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Saturday, February 9, 2013

Community- Season 4, Episode 1

By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America (Joel McHale  Uploaded by maybeMaybeMaybe) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
History 101- After roughly FOREVER, Community was on our TV's Thursday night. But was it the real Community, or did Dan Harmon's exist doom it to becoming something like The Big Bang Theory? The show instantly mocked that possibility by having Abed go to his "happy place," a CBS-like sitcom in his head, complete with a laugh track. He had replaced Pierce with Fred Willard too! (Riffing on the offstage drama between Chevy Chase and the showrunners.) We thought that should have been dropped after the first scene though.



Dean Pelton stole the episode. We love that Jeff isn't repulsed by the Dean because the Dean is gay, but because the Dean is crazy. The joke isn't a homophobic one; it's mocking the stalker-ish character who will do (or wear) anything for attention. We also liked that the episode used Chang sparingly. Joel McHale was looking especially good in this episode too.

The theme of the episode was embracing change. The half hour seemed designed to address the worriers and the haters. While it was funny at first, we wish there had been more to the episode than a self-aware letter to all concerned in the audience. This felt more like a message than an episode.

Spending that much time on responding to critics came across as defensive, because the truth is, as long as the show is still good, we don't care who runs it or who is fighting on the set. A funny show that's true to its own tone covers a multitude of sins and rumors.

We still have one concern: The show used to do these insane high concept parodies of things and churn out these weird, wonderful episodes that we'd become obsessed with. The episode decided not to do that with The Hunger Games, using that as a throwaway joke, which is fine. We just hope these new showrunners CAN do that. For later. We will cautiously continue to watch. Any Community is better than no Community. Still, Inception has been parodied enough, right? South Park did that better.

So is Community back? Is it better or worse? This week didn't answer that question. Really, you couldn't tell from this self-conscious, uneven premiere. We will have to wait until next week to find out.

Episode grade: B-

8 comments:

  1. I think B- is too high for this uninteresting episode. However after watching it a second time I realised the ads during the show weren't real, that was funny.

    Snoz

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Dean stuff is what raised it for us. B- is our standard grade for something we didn't like or hate. It's neutral. You'd think that would be "C" (average), but people on here always take a C+ or below as a bad grade. It's like if we put a C+, we might as well put F. And we didn't think it failed. Just bored a little.

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    2. I understand, similar to when I go to IMDB and see a 70% grade, instantly I think the movie must be orinary but really most people are happy to get a 70% grade for exams so I shouldn't complain. Hope that makes sense.

      Snoz

      Delete
    3. it does.

      In school, there's nothing wrong with a good, healthy C, lol

      Delete
  2. Not bad at all. Some of the reviews had me worried and the previews didn't look so great either...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Some of the reviews were mega harsh. It made me wonder that if they didn't KNOW Dan Harmon left, would they have torn into this episode the way they did or even noticed the huge changes?

      Delete
    2. It was better than the alright episodes of Community but not as good as the good or best episodes of Community. There wasn't too much change but with a bit more improvement, it can be the Community that we know and love.

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