One of the best episodes of the entire shpw so far. I loved the whole tone of the paintball scenario and all the little movie references.
“Come with me if you don’t want to get paint on your clothes.”
That was one of the funniest half-hours of television I’ve seen in a while, which is especially impressive since it was basically the same joke over and over again for a half hour.
I’m trying to think of another sit-com that has devoted an entire show to one long genre-parody. I can’t really think of one, at lesat not one where they stuck to the concept as tightly as Community did for almost the entire show.
The Simpsons must’ve done it at some point, based on the simple fact that the Simpsons must’ve doen everything at this point, but I can’t remember an episode like that.
There was a Simpsons episode that parodied the show 24 for an entire episode.
This was a fun Community episode. I didn’t pick up all of the references, but I didn’t need to enjoy the fact that they turned the entire campus into a post paintball apocalyptic nightmare.
I like how Abed’s hyper-observant aspergers personality that sees the world through tv/film goggles is used to almost break the 4th wall and talk about aspects of the story. It’s such a great character who can talk to the audience without actually talking to the audience. “Something is different. I can sense it.” Very funny.
As I said I enjoyed the epsiode. But, I didn’t find as many laugh out loud moments as I usually do with Community. This was more of a smile episode, but that’s still a great 30 minutes of TV. In fact, I wouldn’t even say that if episodes like the Pool game episode made me laugh so much. It’s just been such a fantastic season that there are already extremely great episodes to compare it to.
My only disappointment was that there were no birds flying in slow motion when Chang walked in the room. But it was an amazing episode. Loved the dig at Glee and Abed running up the wall.
Yeah, I was thinking it would have to be an animated show. South Park gets close, for example, but even the episode that both starts and ends with an Intervention parody did have B-plot to fill in a story.
funniest. show. ever.
“Study group… come out and plaaaay-ayyyy!”
^My favorite movie reference in this ep. Community is awesome!
Also loved Pierce this week:
“Want my advice? Pork her and move on.”
(Troy: “What’s TBD?”) Pierce: “If it’s what I think, I had it for a month back in the seventies.”
(Jeff: “There’s no ‘Britta & Jeff’”) Pierce: “…he said, fully erect.”
(Pierce shoots Starburns) “It’s just Starburns”
(Jeff, devising a distraction: “Pierce, don’t come over here!”) Pierce: “Screw you, I’m coming over there!”
I’ve been watching this show from the premier and it’s somehow only managed to get better. At this point I only hope it gets renewed for next year.
It has.
Sweet! Thanks for letting me know. I was worried NBC was going to FOX it.
By context I know you mean cancel it, so I guess you man that Fox cancels good shows after only one season?
It depends on what you mean by “good.” A certain show that is beloved on the Dope was canceled after a half-season, even though everyone I know loves it. It just did poorly in the ratings.
Another show that is finally back on the air had a similar fate. And one show that was actually good before it was canceled, but is not so good now that Fox finally brought it back.
Plus Fox likes to cancel shows period. They are really big about trying a new show and canceling if it doesn’t immediately find a good enough audience. The aforementioned show even ran a long list of shows that had received that treatment in between its canceling and renewal (a period of only 3 years.)
Just because everyone you know likes Community is not enough for you to know whether it has good ratings, so I could understand some people being worried it would be canceled.
Oh, the show names? I want you to guess. We’ve mentioned them around here often enough. I’ll spoiler them:
Firefly, Futurama, Family Guy.
I thought you were going to mention “Arrested Development”, but then I never watched it, but it was on Fox, right?
Futurama went for something like five seasons in its original run, and Family Guy had 3, so they’re not really examples of shows that weren’t given more then one season. And Fox actually kept Arrested Development around for more seasons then its ratings really warrented.
I’m not sure where Foxes reputation for canceling shows before they have a chance comes from. Part of its certainly Firefly, but one show isn’t really a pattern.
QFT.
Did they build an exact duplicate of the entire set? How the hell did they clean all that up? Did they hose it all down? That was an absolute freaking blast. I was hoping my house wouldn’t catch on fire so I wouldn’t have to run out and miss part of Community.
What I like about the show is that it lives with itself. Since the war was after Jeff had gone off to have a nap I assumed, typical sitcom fashion, that it was all a dream sequence. Then when he and Britta actually had sex, I decided it really had to be a dream sequence and while amused by the episode was also annoyed.
But it wasn’t a dream sequence. I had not enough faith.
In addition to the others which have already been mentioned:
Strange Luck
John Doe
Drive
Tru Calling
Undeclared
Brimstone
Millenium
The Tick
Wonderfalls
Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.
Terminator
Keen Eddie
Many of those shows were shown out of order and bumped around the schedule such that nobody knew when they could actually see the show- it’s no wonder their ratings dropped before they could finish their first season. Fox is very good about giving innovative TV a shot… but very bad about having realistic ratings expectations.
Top 20 shows cancelled by FOX before their time
Some of it stems from FOX torpedoing their own ratings by putting new shows on Sunday evening, which wreaks havoc on VCR’s/DVR’s scheduling, since football inevitably screws it up.
We can also add “Dollhouse” to the list.
I thought it was nice that Jeff and Britta sleeping together, something that would be a big, momentous special episode on most sitcoms, was basically a throwaway on this one. Nothing even changed about the dynamic of the characters (well, nothing that anyone but Abed would detect).