Community

[The Narrator Returns]

That was... not good. But on the bright side, we have Fred Willard as Pierce to look forward to.

[mfunk9786]

Only lasted through the first commercial break of Zombie #Community. Creepy to watch the body continue moving without the head.

[knives]

I can kind of appreciate what they were doing, but the Abed stuff was just a unique sort of awful. At least we got Parks and Recsstill.

[swo17]

The Abed TV stuff was obviously playing on everyone's worst expectations about what would happen to the show now (and it did scare me for a minute). Honestly though, I think people are overreacting--this was a pretty solid episode. If I hadn't known beforehand that Harmon was not involved, I would never have suspected it. If the comedy was a touch more broad, then it was broad in a Happy Endings kind of way.

[Murdoch]

My biggest complaint is that it felt like two episodes crammed into one, and came off as a disjointed whole. But outside of the Abed stuff, which was bad in execution but not as a general idea, it came off like any other episode to me. Although that don't-ask-don't-tell joke was terrible.

[Mr Sausage]

Not a terrible episode, just a very mediocre one. It reminded me of the lesser episodes from last season. I'm also beginning to get tired of watching the same emotional beats worked out each show. Harmon's insistence that each single episode resolve a big emotional issue and have one or more characters grow kind of hampered the show's longevity, since there's only so many lessons about friendship someone can learn on a tv show. Should've gone for more of a season arc format. Once again Jeff is learning not to be selfish, Annie is learning that she finds her life boring, Abed is learning to accept change, Britta is being goofy for no reason, ect. I've seen all that before, and in better episodes.

I'll watch this season because I have a lot of affection for the characters, but I'm not optimistic about what I'll see.

[YnEoS]

That was possibly the worst community episode I've ever seen. It felt like they were trying so hard to re-create the best episodes from past seasons that they just stuck as much stuff as they could. There's so much going on, but none of it made sense. Most of the character's seem like they regressed a few seasons. Why aren't Pierce and Shirley running their sandwich shop? Why does Abed have a happy place in his head when he still has the small dreamatorium? Why isn't

SpoilerShow

Chang at City College?

Why is Jeff still trying to graduate early when he put Shirley over his career? Why isn't Troy at the air conditioning repair school? It's like they didn't watch the last episode of season 3.

[Andre Jurieu]

The only thing in the premiere that felt natural was Britta and Troy getting into an argument over the wishing fountain. Everything else felt ridiculously forced and calculated, like someone attempting to re-create what they assume people enjoy about the show. I think the nadir of that episode had to be the inclusion of that

SpoilerShow

Muppet-babies-style parody,

which felt about as random and unnecessary as anything could possibly be. That sequence felt like the writers just thought some random pop-culture reference was needed to allow the show to function, which really isn't the case at all. I couldn't help but feeling that the writers just threw stuff on the white-board to see what stuck.

I'm certainly not going to stop watching, but I have serious reservations after that episode. I would rather they just pick another style and fully commit rather than continue attempting to include stuff they feel is required.

[Steven H]

I mostly agree with Sausage. I think that something they would have gotten right in the first three seasons is they would have contrasted more between the Abed TV and the normal world. As "wacky" as Abed TV was, the two didn't seem all that much different. Still got some laughs out of me, though.

[mfunk9786]

Whoever had the idea to have the dean suddenly say "dean" constantly and cram it into every single thing he says/does (the Hunger Deans, really?!) needs to be dragged out to a field and left there. This was easily the worst episode of this show so far, and left me pretty much terrified about what's to come. Community, we hardly knew ye.

[swo17]

This was easily the worst episode of this show so far

Oh how quickly we forget "Origins of Vampire Mythology."

[mfunk9786]

I stand by it.

[The Narrator Returns]

Yeah, I like OVM (I regularly quote "I need help reacting to something"). Wine Tasting is definitely at the bottom for me, with Asian Population Studies and Celebrity Pharmacology.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Probably more than you need to know about Dan Harmon.

[Jeff]

The most fun part of that episode was watching how they managed to never have Chevy Chase on set with any of the rest of the gang. It appears to have been done with shadowy doubles, over the shoulder shots, and a few green screen composites.

[albucat]

Ok episode two was just dismal.

[knives]

I thought it was a significant step up actually. Several bits were like old Community.

[Roger Ryan]

I thought it was an improvement over last week's episode as well...although a bit off-putting to have the Halloween episode air on Valentine's Day!

Note that last night's episode was written by Megan Ganz, who contributed some fine scripts to the first three seasons but left the show at the end of 2012. She penned only one additional script for Season 4.

[Mr Sausage]

This show used to have really good timing. What happened? A lot of the banter and the comedic bits went on way too long (especially the opening scene). Very little was snappy. There wasn't a single surprise here, either, and it got unbearably sentimental at the end.

A poor episode.

[mfunk9786]

We all know what happened.

[Andre Jurieu]

I thought it was an improvement over last week's episode as well...although a bit off-putting to have the Halloween episode air on Valentine's Day!

Note that last night's episode was written by Megan Ganz, who contributed some fine scripts to the first three seasons but left the show at the end of 2012. She penned only one additional script for Season 4.

Completely agreed (other than the Halloween vs Valentine's thing, since I was prepared for that). I thought this one felt like it could have fit into any other season without any noticeable difference. After the episode was finished I immediately tried to figure out if Ganz was involved with the script. I wonder if her comedic-sensibilities will really fit in on something as bland as Modern Family.

[Mr Sausage]

We all know what happened.

I've never really been convinced by the Dan-Harmon-as-lone-genius idea. Community has never been a faultless show (it was over-organized, too often had easy, family-television style lessons, and over-relied on a small series of character tropes), but it had such a great sense of invention and character that more often than not it balanced its flaws and found a really unique tone. For two seasons anyway. Season 3, which also had Harmon as show-runner, was half terrible. These current episodes without Harmon aren't unrecognizable; they feel like Community, just Community done poorly. Indeed, they feel exactly like the weak episodes from season 3.

I'm not convinced that season 4 (provided it continues at this level) would've been any better with Harmon as show-runner. We might've gotten a few more good episodes, but otherwise I think that the delicate balancing act Community achieved over the first two seasons wasn't sustainable, and that the more everyone on the show got comfortable, the more rote it was going to become.

[The Narrator Returns]

Apparently, new fans and old ones were turned off by the premiere. Last night's episode got a record-low 18-49 rating of 1.1, a 43% drop from the premiere.

[mfunk9786]

It was also, you know, Valentine's Day.

[The Narrator Returns]

That's true, and it probably didn't help, but its drop couldn't have just been because of the holiday. Parks and Rec dropped only 0.5, as did Glee.