Community

[Brian C]

Whitney will fall hard. The pilot was awful and series premieres always get high numbers.

"Whitney" was awful, but in a way that I'm not so sure will cause its numbers to plummet (adjusting for the high pilot viewership, of course). I mean, it was pretty much exactly what the promos advertised it to be.

[Murdoch]

This opener was a far cry from the excellent Jeff-Britta faux-mance from last season's premiere. I thought the show might be moving past the group drama when Jeff said how they're all friends and the group is a pretense to keep them together, but it just became an excuse to extract more infighting. If this season is just going to be more of the back-and-forth between Jeff and Pierce I don't know if I'll be sticking around.

[AlexHansen]

Did anyone else sense that John Goodman was channeling Rip Torn?

When he got in the Dean's face I thought "he looks an awful lot like Rip Torn right now", which made me think "John Goodman, Rip Torn, a camera....instant gold". Toss in Goodman wrestling a grizzly bear and you've got magic.

[knives]

Best Britta episode ever?

[mfunk9786]

Definitely up there. Hilarious. I am hoping it'll be a trend for this season: Of any character on this show, Britta feels the most real and rife for parody.

[knives]

I know a shocking amount of people that would do the kicking the can thing. Though the Annie freakout is something I've seen from one of my sisters. How that storyline remained funny I don't know.

[domino harvey]

Five solid minutes of fart jokes-- great. Britta and Chang barely saved this one-- their initial faceoff with the written warning provided the only real huge laughs in the episode. The tone is so off so far this season, I guess maybe Dan Harmon shouldn't have fired most of his writers

[mfunk9786]

I hate fart humor as much as the next cynical 21st century guy too, but that was at least humorous and well done. To me, the whole episode felt very much like classic Community... I think you might be grading the first two episodes a bit harshly, domino! At least we haven't had any extended Apollo 13 parodies.

[Murdoch]

The way Shirley said "I far...ted" was hilarious, but that whole sequence felt like it was just thrown in there for no reason other than the writers testing the group. And I enjoyed the Model UN stuff a lot more than the debate last season.

Everything with Britta was gold, I'm once again optimistic about this season.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

The tone is so off so far this season, I guess maybe Dan Harmon shouldn't have fired most of his writers

What? When did that happen?

[Murdoch]

How Dan Harmon Drives Himself Crazy Making Community

[knives]

Finally got to last night's episode and I'm not sure if it's bad or good.

[domino harvey]

Three for three this season in terms of sucking. Once again, Britta was the only funny part of the episode. Literally didn't even smile at anything else here. What a sad, sad direction this series has taken

[knives]

I thought Chang's boss was funny along with some of the Pierce stuff, but yeah excepting Britta this season hasn't been as strong as it should but the show always tends to start slow. If it's still rocky after Halloween is when we should be worried.

[knives]

Well I hope this is true (I think the term the woman was looking for is foreshadowing).

[domino harvey]

Weird that you single out Chang's boss, because one huge problem I've seen so far this season is that the non-name guest stars are terribly miscast overacters. That the show is sillier now isn't the problem, it's that it's no longer smart at the same time-- I hate to keep saying it, but there's a one-word criticism of the direction this show is going, and it's "Scrubs"

And it doesn't help that this week's plot was already done to perfection by NewsRadio (Carl from Accounting) in all of about two minutes

[Doctor Sunshine]

I've never seen Scrubs but I recall a promo for that show with a musical number and I'm assuming the comedy was generally broad and silly. I took Community's premiere's opening number as a jibe at what I'm assuming are mainstream audience's, (my mother's,) and thus the network's criticisms that the show is too weird and probably a request that they tone it down, perhaps into a more consumable Scrubs/Glee-type show. I took the number as a "no, we wouldn't be capable of doing that if we tried" response.

Regarding the guest stars, every character on the show is over-the-top. In fact, it takes a beyond-the-pale over-the-top actor like Ken Jeong to register as the show's wacky neighbour.

[Murdoch]

I don't get the badmouthing of Scrubs, it had one of the greatest sophomore seasons of any comedy and just because it faltered out toward the end doesn't detract from the well-done first four seasons.

[mfunk9786]

You guys are being way too hard on this season. Can things really never get a little wackier now that we're in the third season and know these characters inside and out? I'm enjoying the fact that the show isn't leaning on easy movie parodies like the episodes early last season. I agree that the Chang thing didn't work for me this episode, but the group stuff was solid.

In other words: If loving worms is stupid, I don't wanna be smart.

[Doctor Sunshine]

I take it for granted sometimes, but if I didn't make it clear "weird"'s a superlative in my books. And I'm pro wacky neighbours.

[Andre Jurieu]

I thought Chang's boss was funny...

Agreed. Mel Rodriguez is awesome at being the straight-man dealing with crazies. His reactions are hilariously matter-of-fact. I'm kind of disappointed that it appears that they're done with his character.

[knives]

You guys are being way too hard on this season. Can things really never get a little wackier now that we're in the third season and know these characters inside and out? I'm enjoying the fact that the show isn't leaning on easy movie parodies like the episodes early last season. I agree that the Chang thing didn't work for me this episode, but the group stuff was solid.

In other words: If loving worms is stupid, I don't wanna be smart.

It is and you can't. Stuff like that was fine I like what they're doing theoretically, but they're not bringing the funnies (even stuff like that or the lego Shawshank thing had me more acknowledging that was good than actually laughing) and they're not solid enough on a dramatic level for them to stay afloat just be having interesting ideas. It seems that after Harmon's frustrations with fan reaction the the second season finale he wants to make it so that we can't like the group, a sort of Sunny type thing, but these characters are too complex with their negative attributes not being large enough. In other words they haven't earned Homer's Enemy yet. That said the second episode was very funny and just what I hope he takes the direction in for these ideas. Anyway when has Community been at it's best before Halloween?

[mfunk9786]

Comic Book Guy: Last night's Itchy & Scratchy was, without a doubt, the worst episode ever. Rest assured that I was on the Internet within minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world.
Bart: Hey, I know it wasn't great, but what right do you have to complain?
Comic Book Guy: As a loyal viewer, I feel they owe me.
Bart: What? They're giving you thousands of hours of entertainment for free. What could they possibly owe you? I mean, if anything, you owe them.
Comic Book Guy: Worst episode ever.

[swo17]

I'm mostly just disappointed that the nods to our beloved forum have all but disappeared.

I share some of domino's concerns and didn't get much out of ep 3 but I thought last week's (especially Martin Starr) was hilarious.

[Gregor Samsa]

Comic Book Guy: Last night's Itchy & Scratchy was, without a doubt, the worst episode ever. Rest assured that I was on the Internet within minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world.
Bart: Hey, I know it wasn't great, but what right do you have to complain?
Comic Book Guy: As a loyal viewer, I feel they owe me.
Bart: What? They're giving you thousands of hours of entertainment for free. What could they possibly owe you? I mean, if anything, you owe them.
Comic Book Guy: Worst episode ever.

I'm a fan of that episode, but always thought that sequence was too unsubtle. The rest of the episode does a better job of making its point without beating you over the head with it.

MAN: Okay, how many of you kids would like Itchy & Scratchy to deal with real-life problems, like the ones you face every day? (the kids all cheer and agree) And who would like to see them do just the opposite - getting into far-out situations involving robots and magic powers? (more cheering) So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show... that's completely off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots? (The kids agree)
NELSON: Yeah, good.
MILHOUSE: And also, you should win things by watching!