US: Community!!!

Community is probably my favourite show ever. With that out the way, season 4 is bloody awful. Some episodes I haven't been able to watch in one sitting they've been that bad and some of the dialogue, particularly round the table, has been cringeworthy.

Britta'd.
 
Had forgotten about this (Watched two seasons). Just discovered it's on Netflix... must watch this before I move :-D
 
Thought the first one was rubbish, almost nothing funny in it at all, yeah it's setting up the show but so did the first ep of the first season and that was brilliant. Second ep was much funnier, but still stupid.

The first series was a bunch of guys in college and the funny crap that happens around that. It was spanish, it wasn't fancy, the lessons were funny but not insane and having to be super interesting and the base of any story, the actual classes were barely a story themselves. For quite a while every ep had to have a hook.

I don't know how to explain it great, it used to be seinfeld, a comedy about people, just in college instead of in an apartment in new york. Now it's not just a show about the people, it's a show where fairly boring limited characters are shoved into a new location/world/crazy situation every week.

It's essentially an entirely different show and it's so so much worse. the two new eps aren't a patch on anything from the first 2 seasons and I think was only as good as some of the worst episodes in the past couple seasons. Hugely disappointed :(
 
I'm glad it's back. The first episode wasn't great, but it served its functional and structural purpose well - establishing a new status quo for which the rest of the season will operate. I'm glad they decided to get that out of the way in the first episode, and it's good that it did a lot of work in terms of resetting things after the end of season four. One thing the first episode did do pretty well however, was foreground just how much the characters have actually grown since the first episode. I think that's something that's important to keep in mind at this point; the ever shifting landscape of the show and seemingly revolving number of writers was always going to cause some kinds of gaps, inferior episodes and odd moments within the show, but the fact that the character's progress has stayed entirely consistent through all of this is pretty impressive. This alone puts it head and shoulders above any other sitcom on television because not only is the status quo never reverted back to normal at the end of every episode, but the characters have evolved and changed. Abed said it best when he says people are random and pointless - that's because people change. It's uncommon (in the grand scheme of television) for television series' demonstrate this, and those that do are rarely sitcoms. While this first episode was not funny it did what it had to do, whilst also making comment on just how weird the show has been throughout its entire run so far. Not the strongest episode, nor the boldest, but definitely more insightful than it has been in quite some time.

The second episode was a lot better, hinting at the change of dynamics within the show. It was certainly funnier than the first, but we're now going to see another side to Greendale, one where it is not just a bad place for students to be, but also for faculty too. It certainly seems like its going to be a lot darker than it has been before, but I think that's because all the hopes of the bright future that all the characters were hoping for when they finally left Greendale were dashed by having to reintegrate into the real world.

It's a shame that Donald Glover is only five episodes. I'm glad there was only a few meta-references to that and to the changes made in the production team between season four and five, and the subsequent media/fan speculation all of that has generated. Even THAT was dealt with in the first episode. The second episode is surely the first step in taking us back to what Community really is: just a ******* TV show.
 
The characters have become terrible, insanely limited, very unrealistic and stupid.

Abed was a bit weird but not completely psychotic. It's done what almost EVERY comedy does, the characters become caricatures of themselves.

think Friends, they started as relatively rounded characters, Rachel was supposed to grow from a spoilt rich ***** to a normal adult. Which she probably did, Ross got more ridiculous but was still good, Joey went from stupid sometimes to ONLY being stupid. Monica went from sometimes a bit OCD to only the over the top part of her character. Pheobe went from a normal/whacky character to ONLY whacky.

The majority of shows can't help but take the biggest most different parts of the characters they start with and push towards those being the main part of the character and nothing else. This is what has absolutely happened with Community and it's exactly why Pierce, Britta, Abed, Shirley have become entirely boring. Abed isn't really weird sometimes in a funny way, he's just always weird now and it's not funny at all any more, not really. The nick cage thing would have been much funnier if he didn't do something similarly crazy and out there every episode. I saw it coming the second, the very second he said don't do a marathon, the entire scene coming was clear as day.

The show has done what the majority of shows do and turn complete characters into heavily limited, very narrowly focused characters who can always only react one way to everything. Characters growing into new COMPLETE characters that are multi faceted, great, almost no shows do this. Characters growing from the say 5 sided initial character, into a new but 1 dimensional character is not good writing, and it is what the majority of shows, particularly comedies/sitcoms, end up doing.

As said before, they set up the show in the first episode while being funny, there was no reason setting up how the show would play out in the new season couldn't be equally as funny and brilliant, it wasn't, that is an incredibly bad sign for me. They sacrificed comedy to tell a story, which just suggests they can't do that any more. The entire first season was telling a story in a damn funny way every week......
 
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I really enjoyed its return especially the second episode. The Nicholas Cage ark was brilliant!

The last scene with Abed, Troy and 'Mike'.......:eek::D:p
 
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nice to have it back but yeah the fun and jokes seem very bland.... when you look at say the crazy ones with robbin williams and hello ladies it does pale in comparision.

Strange that chevy chase left the show.... I mean the series showed him as the least liked guy who was trying to fit in and then he actually did go for real life lol

Either way more time for chang and the dean, hopefully we get to see Alison Brie strutting her "stuff" to improve viewing figures
 
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