Community, the tv show

also nice 'Abed's video yearbook' ending gag

i seriously keep wanting to start a Big Bang Theory thread so people can stop talking about it in comedy show threads but that's just too spiteful as i despise the show. but ironically nobody likes it enough to start one

yeah johnny, you missed out

I think scott is really into BBT.

i get so happy when john oliver appears!

scott started a thread for BBT

Hey, Nerdlinger,Sheldon Has Klingon Hearing! (Big Bang Theory Thread)

this will finally stop me from blabbing about this show on the how i met your mother thread.

― scott seward, Tuesday, September 22, 2009 12:43 PM (7 months ago)

haha, my bad!

back to community: yeah nice that they did all those callbacks like john oliver's mandated therapy appointments for britta, john michael higgins, even britta/annie's hippie boyfriend

This finale was amazing. I love how so much of the show's parody is left totally unstated (like the shot where Annie is saying goodbye to each of them and that black wall with lights was lit, or where Troy is at the party and there's just a group of black guys dancing in the middle of the party that he momentarily joins), like with a show that had built less good will with me I'd be annoyed about, but because this show has such a ridiculous distance from itself, I just read as more mockery.

wow I just found out that this week is the finale for Community and Modern Family, this is a totally awesome surprise since I thought last week was the finale week. I was wondering what the hell you were all talking about today...

Why does Hulu have to wait until morning to post episodes? I mean, I'm sure there's some procedural mumbo jumbo rationale, but what about those of us who away from home and at the mercy of shitty cable and can't just call it up on the dvr?

I'm sure it will still be just as awesome tomorrow morning, but I WANT IT NOW.

if you can download, they are usually on torrents/rapidshare within an hour of airing on the east coast

This computer is about a billion years old and not even mine. Don't want to install any torrent applications. I'll just have to wait it out.

m3gar3l3as3.n3t

decent, not amazing, finale. The season really had nowhere to go but "solid" after the paintball spectacular.

wow I just found out that this week is the finale for Community and Modern Family, this is a totally awesome surprise since I thought last week was the finale week

haha me too except i thought that the finale of community was two weeks ago

http://i45.tinypic.com/es3ujm.gif

lol nice to see badger in this

has he been in it before?

also iunno but jeff and britta, jeff and slater, and especially jeff and annie all seem p.lame outcomes

Slater was never gonna happen anyway, and I guess I am still a little weirded out by the age difference between Jeff and Annie, which was even pointed out several times during the show. (Yeah, I know she's actually much older in real life, so that softens it, but they defined her as the "young one" constantly.) But I guess out of those three pairings McHale and Brie clearly had the most natural chemistry, especially in that debate episode, so I guess they had to go with it.

So I gave up on the show around episode 8 or so and after reading some of the comments here got back on board with the "Modern Warfare" episode.

When in HELL did the show go STARK RAVING BUGFUCK INSANE?! That episode was a million different kinds of awesome.

"what's this?" "a roll of quarters..."

TRANNY QUEEN

CON-TRANS-ULATIONS

"I'm going to find a loophole"

^^^ so good

wait coz do u even watch lost?

Just the image of Troy walking around eating that gigantic cookie all episode was great. Then getting sick. Then taking another bite.

bahaha this link to the nyt article on dan harmon being pissed

I applaud Big Bang's move to Thursday at 8 p.m. This clever and witty series should be available to a younger audience instead of the same crude and tired plot lines that pervade most sitcoms ie. Two and a Half Men, How I Met Your Mother, etc, Also, Thursday night is a TV wasteland on the major networks.Thank you CBS.

cbs: too racy for this gal

not crazy about britta declaring her love for jeff &c, and it's true that the season shd have stopped two weeks ago coz basically nothing could ever top the paintball ep

but this was still 'full of lols'

'there was an episode of happy days where fonzie *literally* jumped over a shark. and it was the *best* episode.'

^^^yes

harmon is totally right to be afraid - BBT's audience is over double that of Community's, actually increasing every season. it's a legitimate hit compared to the entire NBC thursday night line-up

we should all be crossing fingers that devil Chuck Lorre hasn't killed the show by this time next year

arrested development was instantly stunning, but I have a hard time thinking of a comedy that revved up so intensely over its first season (30 rock, maybe? i didn't get on the train til later). Simpsons were in their second before things got "holy shit."

Watched "Mystery Team." It's pretty amusing, but Glover is obviously the star of his comedy team; other two dudes are pretty much dead weight. I think they must have realized this because he has the biggest part. Aubrey Plaza and Bobby Moynihan are in it too, plus cameos from Matt Walsh, Dot Com, Lutz, Erin from The Office.

the kinda tallish dead-weight dude from the team's viral karate sketch has been getting bit parts in lots of NBC comedies lately. don't count derrick comedy viral karate dude out yet!

yeah that guy is easily the worst of the three. the other dude seems ok maybe but was basically doing a Napolean Dynamite impression through the whole movie

you don't like viral karate dude? he's like the kevin mcdonald to glover's bruce mcculloch.

