a half dozen times, probably more, that the first season of Community is the strongest, even as the second one was the most ambitious and the third was the zaniest. The first season's the only one with anything like a coherent arc—every character moves from an interesting start to an interesting finish, having changed substantially along the way, yet the finale sets things up so that nearly all of them are facing a new conflict going into the next season. And it's because the characters were so powerfully conflicted to begin with that this works. It's also what made the earlier gimmick episodes work so well—the world could go insane, but the gang stayed strong throughout it, taking on whichever roles they seemed to fit best in. It both revealed nuances within the group and critiqued the genre it was parodying, in a similar "the best is also the worst" kind of way. The most satisfying cliches are also the oldest and most worn-out, and if you can embody the one while making fun of the other, you've got damn good TV.
Season two has probably the best episodes of the entire show, but you can see major cracks forming along the way, right from the start. Plotting is much looser, because the show spent so much time on gimmick episodes that required Enormous Drama that it couldn't deal with subtler character developments along the way. Annie wants to transfer! Wait, no, now we're not gonna bring that up ever again. Whoops. But SPACE! And they tried doing the thing they did with paintball sex and add plot twists in a gimmick episode that kept on mattering past the episode, but it got less and less satisfying each time because the twists were uniformly absurd. The worst plot arcs in season two? Well, "Shirley might have Chang's baby", and "Pierce is the arch-villain", and "Abed is hallucinating, and the whole paintball finale, and really any other time where the writers tried to make character developments matter past the episode where they were arbitrarily revealed.
In the process, the show also ruined its strongest characters. Britta, who was an interesting mix of passionate and naive, couldn't just be the character trying to figure out her place in the world – that would make her too much like a lead! So instead she got massively nerfed and the show started seeing just how stupid it could make her look, since you can only bring up serious issues in a comedy if you have a) pathos or b) a seeming brain disorder. Shirley, whose earlier episodes saw her dealing with the realization that her path to religious faith was not the only one that led to morality, and who even got a great episode involving her struggling with how few people seem to have faith the way she does anymore, got increasingly pigeonholed as the angry black Christian woman. Troy went from being narcissistic ex-jock to just being a goofy lovable guy, and while he is wonderfully lovable, the writers pretty much stopped knowing what to do with him. It's hard to write a character that has no flaws, which is why the third season had to resurrect an old dead joke and make him the Air Conditioning Messiah. And Abed, who was great in short doses as an outsider with a strange perspective on the study group that revealed their absurdities through his own, increasingly became the heart of the show, less out of any conscious plan than because making Abed the heart meant more excuses for parody episodes.
For the most part, though, that worked in season two, though it ruined half of the non-gimmick episodes and it led to a thoroughly lackluster finale. In season three, though, we went in with a series of characters whose dimensions had been reduced, a bunch of gimmick ideas so specific that they pretty much warped the episodes they were in, and a couple of season-long arc ideas that were easily the worst things the show has ever done. The gimmick episodes that paid off – for me, those are Remedial Chaos Theory and the Halloween episode – were tantalizing reminders that the show, at its best, uses gimmick to reveal emotional depth, and in some ways were among the best that Community's ever done. Remedial Chaos Theory in particular was a virtuosic construct that lets us get a crazy amount of character revelation precisely because of how it's built. But then you had the Law and Order episode, which was a complete throwaway (though funny), and the video game and the Ken Burns episodes, each of which were so obsessed with their own conceits that the only thing resembling "character growth" you got from them was this saccharine oversweetness that feels like the antithesis of what made Community great in the first place.
In some ways I think season four handled character development better than the last season-and-a-half did, because it fucking developed its characters. My friends and I all loved the Inspector Spacetime episode, not because it was funny (funny was too much to ask from this season), but because it contained multiple whole discussions between characters where they talked shit out like adults and tried to get a grip on each other. Still far too sweet and not nearly enough bitter, but it hit a note that Community under Harmon had given up on hitting. At the same time, it hit the gimmick notes SO much that it made it more apparent just how weak a show based on gimmicks really is. Yet that was kind of satisfying for me too, in the sense that it wasn't doing anything bad that Community hadn't already been doing badly. But it was done so terribly that it revealed just what a downward spiral the show'd been on as-is. And it also revealed just how important Dan Harmon is to making this show actually worth watching.
So while I'm glad that Harmon's returning, I'm much gladder that McKenna is returning as well. I think that some of the most interesting character dynamics have popped up under him – he wrote the Valentine's Day episode where Britta drunk dials Jeff, the one with the high school douchebags, and the conspiracy episode, which in my opinion is the perfect Community episode the way Last Exit to Springfield is the perfect Simpsons episode. It's not that it does any one thing staggeringly well, it's that it does every single thing that makes Community good at once. If just one more episode that good comes along, then it'll have made this new season worth watching.
Community's always been a mess of a show, and every season it's a different kind of mess. (I think that the first season isn't a mess at all, but other people hate it, so hey.) Hopefully season five is so burnt out by the excesses of the last 2.5 seasons that it tries to get its shit together, instead of just aiming for the most madness at once the way three did. We had a season of that, it's cool that it got made, but maybe it would be nice to have a show trying to be a good show again, you know?
In some ways, the season four finale was the perfect representation of all the things Community wished it could be but never was – that it found a way to combine paintball with the alternate timelines with unnecessary shipping between Jeff-Annie and Britta-Troy was magnificently awful. All those things have a common thread: they were all great the first time they happened, and fans loved them, and then they were brought back as fansterbation with the one thing that made them interesting, the fresh novelty factor, completely removed. Community gets worse the more it gives a shit about its fans. With luck, a year away has given Harmon enough juice that he'll be able to cut new paths and create something new but good, and not succumb to the idiotic fan adoration that's his seeming Achilles Heel.
