Community, the tv show

AND WHERE AND WHEN DID BRITTA LEAVE THAT LITTLE GREEN MACHINE

First episode was great, second one was a bit hit and miss if only because the virtual reality storyline was lame. It felt like a very convoluted way to introduce a new character without actually giving him much to do.

I enjoyed the scenes with Britta's parents through, they were well-cast and I hope they reappear because there's comic mileage there.

yeah, second episode's interminable jeff and new lady watching dean flail around in VR scenes really made it drag. that said, both eps had plenty of laughs and they are hitting much better notes with chang and abed characterwise so I am fully on board with season 6!

I hated the Chang hand-bitten running gag, they are basically just admitting they don't have a clue what to do with Ken Jeong at this point.

tbf they haven't known what to do with him since season 1. his "best" storyline was the Shirley pregnancy, i mean sheesh. the hand gag is probably in the "better" half of running Chang jokes. but i agree the takes on him and Abed are already better this year

that said "AND JESUS WEPT!" did make me laugh, damn you Dean

he was so good when he was the Spanish teacher, they need to get back to that. xpost jinx

they are basically just admitting they don't have a clue what to do with Ken Jeong at this point.

Isn't this essentially everything after season 1?

kinda wishing these episodes were 22 minutes and not 27. that extra time gives room for stuff to sag.

meant that we got the full trailer for Portuguese Gremlins however

yup, those extra minutes mean we get that and The Butcher and The Baker, I say bring 'em on every episode

it is interesting that they made the episodes longer where afaik the Netflix and Amazon Prime sitcoms haven't. i guess there's no chance of the season 6 episodes getting plugged into Community's broadcast reruns on Comedy Central or w/e.

interesting that they made the episodes longer where afaik the Netflix and Amazon Prime sitcoms haven't

episodes of Arrested Development S4 ranged between like 22 and 38 minutes

must just assume anyone watching is already familiar with the show and isn't just coming in blind

Probably not too many people stumbling across it by just leaving their computer on Yahoo Screen after The Nanny finishes.

ah i hadn't watched the Netflix season of AD, i was going off of Kimmy Schmidt, Alpha House, Betas, etc.

Come to Yahoo Screen to watch Community, stay to watch ... nothing? It doesn't seem like they have any other content.

I hated the Chang hand-bitten running gag, they are basically just admitting they don't have a clue what to do with Ken Jeong at this point.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, March 18, 2015 12:16 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hahaha:

http://www.avclub.com/article/ken-jeong-says-he-will-never-leave-community-216779

Come to Yahoo Screen to watch Community, stay to watch ... nothing? It doesn't seem like they have any other content.

― polyphonic, Wednesday, March 18, 2015 7:49 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the ad breaks for Community have a lot of commercials for the extremely unpromising-looking Sin City Saints, which premieres next week (along with, funnily, lots of Netflix ads for Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt)

in the secret bar there was a sign with 'do not serve this man' -- was that supposed to be someone?

looked maybe like younger Harmon with a moustache drawn on but I wasn't close to the screen

Al - Kimmy Schmidt was made for network; season 2 will be the tell for whether they get more flexible on running times. (Streaming shows are likely to stay similar to broadcast standard bcz they can be sold overseas still. Although AD S4 is airing here now on non-commercial FTA.)

Wasn't convinced until the scene in the ladders class, which killed me

that was fantastic

what happened to buzz hickey

travelled back in time to the early '00s

Man, this Yahoo Screen ap suuuuuucks. everytime I paused the show it reverted back to the beginning.

Btw the Harmontown doc is on Netflix

the harmontown doc was what got me to stop listening to harmontown

Too into the cult of personality for me. I like his shows though, and don't fault him for making money. But I have watched every episode of Community and it is good, cleverly-written sometimes-meta pop tv. But not a life-changing work of art that I must delve into, or see a movie about the making of.

I can see it being appealing if you are working in the entertainment industry. Doesn't he talk a lot about his process? It seems like hard work, talking about how hard you are working all the time /jk

harmontown movie is a doc of when he took his podcast on the road, so it's mostly harmon being a sad alcoholic who is really mean to his friends and himself and occasionally hosting a show where he says cruel things to his then-girlfriend (now wife)

According to imdb he has written 9 episodes of tv in the past 5 years. I thought he wrote way more than 7 episodes of Community.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1363595/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

Oh why would you want to support that kind of behavior?

xp The way the sitcom "writer's room" set up is done these days, a team of writers works on every script, credit is distributed to the primary writer for that episode. The showrunner like Harmon typically writes/edits/contributes to every script on the show, credited or not.