I have not seen viral karate. If we're talking about the same dude, he is very very bland in Mystery Team.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFEcNy3u61Y

i'm mystified by the fact that so many people hear loved the paintball episode, which was the weakest one yet imo

while watching it, i thought 'oh heck, i guess at some imminent point jeff will wake up and there will be a funny dream-related plot twist, like maybe he passed out drunk at abed's place again', but no...it turned out to be just lame pop cultural reference trope. didn't simpsons, et al, run that kind of thing into the effin ground?

i only complain so vehemently b/c community was so funny w/o that kind of thing. to my mind it became less funny with that crap. i wish the people writing the show would have confidence that the characters and their relationships are plenty sufficient to bring the lol's. now the show risks becoming trainspotting territory to an audience of stand-ins for the abed character

i definitely think the paintball episode shows how the show could eventually turn into some kind of family guy culture ref repository, but I think it did a witty job of it (I quite like a lot of those old simpsons homages!) and still utilized the character's personalities within the context. I love that it actually advanced relationships - that it wasn't just the usual "finch dreams everyone on just shoot me are characters in the wizard of oz" sitcom thing. i'd be bummed if the show stopped doing small scale stuff and every episode became a movie tribute, but I'm not going to slam a great movie tribute on principle.

It would totally suck if they started doing that kind of episode every week, yeah, it would get totally boring. But the fact that this was a one-off, guns blazin' episode totally worked for me. Plus, I think almost any other attempt at resolving the Jeff/Britta sexual tension would have been awkward and hamfisted. This way they could set their inevitable hook-up in a crazy setting where it wouldn't have been the episode's sole focus.

fair enough. it just prompted far fewer laughs in me than previous episodes did, hence my harshing on it. it occasioned my first disappointment in a show that was surprisingly funny right out of the starting gate. you're very right in that it wasn't purely lazy, as many other shows might have been when ambling into similar territory

I love that it actually advanced relationships - that it wasn't just the usual "finch dreams everyone on just shoot me are characters in the wizard of oz" sitcom thing.

yeah this is otm

it might have bothered me had the execution not been so perfect.

I would hope they'd limit their over-the-top/incongruous episodes to one per season, kind of like how CSI only bases one ep per season on the lab techs or some completely ridiculous case. It's a nice opportunity to see characters you love because they act one way to act that way (or differently) in completely different circumstances.

They just went farther with that episode than others, but the Color of Money and Goodfellas ones were also great. Guys, it's okay to like parodies!

re: paintball episode

I agree it worked partially because it was sort of a one time thing.

What had me going was the experience. They start the episode with them talking about some random stuff I can't remember in their study room. The PA system announces some paintball competition and that announcement came off as background noise. The characters kept on talking and pretty much disregarded the PA announcement if I remember correctly. I knew the episode would have paintball in it (from the previous week's previews) but like the characters, I basically blew off the announcement (for the time being) as well.

But then it was like a sudden onslaught of visceral paintball Armageddon with a wide pan shot of Jeff waking up in his car. The episode became mesmeric because of the sudden immersion and randomness of it all.

Then what kept me on the edge of my seat wondering what was going to happen next was all the great qualities you would find in an action movie. The tension. The drama. The survival aspect. The sex. The twist (Chang enrolling/no prize). The coolness of it all - Abed coming in jumping off the wall playing the part of the all-American hero, Troy with the great "you son of a bitch" line, the girls coming out of the bathroom stalls, the dark cafeteria with roller-skate dudes attacking, Chang with the paintball machine gun...

The cinematography/sets really pulled it all together. The action moments/tense moments were filmed really well and it was crazy to see a whole school messed up badly - something I dreamed of as a kid. "This would never happen" crossed my mind a few times but I that didn't distract me from letting the show unfold because it was all weirdly enjoyable

There was definitely less funny quotes than normal but a there was a lot of silly situational stuff instead

I watched the paintball episode late at night in my basement on a huge HG TV. Plus the episode worked better in that I wasn't expecting so much. I think my experience was also benefited from feeling some of the tension - the kind of tension that people are supposed to feel when watching action movies. Understandably, some people may have not had the same kind of reaction as me - they may have been less susceptible to the tense parts (maybe they were wanting more comedy in a comedy series). People could have easily been in the 'wrong state of mind' for this episode. Different states of mind (e.g. different kinds of logical, emotional, open, closed, sleepy...) is rationale for people's largely varied opinions on any given episode of Lost last season (as I gathered from the Lost thread)

loving this series. the paintball episode was absolute, unalloyed and audacious genius. and i loved the 'shmitty' kids too. shows like this and modern family are STREETS AHEAD of Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother, both of which I think are truly charmless and terrible.

Watching the paintball episode now, and it's just as good as everybody said (possibly even better)

the 'shmitty' kids

XD

Am I the only one who enjoys both Community and Big Bang Theory? I'm only into season 2 of BBT but I don't see a major difference in quality between the shows. (One makes pop culture references. The other makes science references.) If I had to pick one, I may go with Community and I hope the shows don't enter into competition but I do think both are good.