It was a good episode. It just feels different. I miss the old Community but this is still a sitcom that I can enjoy.
Yeah, I watched the first 3 seasons over the summer and really enjoyed them - especially the Abed-Jesus docudrama set of episodes (so cool) - and I really did get used to that little self-contained universe.
I have to assume that they’re trying to broaden the environment since they can’t keep the characters as students there forever, but I have to agree that it does seem a little clumsy so far. And a lot of the staple interactions that sort of underpinned the storylines seem to be largely missing - like between Troy and Abed - and whatever will replace them doesn’t seem to have surfaced yet. I hope this is just a situation where we have to give them time, but right now I’m not optimistic.
It was actually ok for me this week, and all the Inspector Spacetime stuff was lost on me. I realize it’s mostly due to it’s great cast. I’ll even miss Pierce when he jumps ship.
Right, because Annie was acting like a 13-year-old scribbling Mrs. Jeff Winger into her notebook.
It’s called hyperbole.
If you want to nitpick, how about this?
Troy and Abed are superfans who know every episode of Inspector Spacetime. Annie has been watching episodes with then since she moved in. And none of them ever made the connection between Jeff and Thoraxis?
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
Troy and Abed are superfans who know every episode of Inspector Spacetime. Annie has been watching episodes with then since she moved in. And none of them ever made the connection between Jeff and Thoraxis?
[/QUOTE]
Troy and Abed have. That’s why they invited Jeff- to “surprise” him.
Well, obviously it didn’t work. It wasn’t nitpickery, I really didn’t understand if you were using tween to mean “twenty something” or something, and couldn’t understand why you’d consider Annie jail bait when she’s something like 21 in the series, and quite obviously older IRL. That’s all.
I think this is exactly correct. Little things, like Jeff making a big deal about the hotel room being in his name (“so have fun with that!”) are just clumsy setups for Annie being called Mrs. Winger. Also there was no sense of place in this episode. Where exactly was this Inspector Spacetime convention being held? Far enough away from Greendale that Jeff got a room in the hotel - but close enough for Pierce and Shirley to just drop in. Harmon seemed to be a lot more subtle and clever than that.
I still enjoyed it. My favorite of the season so far (Toby was a fun character, although his lack of eyebrows freaked me out; Troy’s jilted-boyfriend freakout; loved the costumes; the notion of “Miranda” being a pejorative term - “everybody hates her”).
Alopecia. Watch Little Britain for more Matt Lucas goodness.
I didn’t get that Miranda was the (Season 1-2) Britta of Professor Spacetime until I read that.
I guess I would have liked Toby better if his hostility to Troy hadn’t been from trying to steal Abed, but just because he was a racist.
An 1800s Disney racist.
Did we see the same episode?
Probably. I fail to understand your point.
This Inspector Space-time episode seems one step closer to the Harmon Community. As did the "Halloween Ep. over the first Ep. Of season 4.
But, still, I too feel its missing something that only Dan and whichever writers that left brought to the table. Perhaps I’d like an episode where we see the gang back in the study room, teasing out the conflict of the episode as it plays out on campus. The first episode was just too obnoxious and overreaching in that regard. If I could see it in context to most of the more grounded campus set episodes of past seasons, I could tease out what’s missing more specifically, as these first three have been so far removed from Greendale proper so far.
As Abed said to himself in the second episode, “Remember when this show used to be about a community college?”
Dan Harmon, despite some truly whacked-out, but original episodes, always kept it grounded there.
That said, this episode felt the closest yet to Harmon’s Community than the other two so far. Still some good laughs for me; some comfortable character moments.
Minerva.
It’d be interesting if we could somehow have a blinded comparison - in a world where we didn’t know about the Harman drama, would people be so quick to declare the show dead? I wonder how much is expectations.
On the other hand, I want to give it a good chance, but it’s still coming off as “community as fan fiction” to me - it’s like they’re trying to cram in the trademark zanyness but just trying too hard and not really capturing the real creativity. They’re hammering the characters too hard with their basic characterization and not letting them bleed, as if to pound “we know how to write for these characters, we know who they are!” down our throats. The characters have actually regressed if anything - Annie this episode is more childish than last season, Abed is even more one-note (the premier episode was horrible for this), etc.
On the other hand, that was some impressive fanservice with Britta at the beginning. If they do anything similar with Alison Brie then this season will have been worth it.
I agree. I gave it a few episodes before making a judgement, but it just feels off. As another poster pointed out, it feels like they studied the first three seasons and are trying to apply the same formula. For example, Troy and Britta fighting in the fountain felt like a poor imitation of them breaking down filming the same commercial scene for 12 hours, only this time it felt completely forced, out of place and out of character.
What baffles me is why they would fire Harmon if the new team is just going to try to recreate his work and make the show the same way. It’s not like there was any reasonable expectation that the show would continue past this season.
My exact words after the first episode of this season were, “I don’t know what this is, but it isn’t Community.” I think the idea that it’s Community fan fiction is accurate. They’re trying really hard, and it doesn’t exactly suck, but it’s not the same show. I have enough good will for the actors and the characters to stick with it, but I’m not worrying about getting home on Thursday to see it asap.
It’s the uncanny valley of Community.
Which would actually be an interesting idea if done on purpose for a *Community *episode.
There isn’t really a “new team”. The writers and directors of the new episodes have all directed and written multiple shows in previous seasons. Its only the showrunner that changed.
There were some more defections in the writing staff (and one in the cast, of course), but most of them didn’t take place till after the current season had been filmed (which seems a pretty good indication that the writers don’t see a fifth season renewal happening).
Anyhoo, I don’t think the show has really changed. I had most of the complaints people have here back in seasons #2 and #3. The show stopped being about people in a Community College pretty quickly after the first season. And its frequently suffered from feeling like its “trying to hard” to be zany or clever. It started being “Community fan-fiction”, or more specifically, “Modern Warfare fan-fiction” in the second season.
I still like the show despite the changes, but in any case, I don’t see the last three episodes to be particularly different then shows from last season. Certainly, they were much more like the last season then any three shows in the first season were.