(Fans of Doctor Who will have to explain to me whether it's fans that made Doctor Who so shitty, or if it was just a shitty show from the start. Another possibility is that it's good when Stephen Moffat's not in charge – I've only seen episodes from the Moffat era, and Moffat is a known shitheel – but it always feels to me like Doctor Who fans and Community fans are irritating in the exact same ways, no?)
posted by Rory Marinich at 10:22 PM on June 10, 2013 [36 favorites]
Only two comments seem to have used Abed's name.
This thread could use some more Abed.
Abed's so funny and wacky and alien!
Abed.
That's who I'm talking about.
Abed.
The main man.
He's practically like the weird one in The Big Bang Theory. And I am told that rates well.
So, we need more Abed.
(Abed)
posted by Mezentian at 10:31 PM on June 10, 2013
This thread could use some more Abed.
Abed's so funny and wacky and alien!
Abed.
That's who I'm talking about.
Abed.
The main man.
He's practically like the weird one in The Big Bang Theory. And I am told that rates well.
So, we need more Abed.
(Abed)
posted by Mezentian at 10:31 PM on June 10, 2013
but it always feels to me like Doctor Who fans and Community fans are irritating in the exact same ways, no?)
No.
Doctor Who fans are a special breed of loathsome parasite.
They've been warped, mutated over the decades, and they need special machines to chumble around in, marinating in their hatred.
Whether the show is good or bad now depends on what one likes.
In my experience there's not much similarity between the two.
Harmon is the heart and soul of Community.
No one person is Doctor Who. Even before there were showrunners there was plenty of haterade to go around.
Moffatt is an above average writer (one of the best) who, when given the keys to the kingdom, has made enemies. He's the arm on the tiller, not the heart and soul.
posted by Mezentian at 10:37 PM on June 10, 2013
No.
Doctor Who fans are a special breed of loathsome parasite.
They've been warped, mutated over the decades, and they need special machines to chumble around in, marinating in their hatred.
Whether the show is good or bad now depends on what one likes.
In my experience there's not much similarity between the two.
Harmon is the heart and soul of Community.
No one person is Doctor Who. Even before there were showrunners there was plenty of haterade to go around.
Moffatt is an above average writer (one of the best) who, when given the keys to the kingdom, has made enemies. He's the arm on the tiller, not the heart and soul.
posted by Mezentian at 10:37 PM on June 10, 2013
Fanservice and pandering be damned, I loved the cheap shot at focus groups whose idea of "focus" is "what do the most vacuous and irrelevant clowns we can find think" and at American remakes in general, and the smooth schlock of Luke Perry and Jennie Garth made me laugh like a loon. I don't care if it's Not Authentic because Dan Harmon Didn't Do It. Cheap and obvious? Sure. It was actually improved by being cheap and obvious.
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:29 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:29 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
Except for the parts where they pretty much try to slap you in the face with the laziest and most uncreative pandering a 13 year old could write.
Jeff:"Hey, Dean, blah blah blah like that movie POP CULTURE REFERENCE blah blah."
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 11:54 PM on June 10, 2013
Jeff:"Hey, Dean, blah blah blah like that movie POP CULTURE REFERENCE blah blah."
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 11:54 PM on June 10, 2013
Jeff:"Hey, Dean, blah blah blah like that movie POP CULTURE REFERENCE blah blah."
It's like Deaning a Changtastic Family Guy script.
posted by Mezentian at 12:29 AM on June 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
It's like Deaning a Changtastic Family Guy script.
posted by Mezentian at 12:29 AM on June 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Fans of community are hard on it. Perhaps because its trying to do too many things at once and often succeeds but sometimes fails. I've only seen the first two seasons (being in the UK is super fun if you don't want to have to download shows!), and a lot of it works, but the Pierce as villain thing ends up being tonally weird occasionally.
I mean, I don't think people have ever held up 30 rock or how I met your mother to much scrutiny in this manner. I guess its because 30 rock never tries to be particularly emotionally smart (although it can be), and how I met your mother, for all that it has some pretty funny episodes, is often quite compromised in its characters and story.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 1:00 AM on June 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
I mean, I don't think people have ever held up 30 rock or how I met your mother to much scrutiny in this manner. I guess its because 30 rock never tries to be particularly emotionally smart (although it can be), and how I met your mother, for all that it has some pretty funny episodes, is often quite compromised in its characters and story.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 1:00 AM on June 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Season 4 was okay, but it was essentially Community fanfiction. Looking forward to what's next.
posted by jbickers at 5:28 AM on June 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by jbickers at 5:28 AM on June 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
To this day I don't understand people complaining about Britta's character getting nerfed. Gillian Jacobs is hugely funny; having her as the Always Prudent Naysayer To Jeff's Sitcom Bad Boy pretty much kept her from being funny. The problem with the first third of Season One is that it keeps Jeff as the lead and Britta has his romantic foil, making the show essentially Everybody Loves Raymond Goes To College.
posted by shakespeherian at 6:25 AM on June 11, 2013
posted by shakespeherian at 6:25 AM on June 11, 2013
I am excited to see Harmon return and also very anxious to see how a year off will affect him and how he sees Community in its fifth season.
Season 4 was a season of a show trying to grasp at its greatness, but never really getting a grip on what lead the show to its best episodes in the past. It's as if they were given the ingredients, but not the recipe, or at the worse, not the complete recipe. It was the type of recipe that was passed down by someone else and conveyed in pinches of that or a handful of this, nothing precise or uniform. A highly personalized recipe, I suppose you could say.
