Pages tagged “joel mchale”

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Community Review: "Regional Holiday Music" (3.10)

Since we won’t be seeing Community again for a while, I’m very happy that the show went out on a high note. And NBC has been very cagey about the back half of the season—yes, we’ve been assured that there will be one, but how it’ll happen remains undecided. NBC has enough struggling sitcoms that it seems conceivable that Community will end up back on the air during the spring season… but then it might not. It might get thrown away in one night or scattered around the summer to languish....  read more

Community Review: "Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism" (3.9)

Last night’s episode of Community had two plots but one of the main things connecting them was their reliance on old sitcom stories. This isn’t Abed going into a Christmas wonderland in his mind here, instead this is standard stuff. In fact, the show goes out of its way to tell you that, when Troy mentions the way Abed has seen his plotline played out 100 times previously on television and can’t be fooled. You’re supposed to recognize that these are pretty ordinary events, to the point that I doubt they work nearly as well if you’re unaware....  read more

Fans Reward Community With Cover Contest, Higher Ratings

Ever since NBC’s unjust announcement that the network was benching Community until sometime in 2012, the show has been riding a wave of much deserved success.  read more

Community Review: "Documentary Filmmaking: Redux" (3.8)

If you’re reading this article you’re almost certainly aware of Community‘s current troubles. The show is not officially canceled by any means. It has a full order that will, we’ve been assured, be fulfilled. However, that’s the only good news. After December we don’t know when the show will be back, or how long it will be back for. Anyone who remembers the third season of Arrested Development may end up feeling some deja vu here. Similar scheduling shenanigans forced that show off the air after the fall, and Fox only aired the final episodes in one short, difficult-to-find block...  read more

Eight Reasons NBC Should Keep Community Alive

Last night, NBC announced its mid-season lineup and to our dismay Community was not on it. The news makes a fourth season less likely, and that would be a damned shame.  read more

Community Review: "Studies in Modern Movement" (3.7)

“Studies in Modern Movement” was one of those episodes that helps illustrate how much Community can do within the old-fashioned sitcom format. The episode centers around Annie moving apartments, and there could hardly be a more predictable set-up for the characters to be in. This is the type of high-stress environment that the show’s format loves, one where stakes aren’t super high but they’re moreso than just sitting around a table. There’s a way in which Community takes each one of its four stories revolving around this and pushes them to the absolute limit....  read more

Community Review: "Advanced Gay" (3.6)

Community‘s ambition to make every episode an event of sorts frequently has its less-themed episodes struggling for an identity. With last week’s Halloween episode, for instance, there was a clear hook that resulted in a something memorable, but it’s when the show needs to come up with something more organic to the normal school dynamic that Community tends to fall into trouble. Unfortunately, the less wacky episodes are also where the show has to find its emotional resonance. “Advanced Gay,” however, succeeded at for once bridging the show’s wackiness with the seriousness of these characters lives. This was the first...  read more

Community: "Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps" (3.5)

The two-week break between last night’s episode of Community and the last one was a good thing, simply because for all of their mutual quality, they’re quite a bit similar. That “Remedial Chaos Theory” was originally episode three of the show rather than four makes sense because it’s hard to imagine that Community‘s creators wanted to have two episodes in a row about variant stories being told by slightly changing the character dynamics. Still, that doesn’t mean that this wasn’t a riveting Halloween episode; it’s just that a little bit of its punch was blunted compared with “Chaos Theory” or,...  read more

Community Planning Holiday Musical Episode

NBC’s Community is staging a Christmas-themed musical episode. TVLine.com reports that the cult hit is stepping it up a notch and will produce an entire musical episode a la Glee with all original songs.  read more

Community Review: "Competitive Ecology" (3.3)

The criticism that Community has long suffered from is that its gimmicks overshadow its characters, that if you’re interested in a spaghetti western done as a sitcom, it’s a good show for you, but if you find that sort of thing irritating then it’s not. This has never been my concern. I have a love for the gimmicks, not just in and of themselves, but also how much they rely on what we know about the show’s characters already. The zombie invasion Halloween episode was fun, but I find myself wondering how comprehensible much of it was to people who’d...  read more