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[tv] Community

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout' started by Nice Rollin, Sep 17, 2009.

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bladeage Member

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Nice Rollin said:

crappy, boring, and unfunny. might give it one more chance.
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You are crazy.

First episode was boring, but this 2nd one seemed like a completely different show from the first episode. Chevy better win an Emmy for this.

#41 bladeage, Sep 25, 2009

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A review from the Onion AV Club...... just to compare notes with the people who aren't enjoying it.

by Todd VanDerWerff September 25, 2009

I am not, by my nature, a “laugher.” I can appreciate a well-told joke, but usually with a smile and a nod. I may laugh politely in public, but I spend a lot of time finding things funny without actually laughing at them. The reasons I am this way (and you can ask my wife about our strange, mirthless life together) are probably buried under layers of emotional trauma I’ll need years of therapy to overcome, but when I say that I laughed out loud a lot at tonight’s Community, that is probably the highest form of praise I can pay it. That the laughter came wedded to a plot that was pretty well constructed and managed to deepen most of the characters in fun and interesting ways was even better, and after this episode, it seems even more likely that this is going to be a show with places to go.

Doing a second episode is one of the hardest things to do in television. You have to repeat the things that made people like the pilot (since they’re presumably watching because they did like it or someone who did convinced them to give it a shot), but you also have to figure out ways to expand the show’s universe in ways that convince the audience the series has something to say. And you can’t repeat the pilot too much, lest everyone think you only have one thing to say. “Spanish 101” has a doubly hard challenge because the pilot was a premise pilot and, thus, didn’t leave a lot of sense of what the show would be from week to week beyond the vague idea that it would take place at a community college.

“Spanish 101” immediately dives into the rough business of building the show from the ground up. One of the problems with previous college-set shows has been that, unlike high school, everyone’s college experience is incredibly, personally specific. If every high school is basically the same with a few different elements, every college campus is basically different with a few similar elements. The culture at my college was almost certainly different from the culture at yours, even if there were certain elements in common (like how Ken Jeong’s Senor Chang – apparently a regular – is almost exactly like my freshman Spanish teacher, except not a ridiculously attractive woman). So it’s hard to come up with the kinds of universal experiences that drive shows like these beyond stories that are already overdone, like stories about having awful roommates.

Community gets around this by mostly focusing as much as it can on its specific characters and figuring out both how they’re types and how they’re individual characters within those types. And when it goes for one of those storylines that every college show has done – the students protesting some injustice on foreign soil – it does so in a closely observed way that also reveals some new facets of one of the two lead characters. By showing Shirley and Annie leading a protest on behalf of murdered Guatemalan journalists, the show both managed to find an “issue” that was something you hadn’t seen on TV before with plenty of satirical moving room and figured out a way to expose just how much Britta’s good girl act is just that. Britta clearly cares deeply about things, but she’s not moved to actually do anything about them, something the show contrasts nicely with Jeff’s inability to actually care about anything.

As nicely as that storyline worked to delineate more of Britta’s character beyond simply being a foil for Jeff, it wasn’t what made me laugh so much. What made me laugh were the scenes where the show set all of the study group members bouncing off of each other, Senor Chang’s introduction of himself and the whole storyline with Jeff and Pierce. If, every week, the show is going to be about putting new spins on the old college storyline clichés, then the study group is going to be our home base for going out to explore those stories. The pilot didn’t really use Chevy Chase as much as the promotions for the show might have led anyone to believe. (I suspect this may be because Pierce was written as a smaller character in the original script, and when Chase signed on, creator Dan Harmon just didn’t beef up the part into a “star” part, instead deciding to save Chase for later. Like episode two!) But he was turned out in full force here, revealing Pierce to be a desperately lonely and kinda weird old man who’s randomly decided that Jeff can be the surrogate son he never had. These notes of out-of-touch-ness and odd familiarity are being played to the hilt by Chase, and now it’s obvious why he signed on to play this character.

