A major disappointment. Not a laugh in the entire show.
I admit I had no idea what they were parodying, but they’ve done that before (I never saw GoodFellas, so I never got that parody) and I still enjoyed the result. This had really nothing going for it.
I didn’t know what they were parodying either, but I laughed quite a few times and really enjoyed it. I was happy to see the professor back, and Starburns. I knew Chevy Chase was leaving the show and was curious about how they were going to handle it, and enjoyed not knowing exactly who the Ass Crack Bandit is.
So I liked it.
It wasn’t working for me in the beginning because I didn’t know (and still don’t know) what they were parodying but by the end it got funnier and I enjoyed it.
Now THAT was a Community episode! This is what I missed when Harmon was gone - the fantastic send ups of other TV & movie genres (in this case, Detective shows where they get too ‘deep’ into the case).
I thought it was much, much funnier than the previous week’s episodes (although there wasn’t much for Britta in this episode).
Oh good. I’m glad I’m not the only one who didn’t know what was being parodied.
Also, a question from something posted in the previous thread.
Please explain what you mean by this. I’m being serious. I’m not sure how a TV genre is deconstructed, and other than Abed kind of sort of breaking the fourth wall from time to time by explaining what’s going on (I.E. saying, “Bottle episode.” in a bottle episode) I see nothing different about Community than any other sitcom. And that’s not a criticism either. I love the show.
From TV Tropes:
In tons of ways, Community, through Abed’s meta commenting mostly, takes actual tropes and says what would happen if this occurred in real life (or rather takes semi-real life occurrences and places tropes upon them). Also Community tends to go highly absurdist when it attempts to follow and then push the internal logic of a regular sitcom trope (For example, “Modern Warfare” was about the sitcom trope about how folks go slightly crazy when there is a too good to believe prize on offer for winning a competition).
Thanks for the answer. Cool cool cool.
Presumably the Ass Crack Bandit song was sung by Ben Folds.
I don’t know what show was being parodied; I suspect it was SVU.
Anyway, in last week’s thread I was super harsh on Repilot. It came off (to me) as desperate and cloying, and devoid of an ounce of humor. This episode was much better in that it tried something. For me it fell flat, but I appreciated the attempt.
Whereas last week was worse than the worst episode ever produced of According to Jim, this week’s was on par with the average of Yes, Dear. Nowhere near the “better than 99% of everything else on tv” cliche that fans of niche shows like this like to claim, but at least this episode (unlike last week) was interesting and tried for humor. This is the Community I can look forward to.
It unfortunately was paired with a vastly superior Parks and Rec episode, so it also suffered by comparison. Not that that was a particularly great P&R episode. Just that right now, P&R is so much better of a show. But Community could easily finish shaking off the cobwebs and get back to form, which at its height was…better than 99% of everything else on television. heh.
Apparently they were parodying David Fincher movies, like Zodiac.
I definitely thought of the Zodiac killer while watching it (taunting the police, etc.). But I thought it was just a parody of the zillions of TV shows and movies where the police are tracking a crafty serial killer.
“Et tu, pencil?”
I enjoyed it a lot and thought it was very funny. “What are people going to do? Not have butts?” is still making me laugh.
It was a David Fincher Parody (as someone else said), mainly Zodiac and Seven. And it was pretty spot on.
I did think the announcement of Pierce dying was undercut by the reality of the situation. I almost imagined them having someone say “Pierce?” and then they cut to a fuzzy paused frame of Chevy Chase from season one with his mouth open and a disembodied voice (not his) says, “Hi guys. I think I’m going to die now. Okay I’'m dead now, bye.”
That’s kind of what it felt like.
Wasn’t Annie the Ass Crack Bandit? I thought there was a shot over her shoulder at the end of the opening credits where she was closing the ACB scrapbook.
Nice to see Professor Duncan back.
I thought that was a good episode and got Community back to being Community. Though it does look like the focus of the show may be moving away from Britta, Shirley, Troy of course and maybe even Abed. This is not a bad thing.
I think that opening credit bit showed Annie was interested in solving this unresolved case. They made it clear at the end (with fuzzy logic) that it could have been many people.
I like it, but I’ve seen Se7en, so I recognized that it was a parody of that type of movie. I liked how they used the lighting to get the feel of those movies.
I thought that the announcement of Pierce’s death was well done since it put how utterly silly the entire ass crack bandit pursuit was.
I assume Jeff was playing a Candy Crush style of game, and I didn’t catch all of the phrases, but “You can’t handle the fruit!” made me laugh.
Another vote for “I didn’t know what was being parodied but still enjoyed it”.
One possible clue: At one point, Abed is deleting a bunch of shows from his DVR. I paused and looked at the list. I recognized all the shows, but don’t watch any of them. The only one I remember now is “The Bridge”. Looking it up, it is a “cop show”. I assume this episode was a parody of these (and perhaps other) “cop/detective” shows?