I agree down the line. What a let down from the great pilot. And I have a feeling it get worse. Since the point of the show is the making of a “Community” Joel will have to become friends with each crazy person in turn. It was a lot more fun when he was insulting them. In fact, it was only fun when he was insulting them.
While we’re on stupid tv conventions, the class we saw couldn’t possibly be the first class of the season or else everyone wouldn’t have had books and study notes already. Yet because this is tv, the prof has to introduce himself as if nobody ever saw him before.
Actually, I thought the joke there was that Troy and Abed made a simple conversation out of the example sentences, rather than the massive effort that Jeff and Pierce were working on.
I thought their presentation at the end was hilarious. Totally surreal. I loved the reaction shots of the students. Some looking perplexed, some bored, some totally horrified…
Ditto. Got the pieces in place for something great like that. McHale’s character is great, but I do love when he’s called out on his douchiness. I think too many other shows would just let it stands and establish it as what is cool.
I’ve had college classes where the instructor abruptly left after class had already started (once after the first week, once after midterms) for “personal reasons” and another instructor had to step in at the last minute and take over the class using the original prof’s text selections and syllabus. That latter time she took our midterms with her.
Currently it’s in the red and wrinkly and covered-with-afterbirth icky stage. Some sitcoms grow out of that and turn into a beautiful baby, some you just have to take and expose on a hill. Community is still in the “could go either way” phase.
Some do, but usually in connection with a 4 year college (ie all of you classes are on the CC campus, but the last 2 yrs are under control of the 4 yr school and you get the bachelor’s degree from them). There are also junior colleges (usually private) that are transitioning from 2 yr to 4 yr status and offer both associate’s and bachelor’s degrees.
As a bit of a hijack, I have to stick up for the Community College a bit here. I went to a Community College before going to University - a 2 year engineering technology program. It’s all I could afford at the time.
It turned out to be harder than University. See, when you graduation from CC, you’re expected to be employable in the field you went into, and depending on the program you’re in, there can be an awful lot of material that you need to learn, plus you have to be given enough practical skills to be functional with the toolset of your profession. In the 2 years I was at CC, we took math all the way through partial derivatives, differential equations and linear algebra, took electronics courses in solid state theory, communications theory, boolean algebra, circuit theory, programming in ‘C’ and Pascal, and numerous other subjects. And we had 15 hours a week of labs on top of the 20 hours a week of coursework. We also had a longer school year by far - almost two months longer than the University school year.
When I went to university, they gave me a a full two year’s credit for my two years of CC after they examined the curriculum and had the various faculties interview me. I found the math courses in University to be a little harder (less applied, more theoretical), the engineering courses about the same in difficulty, the liberal arts classes to be much easier, and the overall workload to be significantly lower.
Community Colleges tend to be looked down on by University graduates, but they do good work, and depending on the college and the program of study, can be every bit as hard as university.
So far, this show has not gone for cheap ‘Community College is for idiots’ jokes, and I hope they stay away from them.
Last night’s episode was really great, I think. It had us laughing more than The Office did. There were so many great little moments. “I’m not your mother.” “You’re not?!” The whole sneezing thing. “This is no way to teach intro to accounting!” And of course, the way Abed’s father reacted to his movie. Well the movie itself was pretty surreal and awesome, but I like the fact that there was a genuine emotional connection and reaction there.
I don’t know about the best episode so far but I think it was at least on par with the pilot. I really liked Jeff trying to con the teacher it really brought back his whole reason for being in the school.
I am also very happy they are moving it to 8:00; I don’t like any of their other shows on Thursday so this will be perfect for me to watch the show and then bail to something else.