I presume Chang will slip into the role that Pierce possessed, as that member of the group that not everyone always likes, or even barely tolerates, and gets to sit in as a foil against expectations of empathy, political correctness, and other hallmarks that Pierce the character cultivated at his end of the table.
Season 5, I like to think will be better than Season 4, and if we can end on a higher note, I can live with that.
posted by Atreides at 6:39 AM on June 11, 2013
Season 4 was a season of a show trying to grasp at its greatness, but never really getting a grip on what lead the show to its best episodes in the past. It's as if they were given the ingredients, but not the recipe, or at the worse, not the complete recipe. It was the type of recipe that was passed down by someone else and conveyed in pinches of that or a handful of this, nothing precise or uniform. A highly personalized recipe, I suppose you could say.
I presume Chang will slip into the role that Pierce possessed, as that member of the group that not everyone always likes, or even barely tolerates, and gets to sit in as a foil against expectations of empathy, political correctness, and other hallmarks that Pierce the character cultivated at his end of the table.
Season 5, I like to think will be better than Season 4, and if we can end on a higher note, I can live with that.
posted by Atreides at 6:39 AM on June 11, 2013
Wonder how he'll keep the gang together after 4 years at "community college"?
Clearly, having burned bridges at his old firm, Jeff becomes the college's in-house lawyer.
I think Jeff should be a teacher at Glendale. Six seasons and a movie!
I wish this show would get the M.A.S.H. treatment and run 14 years.
posted by QueerAngel28 at 6:40 AM on June 11, 2013
Clearly, having burned bridges at his old firm, Jeff becomes the college's in-house lawyer.
I think Jeff should be a teacher at Glendale. Six seasons and a movie!
I wish this show would get the M.A.S.H. treatment and run 14 years.
posted by QueerAngel28 at 6:40 AM on June 11, 2013
Yes, well, this is just the sort blinkered philistine pig ignorance I've come to expect from you non-creative garbage. . . You sit there on your loathsome, spotty behinds squeezing blackheads, not caring a tinker's cuss about the struggling artist. You excrement!
You lousy hypocritical whining toadies with your lousy "showrunner" lingo sets and your Dan Harmon golf clubs and your bleeding MetaFilter handshakes! You wouldn't let me join, would you, you blackballing bastards. Well I wouldn't become a Mefite now if you went down on your lousy, stinking, purulent knees and begged me!
*slam*
/open
Six seasons and a movie.
/shut
posted by petebest at 6:56 AM on June 11, 2013 [4 favorites]
You lousy hypocritical whining toadies with your lousy "showrunner" lingo sets and your Dan Harmon golf clubs and your bleeding MetaFilter handshakes! You wouldn't let me join, would you, you blackballing bastards. Well I wouldn't become a Mefite now if you went down on your lousy, stinking, purulent knees and begged me!
*slam*
/open
Six seasons and a movie.
/shut
posted by petebest at 6:56 AM on June 11, 2013 [4 favorites]
Honestly, I can't offer any cogent criticism of Season 4, because while I have watched the other seasons more times than I care to mention, I basically watched Season 4 once and then moved on. Except for a couple of episodes, there was nothing to keep me coming back.
Typically what kills a well-written show as time goes on is that the characters become caricatures of themselves. And the writing becomes about hitting those same jokes again and again. Ross is a such a loser. Homer is so fat and lazy. Barney is such a ladies' man. What has made Community work for me is that the characters started off as caricatures but became deeper and more complex while still being essentially themselves. The show veered into caricature territory in Season 4.
Though I confess that Chang has been a caricature since Season 2. They need to fix that.
posted by dry white toast at 7:11 AM on June 11, 2013
Typically what kills a well-written show as time goes on is that the characters become caricatures of themselves. And the writing becomes about hitting those same jokes again and again. Ross is a such a loser. Homer is so fat and lazy. Barney is such a ladies' man. What has made Community work for me is that the characters started off as caricatures but became deeper and more complex while still being essentially themselves. The show veered into caricature territory in Season 4.
Though I confess that Chang has been a caricature since Season 2. They need to fix that.
posted by dry white toast at 7:11 AM on June 11, 2013
To this day I don't understand people complaining about Britta's character getting nerfed. Gillian Jacobs is hugely funny; having her as the Always Prudent Naysayer To Jeff's Sitcom Bad Boy pretty much kept her from being funny. The problem with the first third of Season One is that it keeps Jeff as the lead and Britta has his romantic foil, making the show essentially Everybody Loves Raymond Goes To College.
Gillian Jacobs is brilliant, but in the first season Britta is Jeff's equal or even his better, able to see through his shit but remain unfazed by it, capable of helping him out without once making him think like he's getting something out of her because she wants him. What made early Britta great is that she was a character who could kiss or even have sex with Jeff and not be the romantic lead; she's just a woman who can have sex with a guy if she wants. Even in the "Jeff Winger I love you" end to the season, it's obvious that she's not saying that because it's true, she's saying it because she's trying to outdo Jeff's ex.
The thing is, while Jeff Winger is lead by right of "the show's central theme is community and realizing that it's important", Britta is in every way the more shit-got-together person, emotionally speaking. She's able to date a guy and have it be a normal, stable relationship, until Jeff and Shirley fuck it up for her! She watches out for her friends and seemingly has coasting through community college down pat, and she's not doing blow-off classes like Jeff is! Her major "flaw", so to speak, is that she's not doing as much as she wants to do; she's not out there furthering her radical liberal agenda or whatever. But I could see a Community wherein Britta's activist aims are taken seriously, she goes about trying to accomplish things despite how hard that is to do at a community college, and her funniness comes from how smart and incisive and crushing she is, rather than from the fact that she's seemingly too stupid to breathe.