All of this concluded with a wickedly funny send-up of the kinds of poignant montages we get at the ends of movies aiming for inspiration, where a chastened Jeff and an enthusiastic Pierce wandered through Pierce’s long “Two Conquistadors” conversation in lieu of actually doing the assignment as presented. (There’s always one group that tries to turn one of these assignments into something more epic than it needs to be.) As Aimee Mann’s “Wise Up” played, the two dressed in robot suits, waved Israeli and Palestinian flags and did some sort of softshoe routine in Afro wigs. It’s a completely gratuitous sequence, over-the-top and goofy as all hell, yet it works both as something to make the viewer laugh and something to show off how the characters are already growing and changing (would the Jeff of the first few minutes of the pilot have gone along with this?). “Spanish 101” wasn’t perfect, but it did most of the stuff a second episode has to do and then some. It leaves me with even more faith that this show will be good than the pilot.

Grade: A-

Stray observations:

* Shirts used as currency. I think I’ve seen that somewhere before, but it still paid off in seeing Jeff in Abed’s shirt.
* Speaking of Abed, any thoughts on his character? I usually enjoy meta-commentary, but I can already feel where I’ll start to find it tiresome coming from him.
* Does Harmon just like Matt & Kim THAT MUCH?
* "Morning, Jeffrey. People were jazzed to see me too."
* "If you think of grandsons as metaphors for friendship, I think you'll agree with this Transformer here that it's time for ours to become a man. By reading from the Torah."
* "We can have a candlelight vigil like lesbians have on the news."
* "My knowledge will bite her face off."
* "Oooooh. Hemingway's lemonade."
* "Defy oppression. Have a brownie."
* "We are gonna take this and put it in a museum for crazy people."
* "You're bailing on our first sausage fest?"
* "What we have so far. Well, we have something incredibly long and very confusing and a little homophobic and really, really specifically, surprisingly and gratuitously critical of Israel. It's called ‘Two Conquistadors’. It should probably be ‘Dos’; I mean it is a Spanish class.”
* "The woman that I kind of like is out there in the moonlight caring about something stupid."

http://www.avclub.com/articles/spanish-101,33338/
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#42 Oski2005, Sep 25, 2009
sammy Member

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That Asian dude is the ish

NBC has 4 good comedies now imo

#43 sammy, Sep 25, 2009
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I finally finished watching the latest episode. I will say it was better than the Office, but I find too many of the characters annoying, particularly Chevy Chase and the Indian (i think Indian guy). The Chinese guy had some funny moments, so the episode was ok, but not on par with the office or parks.

#44 rhino17, Sep 26, 2009
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How he didn't include the "I'll show you some sperm" quote is beyond me. That was the funniest and most unexpected line of that episode.

Anyway, I don't see how the 3rd episode can top this. For my personal preference, they set the bar pretty high. Maybe they can have can Chevy and Senor Chang scenes.

#45 bladeage, Sep 26, 2009
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rhino17 said:

I finally finished watching the latest episode. I will say it was better than the Office, but I find too many of the characters annoying, particularly Chevy Chase and the Indian (i think Indian guy). The Chinese guy had some funny moments, so the episode was ok, but not on par with the office or parks.
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edit: I didn't mean to say it was better than the Office, I meant to say it was better than the Pilot

bladeage said:

Anyway, I don't see how the 3rd episode can top this. For my personal preference, they set the bar pretty high. Maybe they can have can Chevy and Senor Chang scenes.
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I certainly hope they can top this episode, if not, I will probably not continue watching.

#46 rhino17, Sep 26, 2009
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Missed the first ep, but I liked the second.

#47 TheFreak, Sep 26, 2009

bladeage Member

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rhino17 said:

edit: I didn't mean to say it was better than the Office, I meant to say it was better than the Pilot

I certainly hope they can top this episode, if not, I will probably not continue watching.
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Good, one less person who's complaints I have to read.

#48 bladeage, Sep 26, 2009
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ROFLMAO

"I'm Ron f****ing Swanson"
"I was born ready"

HAHAHAHAH

#49 Royals Ego, Sep 27, 2009
bladeage Member

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Royals Ego said:

ROFLMAO

"I'm Ron f****ing Swanson"
"I was born ready"

HAHAHAHAH
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Wrong show, but yea that was funny.