I think this more than likely has to do with Hollywood/union royalty structures

I can see that.

Is it normal for them to credit non-showrunner writers as having written episodes? For instance Emily Cutler is credited for 5 Community episodes, including the first Paintball episode. That is 2 less than Dan Harmon. I tried finding out more from his 4-part season 2 AV Club interview but the only time he mentions Emily he doesn't talk about her as a writer but how bringing in women writers changed the atmosphere.

whoever is assigned the first draft is credited as the writer, generally. but the pitches come from everyone on staff. after the first draft other writers do "passes" on the episode, including the showrunner, and individual jokes are fixed by committee.

If Harmon wants to portray himself as some kind of comedy writer that is fine, but he needs to step it up imo. Louis C.K. wrote 61 episodes in that same amount of time, compared to his 9. He also earned directing, acting, and producing credits on 40+ episodes.

Or is Louis C.K. not a showrunner? Do they have a different system set up for credits and such being network vs. cable?

lol @ Harmon and Louis even being in the same league in any regard.

louis runs his own show and has full creative control on an extremely small budget. he's essentially making small art films that occasionally have jokes. the system community runs on is the system network and cable comedy have been using at least since the 60's. i mean how many episodes of 30 rock did tina fey write? she was usually credited w/ abt 4 or 5 a year. but if you think that wasn't her show, that it wasn't her voice the writers were emulating, that she didn't have creative control of the jokes that got into the show etc, that'd be silly. it's harmon's decision who gets writing credit and as i understand it he's pretty liberal about not crediting himself when he's written the vast portion of a show's dialogue.

louis' situation is unique in the history of american tv, fwiw.

Tina Fey got full writing credit for 31 episodes period in addition to exec producer and actress in pretty much all 138 eps yeah she is a badass.

xp yeah it should be said that Louis' deal is pretty crazy and groundbreaking and of course no network is rushing to offer similar deals

also there are showrunners who hoard credit as well. whether that's deserved or not obviously depends on the show, but one example was Aaron Sorkin on The West Wing who actually did cram out every word of every single script for like three seasons coked out of his goddamn mind

i heard something similar about Weiner on Mad Men as well, but I don't watch it, so i'm out of the loop on that one

Most of Harmon's writing credits prior to Community are all short films and/or parodies, as in he is interested in coming up with concepts, not so much sketching them out. Nothing with a long narrative or interesting dialog, just lots of clever concepts. I bet he didn't actually write most of the jokes in Community.

Weiner notoriously hoards writing credits on mad men, it's true. he shares or owns credit on like 3/4 of the episodes last I checked.

Harmon heavitly rewrites each and every episode of Community, everyone agrees on that. As could be seen in season four, his voice is essential to the show. His lack of credits only mean that he is generous with doling out credit - and cash - to the other writers on the show. It's a very nice thing, imo.

Yes, even when he does a page-one rewrite - and he did the final script for every episode of season one, for example - he never takes credit from a staff writer.

So he is generous with doling out credit to the writers who are writing the show? And it is a nice thing he is doing by paying them money? Isn't is standard practice to pay the writers of a show money and give them credit?

He's being generous by giving them SOLE credit (and hence more royalties) since he could by all rights take co-credit on every script, like Weiner. But that's sort of standard practice tbh, since most showrunners are already credited as producers and getting some other kind of backend.

i think it's standard practice for showrunners to not take script credit, i think significantly because of union matters but also just the etiquette of the situation (especially re things like 'story credit', which is something showrunners will often have the right to but won't take). i imagine with someone auteur-ish showrunners like harmon it will often involve them having the idea for the episode, writing a significant outline, then passing it on to the credited writer to produce a draft before it goes to harmon and the rest of the writing room for redrafting, but still then there'll be no showrunner credit.

Someone just convince me he did not come up with some brilliant outlines and then wander around drunkenly from dept. to dept. - occasionally making "auteur" demands and doing self-promotion on social media -- while the show was being made around him.

Like he is on a bender and then the script comes in and he is in a drunken fever pining over the purity of his creation and rewrites a few references and lines of dialog and he has "rewritten the script to suit his vision".

How come seasons 5 and 6 aren't up there with 2 and 3? Was it his brilliant vision to let the quality just slide?

Easy to be a "Ninja of alcholism" if there is a whole team of people backing you up and cleaning up after your messes.