Community, the tv show

But I wonder if the writing credit goes to the writer who came up with the idea, or the one who actually wrote the bulk of it, or both, or neither (meaning, the crapulence may not be due to Ganz).

The writing credit goes to whoever wrote the first draft, not who had the idea (usually a collaborative process) nor who wrote the bulk of it (frequently Harmon, when he was on the show)

yeah i feel like analyzing TV episodes by who 'wrote' them (especially when it comes to how funny an episode was) is usually pointless for that reason

Saw my first episodes of BBT last month, all in a row one night, bcz there was a promo on while I was at the gym for "ALL NEW BIG BANG THEORY TONIGHT" with Kate Micucci in, so I kept returning to the treadmill to plug my headphones in and see her turn up. However, it turned out that there were three ALL OLD episodes first, and Micucci was only onscreen for about two minutes.

But I got to see the Blossom/Sheldon thing across a few episodes where she was longing for acknowledgement and affection from him, and it being presented as a victory that we're meant to laughingly share in when his aspieness shuts her out. To the point of drafting a relationship contract including that he is not required to even hold her hand.

I guess this could be seen as supportive pro-asexuality propaganda, but it felt way gross to me to be making broad-audience lols about a grown woman making huge allowances for a partner, and being denied sexual agency and fulfilment in return

yeah that plotline, the longer it goes on, is kinda grotesque, so it surprised me that DJP was all "hey Sheldon has a girlfriend!". Shirley gets more action on Community than My Empty Valley gets on that show.

djp I got yr back on big bang theory

BBT is lazy as hell.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/dan-harmon-had-some-predictably-harsh-words-for-co%2C99117/

Dan Harmon, charmer

[Guarascio & Port] went to Comic-Con, saw what was going on. People dressed as spacemen and bananas and shit; people going, 'Holy shit, I cut myself every night and watch Community.' And they went, 'Fuck' and I think they tried their best and I think that was the best idea — not the best idea, as it turns out, but the most admirable kind of impulse. It's like, 'Let's not let these people down. If there's anything else we do, let's not let these people down' …

what a monster

“I watched season four. I guess I already knew this, but apparently, I’m quite a genius … I think I feel pretty comfortable expressing any kind of 'Eh, not my cup of tea' about it because — this has been expressed a thousand times over — it's obviously not somebody doing what they do and trying very hard to make people happy. It is very much like an impression, and an unflattering one. It’s just 13 episodes of 'Oh, I’m Dan Harmon! Derpy, derpy, durr! Die Hard! Durrrrr!' I feel like I'm going back to work tomorrow morning, and I just feel like, 'Do I talk like that?'…. Man, watching those characters without me there is just not fuckin' cool, man. It's like flipping through Instagrams and watching your girlfriend just blow a million [other guys]”

Still being sarcastic, if engaging in a far less healthy exercise, Harmon then added, “There's something awesome about having all of those preconceived notions ripped away from you. It's exciting. There's something exciting about being held down and watching your family get raped on a beach. It's liberating. It makes you focus on what's important.”

pretty much

sounds like an appropriate reaction. maybe too cordial.

I havent listened to this week's yet, but that sounds like the usual making-fun-of-his-narcissism-for-a-small-audience-in-the-back-of-a-comic-book-shop tone of Harmontown

yeah the nature of the beast that is dan-drunk-at-harmontown doesn't translate at all on paper. on the other hand, jesus take it down a notch maybe?

I havent listened to this week's yet, but that sounds like the usual making-fun-of-his-narcissism-for-a-small-audience-in-the-back-of-a-comic-book-shop ... and then broadcast over iTunes to thousands of people... tone of Harmontown.

you listen? it's v plain that he doesn't think about any audience except those in the room, hence ep 58 not even having the D&D uploaded. (and the tour showed that that micro-audience is in fact the macro listenership.)

(well, them and cockfarmers at the AV Club listening to an episode the second it goes up in case he says something impolitic typical.)

Just listened to the Harmontown intro from which those quotes are pulled. The whole 'watching your family get raped' thing was a joke at the end of a long riff on how he'd been trying to reach out to bill murray to play jeff's dad and how that possibility had been taken from him. Fuck that av club writer

at the end of a long riff

11 and a half minutes in. And it's really the start of the following 18 minutes of serious monologue about Harmon's stilted relationship with his own dad.

if i have to start listening to a podcast to enjoy this show i am done

Aaaaaaand he's apologizing.

sort of amazed he apologized

then again patton oswalt recently went on that rant and came out against rape jokes, maybe that really did have an effect

That might've been part of it, but Harmon's rant looked a lot more dickish in print than it sounded on his podcast. He probably wouldn't have apologized if transcriptions hadn't made the rounds (but he should've expected they would).

