Ongoing Community Discussion Thread

[LeadHead]

FFunctionalData wrote:

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I have to start watching my community DVDs

I'll be watching a lot of season 3 on Hulu to prepare.

[The Borgified Corpse]

Mister Fandango wrote:

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Perhaps, but I always got the impression that he was being written as the archetypical out-of-touch old man set in his outdated ways in a charming kind of way, whereas Chase was portraying him as a racist asshat. You know, more like characters such as Grandpa on the Simpsons, just not quite as senile.

The former was certainly the case early on, and even explored by showing where it all came from via his father. Chase just had the... charisma?... to make him into a despicable, loathsome jackass and I guess the writer's obliged to some degree.

I'm particularly convinced this theory is true simply because of how many times Chase has claimed that he just didn't get the show, the humor, or the character.

When I listened to Chevy Chase on the commentary tracks, he kinda sounds like the out of touch old guy in real life too. He seems to have absolutely no idea what a commentary track is or why they're doing it.

[tighr]

The Borgified Corpse wrote:

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When I listened to Chevy Chase on the commentary tracks, he kinda sounds like the out of touch old guy in real life too. He seems to have absolutely no idea what a commentary track is or why they're doing it.

See, that's dangerous. When the old guy isn't aware of what is and isn't funny, you end up getting Chase playing Pierce as a racist asshat instead of a clueless old guy. He thinks Pierce is supposed to be an asshat. After a while, the writers just started writing him that way.

See Betty White for examples of old people who get it.

[bigdaddy]

The thing I don't get is that they started writing his character more decently at times in season 3, but I don't think Chase got that at all. One minute it seems old guy fun, the next it's horrible. I don't know if it's Chase or Hammond / new guys but it was just weird.

Then firing him after you filmed 90%+ of what is most likely the last season is just silly.

[IndyJones]

bigdaddy wrote:

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Then firing him after you filmed 90%+ of what is most likely the last season is just silly.

Didn't Chase quit?

[bigdaddy]

He was under contract, he was let go.

The episode was fine, but there was something off, I wasn't laughing out loud.

[IndyJones]

bigdaddy wrote:

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He was under contract, he was let go.

He didn't want to be there. He quit, and they left him leave.

[LeadHead]

I liked the premiere, there were some laugh out loud moments, not as many as I was hoping for, but still good. For me, the only season premiere to be of great quality was Season 2. Season 1 I thought wasn't funny and I nearly didn't keep watching because of it. Season 3 was about a C. This one I'd give a B/B-.

[Kitty Worrier]

I liked Fred Willard, can he come back?

[bigdaddy]

Kitty Worrier wrote:

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I liked Fred Willard, can he come back?

Maybe for the few Chase will not be in.

[tighr]

Fred Willard seemed to "get" Pierce. Why can't Chevy Chase "get" Pierce?

[bigdaddy]

Nicole Brown is co-hosting The Chew on ABC today, she was on yesterday as a guest. They called Community a "hit show". Clearly they don't know what they are talking about.

[gblews]

tighr wrote:

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Fred Willard seemed to "get" Pierce. Why can't Chevy Chase "get" Pierce?

Because in Chevy's world, Pierce needed to be written to his specifications, meaning giving him a bunch of 1970's slapstick fall downs and fumbling around with stuff. To Chevy, this is funny. In addition, the rest of the show should have been written like the audience from the 70's was still watching.

When I saw Fred Willard, I sarted searching my memory to figure out when it was that Chase left season 4, the begining or the end. Needless to say, Willard is another older comedic actor who could have made Pierce funny and likeble while still being a "bigoted asshat".

Enjoyed the opener. One TV critic mentioned that it seemed the new showrunners may have been trying a bit too hard to keep the show as Hamonesque as possible. I kind of agreed with that thought.

[JirinPanthosa]

Made some comments in another thread not seeing this one.

I would give the premiere a C-. They tried to keep the characters and the topics 'Harmon-esque', but they didn't keep the humor that way at all.

Jeff acted like Jeff, Brita acted like Brita, Abed acted like Abed...but the humor was just a string of quirk-driven gags, rather than being driven by the characters' emotional state and psychological history.

Also they kept up setting themselves up for great opportunities for zaniness, and not doing anything with them. The Dean sets up a battle royale to make students fight it out to get into the fluff class -- but they don't do anything that funny with it. Annie goes to play pranks on the Dean -- and all they can think of is to put popcorn in his car. These are both serious creative whiffs.

Then they had irritating facepalm moments like Brita and Troy fighting in the fountain then 'learning a lesson' that were just not funny at all.

Maybe the problem is they tried to have both an A plot and a B plot instead of just committing wholesale to one crazy premise, so they didn't have enough time to do either justice.

[TheGodBen]

JirinPanthosa wrote:

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Jeff acted like Jeff, Brita acted like Brita, Abed acted like Abed...but the humor was just a string of quirk-driven gags, rather than being driven by the characters' emotional state and psychological history.

I think you're being overly reverential to Harmon's Community. The best gags are the ones you mention, and they're the ones that fans remember most, but it also had a lot of standard jokes and random quirkiness.

The episode was fine. It was a fairly average episode of Community. If the rest of the season is like this then I'll be a little disappointed, but I know that Community often takes a few episodes to get going each season so I'm just going to sit back and see what happens.