Community

[Dannyalcatraz]

OTOH, there could be a positive side to this: it could be they want him to do a Community spinoff, and simply horrendously bungled the handling of the communication.

Not likely, but possible.

 

[fba827]

i'm not ready to dismiss a show next season sight unseen -- i'll give the new producers a chance to prove themselves. But I do think i would have enjoyed seeing what Harmon continued to come out with...and now we'll just see what is churned out of the brain trust next season.

 

[Felon]

I have to agree. I started watching it because I myself was forced into going to community college for a while (after having been at a 4-year institution for almost long enough to graduate; no knock on anyone who attended CC), an interesting experience to say the least. At first, this show was actually a sitcom version of community college, but it's kind of devolved into a morass of pop culture references and insider gags; the actual "situation" of the sitcom doesn't come through much anymore. There is still some entertainment value in some of the shows, but I think it's definitely past its best days.

You're not Chevy Chase incognito, are you? He says stuff like that in every interview now. He correctly points out that the show stopped being about the diverse groups of people who attend community college long, long ago. It's doing now what the Simpsons did after about ten years: stopped being about characters you can relate to and started being about the zany antics of characters with over-the-top quirks. I don't even of it as a comedy, really. It's more like theater of the absurd (q.v. the air-conditioning repair school arc that parodies....um, "Good Will Hunting" maybe?).

The show tries to be smart with its constant "meta" elements, and bittersweet humor about Ahbed's incremental retreat from reality, but then they invariably cop out and go for the same group hug coda that the dumbest and sappiest of comedies resort to.

In short, I find it entertaining, but in a wildly inconsistent fashion.

Is it bad enough to deserve cancellation? Well, is "Big Bang Theory" still on the air?

 

[Ahnehnois]

You're not Chevy Chase incognito, are you?

No. I don't follow closely enough to be aware of those comments, but I agree with them. How many shows/movies/anything are about community college? Not many. And for a while, I felt like it kind of did capture that vibe, if in an over-the-top way.

The show tries to be smart with its constant "meta" elements, and bittersweet humor about Ahbed's incremental retreat from reality, but then they invariably cop out and go for the same group hug coda that the dumbest and sappiest of comedies resort to.

In short, I find it entertaining, but in a wildly inconsistent fashion.

Pretty much.

Is it bad enough to deserve cancellation?

In favor of what, one wonders? I don't know; I don't really care if they're going to dismantle it and then renew it.

 

[Felon]

You know what? I just went back to Hulu and found the 8-bit episode that was being discussed here. And I laughed!

So, I lose the points I accumulated for saying that the show was simply absurd and not funny. OTOH, it did end with a big hug coda.

 

[Kzach]

You know what? I just went back to Hulu and found the 8-bit episode that was being discussed here. And I laughed!

So, I lose the points I accumulated for saying that the show was simply absurd and not funny. OTOH, it did end with a big hug coda.

And in other news, water is wet...

 

[Viking Bastard]

I loved the finale, and if the Harmon-less fourth season sucks at least there's an actual finale (much like Scrubs).

Yeah, the finale was a much mellower affair than I anticipated, but it actually wrapped things up pretty well. It was surprisingly satisfying.

(EDIT) Also, while I certainly enjoy the almost absurdist and gimmicky nature of the show the last two seasons, I definitely miss the wacky-but-grounded nature of the first season. I've enjoyed the absurdity, but the show was at it's best in the first season.

That is the exact opposite of my view: Sure, I liked Community in it's first season, but it wasn't until the tail end of the season it started so show signs of the brilliance that was to come.

 

[Felon]

Yeah, the finale was a much mellower affair than I anticipated, but it actually wrapped things up pretty well. It was surprisingly satisfying.

Shows they knew the axeman was drawing near. I wonder if they can evade the hooded one as long as "Chuck" did?

 

[Deset Gled]

That is the exact opposite of my view: Sure, I liked Community in it's first season, but it wasn't until the tail end of the season it started so show signs of the brilliance that was to come.

I think Community is struggling to find right balance between being sitcom and being a complete meta-parody-mindscrew show. It's almost like the show flanderized itself this season after realizing that the extremely over-the-top paintball episodes were the most popular episodes of the show. Since then, we've been getting things that make the paintball episodes seem normal by comparison. I have absolutely loved the new absurdities, but I don't think the show is sustainable with that level of wackiness. That's why I am trying to look at the positive side of the executive shake up; hopefully, the new crew will be able to find the right mix.