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Community (season 3 on)

The critics are raving about Community!

The New York Times said:
But the changes in “Community” feel like a total surrender. What the new episodes often resemble is the type of post-“Friends” sitcom that is defined by a jokey solipsism, in which the humor comes not from anything we’d recognize as real life but from the barely distinguishable characters’ constant battle to one-up one another. As it happens, Mr. Guarascio and Mr. Port worked together on one of those shows, “Happy Endings.”
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Time said:
The new episodes, though, play like they were created by very talented writers who prepared by reading Community’s IMDB description. Community made some famous paintball episodes–so the return installment features a similar campus-wide competition to get into a coveted class. Community does a lot of parodies–so the first episode involves a Hunger Games parody. Community has complicated framing devices–so one new episode includes an imaginary TV show within an imaginary TV show within Community. Community loves nerd culture, so an upcoming episode is set at an Inspector Spacetime convention.

It’s not terribly executed–the Inspector Spacetime episode, at least, is funny and finds its way to a heartfelt conclusion. And Guarascio and Port seem very conscious of concerns they might screw the series up, to the extent that the new season opens with a meta joke—another thing Community does—that tweaks just that fear.

I won’t spoil the joke. It’s a funny one! But it’s also telling: these episodes feel like someone doing an imitation of a mimic. They’re simple and untaxing. To extend the college metaphor, they’re the Cliff’s Notes of Community.
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HitFix said:
For the most part, the new episodes understand who these characters are and how they relate to each other. They speak in the show’s usual cadences, and they drop the appropriate pop culture references at the right time. (The other episode sent out for review takes place at a fan convention for “Inspector Spacetime,” a “Doctor Who” pastiche that has entranced Troy and Abed.) But something’s off about almost all of it. It feels like Port, Guarascio and the other writers decided to reverse-engineer the Harmon version of “Community,” but couldn’t quite manage without the missing ingredient of Harmon himself.
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AVClub said:
Yet as it begins its fourth season, Community is also a show that’s displaying rampant signs of age. The running jokes that once seemed hilarious now feel beaten into the ground. The laughs are fewer and farther between. The characters, who once had some nuance to them, tread dangerously close to being one-note at times, and the show is more and more reliant on the kinds of hacky sitcom stories that it would have made fun of back in season one, via Abed, a character who makes fun of that kind of thing. Where once the show was a giant pop-culture wood chipper, taking in everything that had ever existed and spitting it out in interesting and new configurations, it’s now a show that essentially does big reference gags, hoping they’ll be funny enough.
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Best line of the episode:
JEFF: "God, I hate new Jeff."
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It was a mistake for them to make their return episode so self-referential and winkish. And the characters did seem like slightly flatter versions of themselves. But it's hard to tell if that's what we should expect from now on, because the episode was so winkish and self-referential. We still don't know what "new" Community will be like. Maybe next week...

Oh and the Britta/Troy fight in the fountain seemed half-improvised (it was sloppy). Either it was improvised, or the new writers really don't know what they're doing. I'm praying it was improvised.
 
Oh, I agree with that first reviewer. One one-liner joke after the next... blah. Also, it looked different, like they're trying to make the show look more like the standard sitcom, but maybe that was because a lot of it took place in Abed's head where reality was filmed before a live studio audience. I didn't hate it, but the whole thing was rather disappointing. It seemed very dumbed down. Did they need to tell us we were inside Abed's head? NO THEY DIDN'T.

Also, this episode makes me have a small bit of sympathy for Chevy Chase, I mean I still think he's an asshole, but if all the characters get this shiny newness and he's still clueless and racist, then I can kind of see why he was annoyed.
 
So I now have opinions actually informed by watching the episode, and I found it pretty mediocre. A lot of things didn't work!

Annie's prank plot felt like it could have taken place in Abed's head-sitcom. I think the joke was "haha Annie can't play pranks correctly"? It felt like it came from a lesser show.
Abed's sitcom didn't feel exciting at all. It felt like the show was giving us a "Abed thinks the world is a TV show!" segment for its own sake, and not using it to support character development or the plot at all. It's something the show's done before, with a lot more purpose. And some of the scenes from the regular show felt like they could fit in here, which was really bad.
Same with the Brittroy plot. "Troy and Abed's weird rules are a barrier to their interactions with other people" has been done before, and the episode played it completely straight. No twist, no evolution, just a straight-up serving of "Troy and Abed act weird" vanilla ice cream. Also it was badly written.

Usually, the show's experimentation with format and storytelling and self-reference feel like they come from an interesting place that actually speaks about the characters or the medium, or like exploration and someone figuring out the limits of what television can be and do. This time around, it felt like the show was doing those things because it's what Community does, and it felt hollow.
 