He always sounds incredibly dickish to me, audio or print

he sounds varying stages of drunk to me

Yeah, I've heard that he drinks a lot on his podcasts. And at every other time of day.

He was the guest on, as far as I know, the only unaired live Nerdist podcast. He was SO drunk, like, humping the stage drunk. And saying the CRAZIEST trolliest shit. It was hilarious. But also kind of twilight zone.

I saw the Harmontown podcast tour. Dude was openly swigging from a vodka bottle whilst dancing shirtless to begin the show with a GoPro camera strapped to his head. He gets that drunk.

Fuck that av club writer

so at last night's show he opened with talking about how since last week he's now hired a publicist to make him less famous. after five minutes of that he said "have you heard about this new thing, context?" which launched a lot of talk about the transcriptions from last week and related issues, and prompted bringing a boy-and-girl band up on stage and discussing how using a ringtone sample in a song they put on youtube has resulted in them reading hundreds and hundreds of strangers directly telling them to kill themselves and that the girl is hideously ugly and etc. it was really great. (nb: Erin was comptrolling, so Harmon's discourse on his big mouth and unthinkingness and intended audiences was p much unfettered/unstructured, rather than being interaction with Jeff's enquiry or analysis)

also in one week of work on Community, Spencer has twice earned applause from the writers' room for getting Dan to sit down and calm himself

also they made fun of the entertainment bloggers or Hollywood Reporter types who were obviously attending in hope of headlines


if i have to start listening to a podcast to enjoy this show i am done

he reiterated last night what he's said before: the TV show itself is what he wants to say to a large audience.

Gotta say the more I read about DH, the less likely I am willing to indulge his BS. It's sort of a blessing that Google Reader is dying in a week and I won't have AV Club updates on his ego delivered to my browser daily.

I wouldn't really comment on his ego based on AV Club updates

http://www.avclub.com/articles/community-will-now-have-far-less-donald-glover%2C99865/

Less Troy, more Childish Gambino.

That's a shame, because he's funny as Troy, but really not very funny or good or interesting at all as Childish Gambino.

I guess I don't fully understand what the show even is without Glover and Chevy Chase. I guess the writers can write around it.

I know everyone hates Chase but imo he was a huge part of the show.

Now they're really not going to have a clue as to what to do with Abed, his relationship with Troy was one of the few reliably great things at the heart of this show.

maybe they'll have Abed murder someone

i kinda burned out on this show halfway through the third season. should i keep going, or am i destined to be heartbroken by the awfulness of what comes next?

You can certainly skip season 4, even if it wasn't as bad as some people thought it would be.

they should just hire another actor to do an impression of glover as troy

bummer about that news, as Glover was Harmon's favourite actor in the cast

(though he never seemed to adore Harmon as much as the rest of them, so)

http://www.avclub.com/articles/some-unnamed-extra-has-made-appearances-on-17-diff,100485/

give the av club a pulitzer already

"thing that happens all the time also happens in show that makes us a lot of ad money"

Maybe he's a ghost.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/education/edlife/a-new-student-run-breed-crisis-oriented-and-fiercely-competitive.html

Comedy Central is kicking off their Community syndication tonight, and it's the first time I've seen all these S1 episodes since they originally came on. One thing that very clearly fell by the wayside with this show...exterior shots. I'd forgotten how often they did things outside the classroom/study room/people's apartments, something which never happens anymore.

one of my local broadcast stations starting showing it in late night reruns recently. the other day i watched the 3rd episode, and it was kinda jarring how different it was from later episodes, both in how a lot of the characters were portrayed and in how little there was of anyone but Jeff and Britta. i liked the show a lot from the beginning, and it definitely improved from there, but i wish the seams didn't show so much in how it grew in retrospect.

i think that's the norm when it comes to sitcoms, it always feels weird to go back and watch the early episodes where they're still refining the formula and retooling, let alone how often main characters got replaced

the other day i watched the 3rd episode, and it was kinda jarring how different it was from later episodes, both in how a lot of the characters were portrayed and in how little there was of anyone but Jeff and Britta

? That episode is all about Abed. It's actually one of my favourite episodes. Prof Whitman and Abed's Dad are both great.

One thing that very clearly fell by the wayside with this show...exterior shots. I'd forgotten how often they did things outside the classroom/study room/people's apartments, something which never happens anymore.

― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever), Friday, September 20, 2013 10:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This may be due to budgetary constraints. iirc, in the commentary for "Cooperative Calligraphy," Harmon said they were so over-budget that at least one bottle episode was a necessity.

Exterior shots can't be that expensive, especailly on a campus. Local news stations across the world do them daily.