Britta as romantic foil was fun to watch and Gillian was good at that, because from the start Community didn't buy that Britta was going to be suckered into any bullshit. They dispel the will-they-or-won't-they in the third episode, in a wonderfully cynical kiss, by episode 4 Britta's with Vaughn, and by episode 7 Jeff's hitting on Slater instead. It's such a fast-paced set of developments that I have to think the people who dislike early season 1 went in thinking "oh this is cliche this sucks what bullshit" and kept on thinking that even as Community deconstructed all those cliches in literally the first episode.
posted by Rory Marinich at 7:31 AM on June 11, 2013 [6 favorites]
Gillian Jacobs is brilliant, but in the first season Britta is Jeff's equal or even his better, able to see through his shit but remain unfazed by it, capable of helping him out without once making him think like he's getting something out of her because she wants him. What made early Britta great is that she was a character who could kiss or even have sex with Jeff and not be the romantic lead; she's just a woman who can have sex with a guy if she wants. Even in the "Jeff Winger I love you" end to the season, it's obvious that she's not saying that because it's true, she's saying it because she's trying to outdo Jeff's ex.
The thing is, while Jeff Winger is lead by right of "the show's central theme is community and realizing that it's important", Britta is in every way the more shit-got-together person, emotionally speaking. She's able to date a guy and have it be a normal, stable relationship, until Jeff and Shirley fuck it up for her! She watches out for her friends and seemingly has coasting through community college down pat, and she's not doing blow-off classes like Jeff is! Her major "flaw", so to speak, is that she's not doing as much as she wants to do; she's not out there furthering her radical liberal agenda or whatever. But I could see a Community wherein Britta's activist aims are taken seriously, she goes about trying to accomplish things despite how hard that is to do at a community college, and her funniness comes from how smart and incisive and crushing she is, rather than from the fact that she's seemingly too stupid to breathe.
Britta as romantic foil was fun to watch and Gillian was good at that, because from the start Community didn't buy that Britta was going to be suckered into any bullshit. They dispel the will-they-or-won't-they in the third episode, in a wonderfully cynical kiss, by episode 4 Britta's with Vaughn, and by episode 7 Jeff's hitting on Slater instead. It's such a fast-paced set of developments that I have to think the people who dislike early season 1 went in thinking "oh this is cliche this sucks what bullshit" and kept on thinking that even as Community deconstructed all those cliches in literally the first episode.
posted by Rory Marinich at 7:31 AM on June 11, 2013 [6 favorites]
But I could see a Community wherein Britta's activist aims are taken seriously, she goes about trying to accomplish things despite how hard that is to do at a community college, and her funniness comes from how smart and incisive and crushing she is, rather than from the fact that she's seemingly too stupid to breathe.
I'd like that, but my point is that in the first third of the first season they don't let Britta be funny because she has to spend all her time being the adult to Jeff's cool kid. The big reason the show improved ca. ep 7 is that it deemphasized Jeff as scumbag lead who will slowly grow up because he's surrounded by misfits and started paying more attention to the misfits-- and making Jeff just another misfit. Part of that transition deemphasized Britta as the One Who Sees Through Jeff's Shit, because Jeff's Shit was no longer the show's main plot. Which means that Britta has to be one of the misfits too. I think it became a stronger show for it-- and to be clear, I don't think anyone dislikes the first season (even compared to later seasons), it's really just those first six episodes that posit Jeff as lead.
posted by shakespeherian at 7:41 AM on June 11, 2013
I'd like that, but my point is that in the first third of the first season they don't let Britta be funny because she has to spend all her time being the adult to Jeff's cool kid. The big reason the show improved ca. ep 7 is that it deemphasized Jeff as scumbag lead who will slowly grow up because he's surrounded by misfits and started paying more attention to the misfits-- and making Jeff just another misfit. Part of that transition deemphasized Britta as the One Who Sees Through Jeff's Shit, because Jeff's Shit was no longer the show's main plot. Which means that Britta has to be one of the misfits too. I think it became a stronger show for it-- and to be clear, I don't think anyone dislikes the first season (even compared to later seasons), it's really just those first six episodes that posit Jeff as lead.
posted by shakespeherian at 7:41 AM on June 11, 2013
I don't know, I think Britta's plenty funny early on. But it's often funny in a makes-Jeff-fall-flat-on-his-face way.
And I don't see the study group as "misfits". If anything, it's their self-perception as such that makes them such a clique that the rest of the school seems to actively dislike. None of the things that any of them do make them outsiders in any sense—even their identities are relatively mainstream Americana. (Lawyer? Rich business owner? Former football star? Obsessive student? Pretty alienating stuff there.)
posted by Rory Marinich at 8:00 AM on June 11, 2013
And I don't see the study group as "misfits". If anything, it's their self-perception as such that makes them such a clique that the rest of the school seems to actively dislike. None of the things that any of them do make them outsiders in any sense—even their identities are relatively mainstream Americana. (Lawyer? Rich business owner? Former football star? Obsessive student? Pretty alienating stuff there.)
posted by Rory Marinich at 8:00 AM on June 11, 2013
There is a great sophomoric joke to be made about who everyone's favorite character really is.
posted by oddman at 8:51 AM on June 11, 2013
posted by oddman at 8:51 AM on June 11, 2013
Favorite or identify with? I identify most strongly with (original) Britta and Annie. I'm not sure I have a favorite. Maybe Abed.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:57 AM on June 11, 2013
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:57 AM on June 11, 2013
Abed is a Shaman. You ask him to pass the salt, he gives you a bowl of soup because you know what? Soup is better.