Well... it was... okay? I guess? I mean it didn't inspire FURIOUS ANGER in me but at the same time I didn't really laugh much.

I mean it's biggest problem was that it was trying to beat us over the head with "HEY GUYS EVEN THOUGH WE'RE DIFFERENT ACTUALLY IT'S THE SAME, GET IT? GET IT? GET IT?" and by doing that they forgot to add, like, good jokes and good character moments.

Also the fact that it really did come off as trying way too hard, and get way too self referential - which is always the first sign of a dying sitcom. We get it, you've seen the show, there's Annie Kim and Fat Neil, great. Doesn't mean you can write the show.

Of course WHO KNOWS WHAT NEXT WEEKS WILL BE LIKE.

Of course of course Gillian Jacobs is still really, really attractive so there's that.
 
So for the first couple of minutes I thought it was okay. The fake titles for the sitcom were fairly amusing and the joke with the different actor playing Pierce was kind of funny. And when "#AbedTV" appeared on screen I thought "oh, they're making fun of those shows that try to promote their own forced hashtags. That's funny."

But then the regular episode started and they got to the Hunger Deans part and "#HungerDeans" appeared on screen. So it turned out they weren't making fun of those sitcoms that try to promote their own hashtags on air. They'd become one.

Then as it kept going back to Abed TV I realised that there wasn't really any difference between the writing of the show in Abed's head and writing of the rest of the episode.

The fountain scene was almost painful to watch. I never liked the idea of Troy and Britta together (the times in season three when they'd randomly look at each other felt really forced) and it fell completely flat here.

The Dean is just straight up "I WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH JEFF" now. It's not actually funny.

#ChevyWasRight
 
CaptainWacky said:
Then as it kept going back to Abed TV I realised that there wasn't really any difference between the writing of the show in Abed's head and writing of the rest of the episode.
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Ugh, this.

I remember when Scrubs did the same thing of going into a multi-camera sitcom, and the differences between that and it's normal style (which wasn't exactly restrained at the best of times) was very apparent, and it worked really well.

This just felt like 'in Abed's head there is a laugh track'.

ALSO if you're going to have FUCKING hashtags that FUCKING change because TV guys FUCKING try to force social media because they're FUCKING lazy, how about you change the hashtag only after the thing it is referencing has actually happened on the show.
 
Troy and Britta had a major subplot, and we learned essentially nothing about their relationship besides "Britta isn't Abed".
 
OMG, I felt exactly the same about inside Abed's head and outside. There was no difference besides the laugh track. It was one of the things that annoyed the shit out of me.
 
SAUSAGEMAN said:
Troy and Britta had a major subplot, and we learned essentially nothing about their relationship besides "Britta isn't Abed".
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I didn't mind the hints of possible romance between Troy and Britta in previous seasons, but I never thought their romance would go anywhere. It's like when you are attracted to someone, but you end up knowing it's better to stay friends... ALTHOUGH we did learn something, we learned the new writers don't know how to be subtle. How long ago did the former writers of the show plant the seed for Troy and Britta? Was it when they were on that KFC spaceship thingy? IT WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BECOME A THING. (imo)


Annie and Shirley's subplot was also unsatisfying and inane. So Shirley is a prankster now? They popped popcorn with mirrors? WTF COMMUNITY?
 
If you fed the last three seasons into a computer, and then told that computer to write a new episode of Community, this is the episode you would get.
 
"There's episodes this season that I'm pretty sure are not as bad as I think they are..."

Oh everything's fine then.
 
Maybe he's being self deprecating. I'M JUST HOPING IT GETS BETTER OKAY? :rwmad:
 
I didn't have as much of a problem with it as you guys, but maybe I was just thankful enough to have it back that I managed to ignore a lot of the issues.

I did laugh quite a bit, but as it went on it got more extreme and unsubtle. Jeff (even New Jeff) wouldn't literally punch Leonard. The Dean is now a full on predatory gay transvestite. Popcorn. Weird fountain fight.

Abed's daydream world had its amusing moments, but there were times when I couldn't quite tell where we were for a few seconds, which is pretty bad news.

At least it wasn't terrible, anyway.
 
Maybe the joke with Abed's fantasy world was "see, Community really ISN'T any different from a traditional sitcom, GET OVER IT, FANS!" But that would just be cruel.

(I'll read that interview tomorrow Cassie.)
 
I just finished reading it. He was very honest about Chevy Chase and everyone enjoying themselves so much more when he wasn't around. And also about this episode being overcooked. The Hunger Games thing would've been a lot more interesting if all the gang had taken part, fighting for one place in the class. Of course they would've eventually realised they didn't need a stupid class as long as they had eachother, and finished the episode in a diner eating ice cream around a table laughing.
 
Oh I just read it, yeah, good interview but there's a worrying feel of "I'm not really sure if this season's any good" to it?
 
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