Happy October 19 everybody! Tonight is finally the return of new episodes of Community. The other threadhas covered all of the offseason stuff (there was a lot) so I thought we should have a thread devoted to the actual episodes.
Tonight is “History 101”. From the NBC episode preview/recap/description:
On the first day of senior year, Jeff reveals some news that threatens to tear apart the study group. Meanwhile, Dean Pelton holds an elaborate competition dubbed “The Hunger Deans.”
I just read Grantland’s take on the new season yesterday and I can’t watch it tonight either way but i’m going to wait on some more reviews before I watch it.
Wow that was a depressing read. I really don’t want to watch my favorite comedy of all time become of shell of its former self, but it’s not like I’ll ever to refuse to watch it as long as they keep making it. I’m eager to see these episodes for myself and see how they measure up.
I saw it. It’s definitely a step backward. They’re going through the formula, but it’s flat. Not terrible, but far from brilliant.
In a way, it reminded me of Woody Allen’s Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask – more funny in concept than execution. If you summarized the script, it sounds better than what was on the screen. It also seemed to be trying too hard and the packed too much into the episode; some of the subplots should have been left out.
Flat is probably the best way to describe it. Maybe they’ll find their sea-legs in the upcoming episodes (with Harmon fired, and having sat through this premiere, I’m doubtful), but tonight it feel like the soul has gone out of the show. There was no momentum, no development. Sad.
I sort of agree with RealityChuck. It was still funny - but you can tell it’s not the Dan Harmon Community that I enjoyed so much the past three seasons. Just a little bit off … the characters weren’t exactly right, especially the whole Troy/Britta scene at the fountain.
However, the notion of Abed’s “happy place” being a typical sitcom featuring his friends (complete with laugh track!) was a good idea. And putting the pop-up promos for other shows was brilliant. I would totally watch American Sword Chefs and the blonde/blind marathon.
I loved the first three seasons and just finished this episode. I hated it. The stepford quality that the article refers to just about nails it. The two new showrunners are clearly out of their comfort zone here. I’m incredibly disappointed but not particularly surprised.
The show is not their vision, it was Dan Harmons. Because of the nature of the show, he is the only one capable of making it the way it was. It’s seems as though they sat in a writers room and tried to reverse engineer the first three seasons in order to figure out how to make the final one. You can’t make Community this way, it’s not possible. It’s as close to random as a sitcom has been. There are recurring themes and a distinct story telling method and sure there are recurring jokes, but the very fact that they exist were part of the joke.
It’s entirely possible the new showrunners will write some perfectly amusing episodes of tv this season but it won’t ever be the same.
I didn’t hate it, but it wasn’t great. But then again, there are plenty of just ok episodes of Community, especially at the beginning of each season. If Harmon was still in charge and put out this episode, we wouldn’t be freaking out like its the end of Community as we know it. But I especially don’t like it when shows do parodies of “traditional” sitcoms, so that really rub me the wrong way.
I think it’s being over-analysed and it’s way too early to tell. I laughed a lot throughout, so I have hope I’ll enjoy the season even if it does end up subtly different, which is inevitable anyway.
I’ll echo the feeling that something was off. Though the inception like Abed TV was pretty amusing. The Hunger Deans could have been just so much more (as could Troy and Britta at the fountain - in previous seasons that would have lasted throughout the ep and gotten progressively funnier).
I really hated the sitcom parody cold open. The whole time I’m thinking of all the people who spent time trying to convince their friends to watch this show, or people who just wanted to give it a chance - it opens to a minute of painfully bad sitcom cliches. A new viewer wouldn’t get it, and would’ve turned the channel about 8 seconds in. Ugh. Seriously, any new viewers to the show would’ve been turned off incredibly fast. Just an awful choice.