And that's from the series premiere. Raymondesque? OUCH.
posted by Lorin at 8:59 AM on June 11, 2013
And that's from the series premiere. Raymondesque? OUCH.
posted by Lorin at 8:59 AM on June 11, 2013
However sitcom-typical the plot constructions of the first season were at times, we're still talking about a show that cold-opened on Jeff's meeting an obviously on-the-spectrum Abed. Also, Footall, Feminism and You is still one of my favourite episodes.
posted by Lorin at 9:00 AM on June 11, 2013
posted by Lorin at 9:00 AM on June 11, 2013
Metafilter is already 76% Rory by volume, I don't see why we shouldn't expand that to the entire written world.
posted by forgetful snow at 9:11 AM on June 11, 2013
posted by forgetful snow at 9:11 AM on June 11, 2013
I heard the Rory Mariachi was THE dance craze of the late 1990s.
I definitely need to go back and start a Community re-watch. Sometimes I have trouble believing that such a show exists and yet, when I tell people to watch it, they stare blankly at me, reinforcing that fear that perhaps it doesn't.
posted by Atreides at 9:41 AM on June 11, 2013
I definitely need to go back and start a Community re-watch. Sometimes I have trouble believing that such a show exists and yet, when I tell people to watch it, they stare blankly at me, reinforcing that fear that perhaps it doesn't.
posted by Atreides at 9:41 AM on June 11, 2013
On any given day, the Boolean that Community exists is best described as a Hilbert space <Φ|Ψ> when Φ represents the Harmon to Season ratio (as Season approaches Movie), and Ψ represents the darkness to timeline vector, and the tensor product is an expression of the real set of Abeds.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:06 AM on June 11, 2013
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:06 AM on June 11, 2013
My local community college offers four year degrees. It's not unusual or uncommon.
posted by Malice at 11:54 AM on June 11, 2013
posted by Malice at 11:54 AM on June 11, 2013
"My local community college offers four year degrees. It's not unusual or uncommon."
Yes it is. I just researched it and posted about it in this thread.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:17 PM on June 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Yes it is. I just researched it and posted about it in this thread.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:17 PM on June 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Isn't Rory Marinich the leading candidate to replace Matt Smith on Doctor Who?
And Rory is actually the 7th listed Ingredient by Volume on the latest batch of MetaFilter, behind The Whelk, elizardbits and others too long-named to mention.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:00 PM on June 11, 2013
And Rory is actually the 7th listed Ingredient by Volume on the latest batch of MetaFilter, behind The Whelk, elizardbits and others too long-named to mention.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:00 PM on June 11, 2013
I'm glad to see that other people (ie, Rory Marinich) love S1 as much as I do. In many ways, it is my favorite, and definitely the one that I watch when I'm feeling down. Watching Jeff get to know the others just makes me happy.
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:14 PM on June 11, 2013
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:14 PM on June 11, 2013
Wonder how he'll keep the gang together after 4 years at "community college"?
Come on, like any graduates on time.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 5:33 PM on June 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Come on, like any graduates on time.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 5:33 PM on June 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Yeah, I can say that I have learned from my job that most people take at least 4--sometimes 8-- years to graduate from a "two year" college. Especially since with budget cuts, nobody can get into classes any more.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:23 PM on June 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:23 PM on June 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Wonder how he'll keep the gang together after 4 years at "community college"?
Come on, like any graduates on time.
Yeah, I always thought that was the genius of making this a show about Community College. I knew people who were pretty much permanent fixtures at the local community college.
posted by billyfleetwood at 8:55 AM on June 12, 2013 [1 favorite]
Come on, like any graduates on time.
Yeah, I always thought that was the genius of making this a show about Community College. I knew people who were pretty much permanent fixtures at the local community college.
posted by billyfleetwood at 8:55 AM on June 12, 2013 [1 favorite]
That's Pierce's character right there. Hasn't he been at Greendale since the 70s or something?
posted by shakespeherian at 9:08 AM on June 12, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by shakespeherian at 9:08 AM on June 12, 2013 [1 favorite]
I'd love to see Fred Willard take over Pierce's role like he did in S4, even though I think he's probably going to be occupied with Christopher Guest's show on HBO.
Maybe have Willard (who's also named, coincidentally, Pierce Hawthorpe) as a student who transfers in from an East Coast community college after an embarrassing arrest at an adult bookstore.
posted by codacorolla at 9:16 AM on June 12, 2013
Maybe have Willard (who's also named, coincidentally, Pierce Hawthorpe) as a student who transfers in from an East Coast community college after an embarrassing arrest at an adult bookstore.
posted by codacorolla at 9:16 AM on June 12, 2013
"Yeah, I always thought that was the genius of making this a show about Community College. I knew people who were pretty much permanent fixtures at the local community college."
My complaint was never that they were or would be there for more than two years, it's that the way they talked about what they were doing implied they were going full-time or nearly so and were working toward four-year degrees.
But Annie, especially, should really have been going full-time and completing the two years of core stuff and then transferred to a four year school to finish. That's what someone like her would be doing. Possibly first-season Britta, too. I don't even know how to understand what Jeff's been doing or that it makes any sense at all.
Shirley ... I'm not sure. She would probably have been focused on some definite two-year associate degree goal but would end up taking classes in order to stay with the gang.