#50 bladeage, Sep 27, 2009
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I must have seen a different episode than the rest of you - b/c I didn't think Senor Chang was all that funny, and I didn't laugh once in the first or second episode. Though I did like the closing of the second episode with the spanish rap.

I had such high hopes for this show all summer, but I think I prefer "Modern Family" over this as my favorites of the new sitcoms this season. I really hope this show gets better, and I'll continue to watch in hopes it does.

#51 TexasFight, Sep 27, 2009
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TexasFight said:

I must have seen a different episode than the rest of you - b/c I didn't think Senor Chang was all that funny, and I didn't laugh once in the first or second episode. Though I did like the closing of the second episode with the spanish rap.

I had such high hopes for this show all summer, but I think I prefer "Modern Family" over this as my favorites of the new sitcoms this season. I really hope this show gets better, and I'll continue to watch in hopes it does.
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I enjoyed Modern Family, but their pilot was definitely not funnier than Community's last episode.

Modern Family definitely has potential to be great. They have a good mixture of unique characters. That whole Lion King part, when they brought the baby out was hilarious.

#52 bladeage, Sep 27, 2009
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unlike most, i thought the pilot was funny. considering how rough most pilots are, they did a pretty good job. and the 2nd episode was hilarious. the acting out of "two conquistadors" had me rolling.

it's got the clever writing and jokes that come quickly that i like in shows and a pretty good group of characters and good enough actors to play them. also, gillian jacobs has anne hathaway's eyes and voice so that is a plus for me.

so far i'm 2 for 2 in trying out new shows and liking them (flash forward being the other) and based on the 2 minutes of "modern family" that i saw (basically the lion king scene) i think i'll give it a try and hopefully go 3 for 3. scripted shows ftw.

#53 francis 4 prez, Sep 29, 2009

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I think it's got some great potential. It's funny and has a lot of quick subtle jokes crammed into each other. I'm a big Joel McHale fan, too.

#54 Astro101, Sep 29, 2009
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Royals Ego said:

ROFLMAO

"I'm Ron f****ing Swanson"
"I was born ready"

HAHAHAHAH
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Ron Swanson is going to be an epic type character imo. btw, we need a Parks thread if there is not one already.

#55 rhino17, Sep 29, 2009
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I'll give it 5 more airings before its pulled.

#56 Space Ghost, Sep 29, 2009
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I don't care what anyone else thinks, I am really liking this show. The writing is so quick and clever. The jokes come at you in rapid-fire and the comedic timing from the acting/editing is uniformly good to great.

It's not a perfect show, I'm still waiting for an episode that pulls all the elements together for a great ep, instead of the merely good eps that we've been getting. And the "heart" sometimes threatens to cross the line into being mawkish and schmaltzy (which was a problem on My Name is Earl) but it's been okay so far.

But I think community has all the pieces in place to become a weekly, smart and clever laugh-riot.

#57 m_cable, Oct 2, 2009
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Solid EP, we need more Senor Chang though. But it was nice to see John Oliver and Alison Brie is cute as hell. Look at her reactions to the "you're an 8 which is a British 10...I'm so angry" line:

<object width="512" height="296"><param name="movie" value="http://www.hulu.com/embed/iF_3E3PODiUlbFh40J5fDw/117/172"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.hulu.com/embed/iF_3E3PODiUlbFh40J5fDw/117/172" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullScreen="true" width="512" height="296"></embed></object>

She can also do sexy:
<object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/CzJSbxjVVjk&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/CzJSbxjVVjk&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>

I think I'm in lurve.

#58 Oski2005, Oct 9, 2009

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m_cable said:

The jokes come at you in rapid-fire
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I'm not saying you're wrong, but...huh?

I'm used to quick wit and interconnected jokes and references (see. The Office, Arrested Development) but I haven't experienced that at all during my trial run with The Community. And it's not that I have anything against the show and want to see it fail. Both my gf and myself like Joel McHale and we both love Chevy Chase. We were both very excited for the premiere

Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.

#59 ClutchCityReturns, Oct 9, 2009
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La Biblioteca remix
<object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/JgvRfmo8Ock&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/JgvRfmo8Ock&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>

#60 Oski2005, Oct 9, 2009

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