Community Review: "Pascal's Triangle Revisited" (1.25)
Last week’s episode of Community in many ways felt like the season finale, not just because it covered the college’s finals but also because it featured the sort of large-scale events that are usually only brought into play during finales. Señor Chang being knocked down to student Chang (his first name hasn’t been mentioned yet, has it?) was the type of unexpected move that isn’t normally deployed in just any random episode. As much as Community is a show that constantly questions our basic assumptions about sit-coms, for the most part it remains a party to the greater constant of... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsCommunity Review: "English as a Second Language" (1.24)
Like all school-based shows, Community‘s premise eventually has to come to an end. While shows about workplaces or friendships can theoretically go on forever, school automatically lasts a set amount of time and attempts at extending this can only end up strained. I call this the “Mr. Feeny Dilemma” after my favorite example of it from Boy Meets World, in which the teacher Mr. Feeny follows the show’s protagonists not just from middle school to high school, but then even to college. Forcing a show’s situation to continue longer than it organically would completely removes any sense of reality it... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsCommunity Review: "Modern Warfare" (1.23)
Hype is a powerful thing. NBC itself hasn’t been doing too much to talk up the “Modern Warfare” episode of Community (after all, how much can you promote a single episode of a TV show?) but the show’s creator Dan Harmon has been doing so for quite a while. When I interviewed him a week ago this episode was a lot of what he wanted to talk about, and on Twitter and in discussions elsewhere he’s been implying that the episode is pretty much the best thing made in the history of mankind, ever. I came in with some high... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsCommunity Review: "Contemporary American Poultry" (1.21)
There's no denying that Community is a show suffused with pop culture. Almost every episode's plot has been done by a sit-com or movie previously, and Community does little to hide this—to the point where it sometimes revels in its referentiality. Other than Family Guy and occasionally South Park, it's a show that's most reliant on its audience knowing its pop culture references for enjoyment. This is going to be especially true of an episode centered around Abed.... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsCommunity Review: "The Science of Illusion" (1.20)
If there's one joke in Community that perfectly encompasses the show's sense of humor it's the snake in a can gag at the beginning of "The Science of Illusion." Like the show's characters, we're all aware of the old snake in the can prank. I've seen other shows comment on this before, but the commentary is usually, "Let's mention how dumb this prank is." Community took a different route, which is instead actually infusing the joke with comedy by changing things while simultaneously recognizing the joke along with the audience. Offering a totally empty peanut can is funny, and the... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsMichael Bay Blogs Transformers 3 Update, Confirming Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Ken Jeong
Transformers 3 producer-director/guy we wish would adapt Dr. Faustus for the screen, Michael Bay, recently issued a statement via his official website updating his progress on the third installation of the robot action series. “We are going to shoot in LA, Chicago, Washington DC, Florida, Texas, Africa, Moscow, and China,” Bay wrote. He also confirmed that Oscar winner Frances McDormand will be joining the cast, as the National Intelligence Director, while John Malkovich will play Sam Witwicky’s (Shia LaBoeuf) boss. Ken Jeong, of Knocked Up/The Hangover/Community fame, will bring levity and laughter to the action flick. The... read more
Found in: Movies, NewsCommunity Review: "Basic Genealogy" (1.18)
One of the things that always sets sit-coms in particular off in their own, unrealistic little worlds is their lack of outside friendships or families. If a show is based around a family, you’d better be prepared for almost every episode centering on the characters of that family interacting rather than the reality of our lives, which is time spent at school, work and with friends. Reality is a lot bigger than the couple of easy sets used in a sit-com, and the way shows wall off one portion of the world is a large part of what keeps them... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsCommunity Review: "Physical Education" (1.17)
When Community began, one of my biggest fears was that the show would be taking Abed's immediately popular quirkiness and turning this into the entire show. Remember Family Matters? If so, you might recall how quickly the show was subsumed by Urkel and went from watchable if unoriginal to frighteningly awful. Community was always a better show than that, but breakout characters run the risk of ruining the balance of things, especially when they're not really developed. For more examples, just think of nearly every running character that SNL has ever had. ... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsCommunity Review: "Communication Studies" (1.16)
Community, as with every other sit-com this week, saw the need to focus on Valentine’s Day. But while for most shows I maintain a certain level of dread for these things, Community is different. The show manages this first off by having a fairly interesting love triangle with its Jeff-Britta-Michelle relationship, which this episode definitely improved, but more importantly because of the show’s intense pacing. In The Office, the Pam-Jim dynamic took years of will-they/won’t-they nonsense before things happened, and while the show has a certain level of changing dynamics ultimately it’s always about bringing things to a nice,... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsCommunity Review: "The Politics of Human Sexuality" (Episode 1.11)
One of the early concerns for Community was whether it would wear itself out quickly. As good as the pilot was, and it was damn good, the next few episodes were in large part repetition. Meet the cast, meet a class, and get a few jokes about how bad community colleges are. Rinse, show Abed being weird in some sort of autistic or foreign way, repeat. ... read more
Found in: TV, Reviews
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