The rest it makes sense that they'd just be randomly taking classes forever.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 9:19 AM on June 12, 2013
My complaint was never that they were or would be there for more than two years, it's that the way they talked about what they were doing implied they were going full-time or nearly so and were working toward four-year degrees.
But Annie, especially, should really have been going full-time and completing the two years of core stuff and then transferred to a four year school to finish. That's what someone like her would be doing. Possibly first-season Britta, too. I don't even know how to understand what Jeff's been doing or that it makes any sense at all.
Shirley ... I'm not sure. She would probably have been focused on some definite two-year associate degree goal but would end up taking classes in order to stay with the gang.
The rest it makes sense that they'd just be randomly taking classes forever.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 9:19 AM on June 12, 2013
I don't even know how to understand what Jeff's been doing or that it makes any sense at all.
Jeff faked his four year degree so he just needs any four year degree to requalify to be a lawyer. Whether that is realistic or not I don't know.
posted by Mitheral at 9:22 AM on June 12, 2013
Jeff faked his four year degree so he just needs any four year degree to requalify to be a lawyer. Whether that is realistic or not I don't know.
posted by Mitheral at 9:22 AM on June 12, 2013
Yeah, but I don't see how he's accomplishing this at Greendale. That was my point. If he was short a few credits, he'd still need to transfer those to a four-year school to actually finish the degree.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:32 AM on June 12, 2013
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:32 AM on June 12, 2013
That's such a minor hurdle for me I have never let it stop me from fully enjoying the show, but I always just filed it away as a stupid premise that put these characters in this place together. Just like most any other stupid premise for most any sitcom. Is anyone griping about the fact that the dad in How I Met Your Mother has been telling what should be a five minute bedtime story for almost a decade? Is he tucking in his 17 year olds?
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 10:42 AM on June 12, 2013
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 10:42 AM on June 12, 2013
More importantly, how did Norm float such an immense bar tab at Cheers even while he was unemployed for a season?
posted by shakespeherian at 10:51 AM on June 12, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by shakespeherian at 10:51 AM on June 12, 2013 [1 favorite]
Was there a rush on adoption agencies in the late 70's, early 80's?
Diff'rent Strokes
Webster
Punky Brewster
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 11:36 AM on June 12, 2013
Diff'rent Strokes
Webster
Punky Brewster
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 11:36 AM on June 12, 2013
Wasn't that an awfully small girls dormitory in Facts of Life?
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 11:37 AM on June 12, 2013
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 11:37 AM on June 12, 2013
Did Ricky Schroeder really have it that bad?
HE HAD A FRICKIN TRAIN IN HIS LiVING ROOM.
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 11:38 AM on June 12, 2013 [1 favorite]
HE HAD A FRICKIN TRAIN IN HIS LiVING ROOM.
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 11:38 AM on June 12, 2013 [1 favorite]
Was Charles really in Charge?
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 11:39 AM on June 12, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 11:39 AM on June 12, 2013 [1 favorite]
Heh. I can see how it looks like nitpicking peevishness to care about the community college stuff. In my defense, for me it matters because a) this is a slice of American life that has otherwise been entirely ignored in popular media, b) it's a cultural context that skews toward the less privileged, and c) it's mocking it. Given that combination, it bothers me that it's a weirdly unrealistic and uninformed portrayal that ends up making it look more like a bad small, state university than a community college. Shirley and Pierce ring true, and particularly Troy and the HVAC school, but Annie, Britta, Abed, and Jeff should be attending a university (if an inexpensive state school) and the show acts as if they were attending a university.
The HVAC school stuff is interesting because trade school stuff is basically at least half of what your typical community college does, but other than the HVAC, you don't see it. For the two-year vocation-oriented degrees, there aren't that many general requirements and students mostly take technical courses in their field. Mostly what we see on the show are random classes which aren't part of any degree track, which makes sense in the context of students taking stuff at a community college to satisfy their general requirements prior to transferring to a university, but then the show portrays them as completing a degree at Greendale.
So, to me, the show seems almost contemptuously ignorant/indifferent to what community colleges are really like, which is problematic for me for the reasons I mention in my first paragraph.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:01 PM on June 12, 2013
The HVAC school stuff is interesting because trade school stuff is basically at least half of what your typical community college does, but other than the HVAC, you don't see it. For the two-year vocation-oriented degrees, there aren't that many general requirements and students mostly take technical courses in their field. Mostly what we see on the show are random classes which aren't part of any degree track, which makes sense in the context of students taking stuff at a community college to satisfy their general requirements prior to transferring to a university, but then the show portrays them as completing a degree at Greendale.
So, to me, the show seems almost contemptuously ignorant/indifferent to what community colleges are really like, which is problematic for me for the reasons I mention in my first paragraph.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:01 PM on June 12, 2013
Also I really doubt that disgraced Spanish teacher would lead a coup comprised of fifth-graders.
posted by shakespeherian at 12:11 PM on June 12, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by shakespeherian at 12:11 PM on June 12, 2013 [2 favorites]
So, to me, the show seems almost contemptuously ignorant/indifferent to what community colleges are really like, which is problematic for me for the reasons I mention in my first paragraph.
