The very little we got to see of them. The men were naked for over a minute. Annie’s Boobs got a second or two of screen time. 
I may be overthinking it, but I thought there were a couple Breakfast Club references. A Breakfast Club is essentially a bottle episode movie. When Brita dumps out her purse, it reminded me of Ally Sheedy doing the same. And Abed said “That’s my business - my personal private business”, which is one of Anthony Michael Hall’s lines in the movie.
A stretch? Intentional? Not sure.
Is which a spoiler? The casting of Malcolm-Jamal Warner?It has been announced in all the mainstream media; it’s not a spoiler, at least according to [generally accepted definitions.](generally accepted definitions.)
[bolding mine]
I am very sorry if that was distressing to you. I will err toward the side of prudence in the future.
JSexton, you can be sure it was intentional. The writers and producers have made no secret that the show is a tribute.
Point of order: Saying that MJW will guest star as Shirley’s ex-husband in a future episode is not a spoiler. Saying that he and Chang dual over Shirley’s unborn child, and change wind by eating his soul is a spoiler.
Nope.
You can tell monkeys apart? I can’t name my co-workers.
No. I was reminded of this by the same source that pointed out that the pen theft was shown – The Onion A.V. Club.
When the grate started to open at the end, I was sure the thief was going to be Chang.
They briefly mentioned the monkey in this episode. Plus it was wearing a name tag.
I will be very appreciative.
That is so great! I didn’t notice it of course but the fact they bothered is awesome. It reminds me of something Futurama would do.
You didn’t do anything wrong. Casting info is not a spoiler. If knowing who plays a character in the future actually spoils a show or movie for someone, they should get a grip (and they should probably wear blinders to avoid seeing movie/television promotional posters, trailers, commercial promos, etc)
i did too. i thought it was going to be revealed that Chang now knows about the pregnancy.
I’m pretty sure Troy is the only one that knows that Chang and Shirley got it on, since everyone forgot the zombie thing.
Knowing a certain character will appear in a future episode can spoil plot elements.
I don’t need to do anything to avoid seeing them. I don’t watch promos on TV and the only TV promotional posters I’ve seen in years are for teen-oriented and children’s programming in the mall. Even then, they are always general show promos and don’t seem to give information about specific episodes.
The only time I hear about future episode casting is when someone on this site goes out of their way to mention them. And since this is an episode-specific thread, it seems off-topic anyway.
Obviously, it’s not a rule here, but in my perfect world, any information about a future episode – including that any particular actor has been contracted to appear, or that a particular non-regular-cast character is scheduled to appear – would be mentioned only in threads about that episode, not in a thread about a current or past episode.
I also noticed a quote from Pierce on the whiteboard that said something like “If humans evolved from monkeys, why do we still have monkeys?”
Not everyone is exposed to the same promotional material. Back when Battlestar Galactica was on, for instance, the Canadian channel Space aired different promos for upcoming episodes than SyFy did. On several occasions, discussing the previews that Space aired would have been a spoiler for American viewers, and I was exposed to a few (to me) spoilers from the SyFy promos mentioned in the SDMB threads.
Furthermore, casting info is generally something that you can look up if you want to, but otherwise can avoid (assuming nobody posts it without spoiler tags like in this thread).
I for one believe that putting spoiler tags around both is the courteous thing to do.
I can’t even begin to conceive how naming a future guest star is a spoiler. How on Earth could that spoil anything?
Knowing the actor isn’t; knowing the character that will be introduced into the story is. It’s a very minor one, IMO, but it’s a spoiler nonetheless.
And it can be a major spoiler if it’s the actor who played a character who’s supposed to be dead or missing or whatnot. Better to just put spoiler tags over guest star news rather than take it on a case-by-case basis and risk pissing people off.
But as this isn’t a character who is supposed to be dead or missing. Nor is it a character who we couldn’t reasonably expect to see stop by the college someday.
This is about as minor a spoiler as it gets.