As someone who attended no less than two community colleges (that obviously makes me an expert), it doesn't really bother me that much. I can say that the school I went to in Southern California, Orange Coast Community, definitely felt more like a 4 year university/college than the community college I went to in southern Missouri. If Greendale is based off a southern California school, then I don't think it's depiction is that far off base. OCC had clubs, a weekly newspaper, and a variety of classes. I got to take film history 101 class that consisted of basically sitting in a movie auditorium (on campus) and watching movies or documentaries. I did learn a lot about film history, but it definitely wasn't that far from something we'd see our favorite students attending.
posted by Atreides at 12:22 PM on June 12, 2013
As someone who attended no less than two community colleges (that obviously makes me an expert), it doesn't really bother me that much. I can say that the school I went to in Southern California, Orange Coast Community, definitely felt more like a 4 year university/college than the community college I went to in southern Missouri. If Greendale is based off a southern California school, then I don't think it's depiction is that far off base. OCC had clubs, a weekly newspaper, and a variety of classes. I got to take film history 101 class that consisted of basically sitting in a movie auditorium (on campus) and watching movies or documentaries. I did learn a lot about film history, but it definitely wasn't that far from something we'd see our favorite students attending.
posted by Atreides at 12:22 PM on June 12, 2013
Well let's set aside the fact that I haven't seen any super-spies at Best Buy recently (should I head over to Fry's?) and think about this.
I would have to side with Atreides on this idea, much to your protestations, that schools like this are not uncommon. I can name three that I know of in my area, two of them being community colleges that offer two and four year degrees alongside various certifications. The third being a "private" liberal arts school that you can finish out a four year and get a graduate degree. I would not be surprised if they had classes on ladders. Which reminds me of another large public liberal arts school around here. But it sounds like you mostly have a problem with the words "community college" more than anything else, which I guess is your prerogative.
Although, I do know plenty of full-time mothers that had to settle for schooling like this. AND over-achievers that stumbled for one reason or another in their schooling and ended up in a CC. AND young men who have overly-controlling fathers that would rather send their son to a CC than let them go to a college for a degree of their choice. AND women & men, like Britta and Jeff, who didn't get their shit together until their thirties and went to a school that offered 2 & 4 yr degrees, & certifications and offered various school sponsored activities. That last one sounds really familiar actually, and no I don't know how I missed the memo on the Mackmore concert last week... So I guess none of that is to mind-blowing for me to wrap my head around.
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 12:47 PM on June 12, 2013
I would have to side with Atreides on this idea, much to your protestations, that schools like this are not uncommon. I can name three that I know of in my area, two of them being community colleges that offer two and four year degrees alongside various certifications. The third being a "private" liberal arts school that you can finish out a four year and get a graduate degree. I would not be surprised if they had classes on ladders. Which reminds me of another large public liberal arts school around here. But it sounds like you mostly have a problem with the words "community college" more than anything else, which I guess is your prerogative.
Although, I do know plenty of full-time mothers that had to settle for schooling like this. AND over-achievers that stumbled for one reason or another in their schooling and ended up in a CC. AND young men who have overly-controlling fathers that would rather send their son to a CC than let them go to a college for a degree of their choice. AND women & men, like Britta and Jeff, who didn't get their shit together until their thirties and went to a school that offered 2 & 4 yr degrees, & certifications and offered various school sponsored activities. That last one sounds really familiar actually, and no I don't know how I missed the memo on the Mackmore concert last week... So I guess none of that is to mind-blowing for me to wrap my head around.
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 12:47 PM on June 12, 2013
b) it's a cultural context that skews toward the less privileged, and c) it's mocking it.
Btw, i think you're delving into a whole different conversation than believability in the premise here. Personally I don't think this really covers it, because I could just as easily state that it is a parody. The show does constantly mock itself for the unbelievable ideas it presents, in which a simple mean spirited mockery of a subject would not take time to show.
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 12:59 PM on June 12, 2013
Btw, i think you're delving into a whole different conversation than believability in the premise here. Personally I don't think this really covers it, because I could just as easily state that it is a parody. The show does constantly mock itself for the unbelievable ideas it presents, in which a simple mean spirited mockery of a subject would not take time to show.
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 12:59 PM on June 12, 2013
Ivan Fyodorovich: "Yeah, but I don't see how he's accomplishing this at Greendale. That was my point. If he was short a few credits, he'd still need to transfer those to a four-year school to actually finish the degree."
I guess this doesn't strike me as weird because the college I went to offered 4 year degrees. In fact it is in many ways quite similar to greendale with the exception of the Dean stirring around all the time. A degree granting community college offering such diverse paths as trades, university transfers and 4 and 5 year degrees. If Jeff was around and needed an accredited degree, any accredited degree, then the college I went to would be perfect. It was cheaper than the big universities, had small class sizes, cost of living was low, and mature students were common place.
posted by Mitheral at 7:45 PM on June 12, 2013
I guess this doesn't strike me as weird because the college I went to offered 4 year degrees. In fact it is in many ways quite similar to greendale with the exception of the Dean stirring around all the time. A degree granting community college offering such diverse paths as trades, university transfers and 4 and 5 year degrees. If Jeff was around and needed an accredited degree, any accredited degree, then the college I went to would be perfect. It was cheaper than the big universities, had small class sizes, cost of living was low, and mature students were common place.
posted by Mitheral at 7:45 PM on June 12, 2013
Perhaps not in this thread but I've often heard that Harmon addressed the whole 4 years of community college angle on this or that podcast. Here's a very rough transcript of one such explanation from WTF episode 179:
People think that there's a shelf life to the fact that it's community college, but the show's not called Community College, and I was urged to call it Community College. They did testing and uh, they said the word community is not, it's never gonna trend on Twitter and it's never...people aren't going to remember it. It means nothing, it's like calling your show "The". And I said it's also like calling it Cheers, y'know, it'll get there. And if it doesn't, what are we doing, but more importantly what if we last beyond four years, are they all going to grow beards and start teaching each other? Wouldn't it be nice, four years from now to have no ... the word blackboard isn't in the title, because you never know ... and I've been demonstrating, y'know with increasing frequency, sort of strategically, that although the show exists there and is currently dancing around that tree, it's the dance that you're watching and the characters that are alive and stuff. We have very much so done entire episodes where they never, they're not even on campus. I very purposely, like, first season, the camera never left the campus, because I thought that if we got a second season, that instead of trying to come up with a way to make things better, why not constrict yourself and simplify your world. Create a little Milwaukee for the first season, and then the illusion will be, that if you just stop doing that in the second season, people will scratch their heads and go "How did the show get so much bigger and better?" and the answer is "Oh we stopped wearing that collar that we purposely staked ourselves to."posted by Lorin at 10:14 AM on June 14, 2013
"Shirley and Pierce ring true, and particularly Troy and the HVAC school, but Annie, Britta, Abed, and Jeff should be attending a university (if an inexpensive state school)"
I teach at a CC (well we dropped the Community C when we started offering four-year degrees). I've taught quite a few Shirleys (woman not formerly in the out-of-home workforce trying to enter it late in life), Troys (person going for a certificate or terminal A.S. degree of various sorts), and I even taught one Pierce (older student enrolled in a class just for fun).
But I've had many many more Abeds, Brittas, Annies and Jeffs (students who, for a variety of reasons end up at an open-enrollment college when they certainly have the intellectual chops to go to a putatively better school).
Actually out of that bunch the most absurd "origin story" is Jeff's. The rest are, honestly, pretty typical CC students.
As for mocking CC's I think you've misread the tone of the show. If you notice the only characters that are presented as targets for our laughter are the ones that have a disdain for Greendale (the male psych professor, the HVAC guys, the trustees). The other characters are all, more or less, treated with a degree of empathy and understanding. It's an absurdist caricature of a CC, sure, but it's not at all disdainful.
posted by oddman at 12:52 PM on June 14, 2013 [2 favorites]
I teach at a CC (well we dropped the Community C when we started offering four-year degrees). I've taught quite a few Shirleys (woman not formerly in the out-of-home workforce trying to enter it late in life), Troys (person going for a certificate or terminal A.S. degree of various sorts), and I even taught one Pierce (older student enrolled in a class just for fun).
But I've had many many more Abeds, Brittas, Annies and Jeffs (students who, for a variety of reasons end up at an open-enrollment college when they certainly have the intellectual chops to go to a putatively better school).
Actually out of that bunch the most absurd "origin story" is Jeff's. The rest are, honestly, pretty typical CC students.
As for mocking CC's I think you've misread the tone of the show. If you notice the only characters that are presented as targets for our laughter are the ones that have a disdain for Greendale (the male psych professor, the HVAC guys, the trustees). The other characters are all, more or less, treated with a degree of empathy and understanding. It's an absurdist caricature of a CC, sure, but it's not at all disdainful.
posted by oddman at 12:52 PM on June 14, 2013 [2 favorites]
I would like to see Chang fill the void that is Pierce, in his own warped way.
posted by Malice at 4:05 PM on June 15, 2013
posted by Malice at 4:05 PM on June 15, 2013
It'd be great to make the whole season about finding a replacement for Pierce. There are so many ways they could go with it. They could tease different explanations for what happened to Pierce -- Did he die? Did he go up the stairs and never come back? Did he get recast and no one noticed the difference? Have episodes devoted to different possibilities. The stunt-casted respected elder statesman of comedy; Rick, Vaughan, Leonard, Garrett, Chang, John Oliver, Dean Pelton, Mike and the fly dancers; or maybe a contest episode, cast as a reality show (Wipeout? for the Jon Henson/Talk Soup - Joel McHale/The Soup connection); a season long group session in a new Dreamatorium exploring different timelines, accompanied by the pizza delivery guy; Inspector Spacetime watching a TV show while relaxing on a timespace-vacation ... (OK, it's getting ridiculous now, I should stop.)
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:14 PM on June 16, 2013
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:14 PM on June 16, 2013
Harmon finally watched Season 4. EW summaries Harmontown podcast.
Harmon mused, “There’s something awesome about having all of those preconceived notions kind of ripped away from you. It’s exciting. There’s something awesome about being held down and watching your family get raped on a beach. It’s liberating. It makes you focus on what’s important.”
Yowch.
posted by Atreides at 10:54 AM on June 17, 2013
Harmon mused, “There’s something awesome about having all of those preconceived notions kind of ripped away from you. It’s exciting. There’s something awesome about being held down and watching your family get raped on a beach. It’s liberating. It makes you focus on what’s important.”
Yowch.
posted by Atreides at 10:54 AM on June 17, 2013
See, this is why I try really hard to not pay attention to anything Dan Harmon says outside of Community, because he generally seems to be a wreck of a human being who says really horrible things with regularity.
posted by NoraReed at 5:26 AM on June 18, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by NoraReed at 5:26 AM on June 18, 2013 [2 favorites]
And.....the inevitable Harmon apology for his comments on the podcast.
He comes off as rather sincere and apologies to the Community fans, actors and crew, and the writers of Season 4. Additionally, he apologies for the rape comment and other slams he made. Worth reading.
posted by Atreides at 9:47 AM on June 18, 2013
He comes off as rather sincere and apologies to the Community fans, actors and crew, and the writers of Season 4. Additionally, he apologies for the rape comment and other slams he made. Worth reading.
posted by Atreides at 9:47 AM on June 18, 2013
If more people listened to Harmontown regularly, he'd be doing one of these for every episode. I tuned out after the "Technology of N-Words".
posted by Lorin at 12:09 PM on June 18, 2013
posted by Lorin at 12:09 PM on June 18, 2013
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