Season 3, Episode 11
“It's almost too conceptual to follow, but I love it.”
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
Okay, now that that's out of the way...The show's forced hiatus has been an interesting time for all parties involved. Dan Harmon has said repeatedly that he had grown used to the “feedback loop” with the fans that the hiatus, which had already depressed him, was made even more difficult by the uncertainty that he faced in creating these back 12 episodes.* All of these episodes are now in can, and so it will be interesting to see the role that the fans plays in the creation process, especially considering that the show's rabid fans base is part of the reason that casual viewers have been so reticent to tune in.
*(The prime example he gives is a future episode that takes place entirely within the Dreamatorium, which he describes as either the best or the worst thing the show has ever done, and something so crazy that it wasn't until it got to the editing bay that the cast and crew finally understood what it was supposed to be about.)
For the fans, the three months that the show had off was a flurry of creative activity as they did what fans did best – they memed, and they memed hard. All sorts of illustrations came out, with the cast re-imagined in everything from X-Men to Star Wars to Calvin and Hobbes to Batman to Street Fighter, as well as Valentine's Day Cards. There were of course YouTube mashups, including Arrested Development, Prometheus, and The Dark Knight Rises. Some imagined that mythical theme park that would come after the 12th season. Out of desperation from their Community withdraws, the regular commenters over that The AV Club set up shop at the review of "Regional Holiday Music", eventually racking up over 30,000 comments. (It was an "achievement" so big, it got mocked by The Onion, and even made it's way to at least one of the show's stars.)
For critics, it was a time to see just how far they could stretch their writing muscles, as many, many e-words were used to endlessly discuss the show, it's fate, and why it should be renewed. It also seemed like another chance for the show's detractors to kick the show while it was down, or for the more fair-minded, to begin an honest conversation about why the show just isn't for everybody. (There were of course some well-reason rebuttals.) Alan Sepinwall whittled away the cold, Community-less weeks with weekly posts about what he missed about the show. The AV Club taunted it's readership by continually including Community tags is the seemingly unrelated posts, which would then appear in registered users notifications. And that's to say nothing of all the pre-air posts that appeared this morning, urging any random viewer to watch if they hadn't done so already. (Or in some cases, not.)
For NBC...well, they didn't do much for the first couple of months, perhaps trying to whether the shitstorm of internet negativity that they kicked up. But around the time of Jim Rash's Oscar win, NBC suddenly became very invested in marketing the show, in a way that it hadn't previously. In December, a deal was struck to put the show's entire back catalog on Hulu Plus. Then, there was the “Jim Rash won an Oscar” ad. Then there was the long-form ad that premiered on The Soup (which is on E!, which is part of the NBC-Universal family). And then NBC stealthy snuck in another commercial on their website. And soon these things were no longer resigned to just the internet, as the commercial from The Soup began to appear during commercial breaks for other NBC shows. In the week before the show returned, a three-part animated webisode was rolled out on Hulu. Yesterday, a deal was struck with Comedy Central to start syndicating the show. It's almost as if NBC (and more likely Sony, who produces the show) wanted Community to succeed, no doubt brought on my 30 Rock bombing in the same slot. Hell, Joel McHale appeared in the opening bumper before tonight's episode.
That is a lot of pressure to put on a show that got benched for not having enough viewers in the first place, and no doubt all lot of these instances were mostly just exercises in preaching to the choir, so the extent to which these things would be successful was highly questionable. But then a funny thing happened. Tonight while the episode was airing, the show managed to rack up FOUR different trending topics on Twitter, and while Twitter obviously isn't the best metric for ratings and veiwership, that was something the show has yet to accomplish. Sure it could be chalked up to an extra-vociferous fan-base, but it could also be an increase in overall viewers, who were actually enticed by all the fan activity.
Somehow Community became The Little Show That Could, and luckily tonight's return episode had the goods to back it all up. Given the way production schedules work out, we can't really give the show credit for this, but it certainly was fortuitous that the first episode back, the one that would have the chance to hook any potential new viewers, was one that was a fairly “normal” episode, and perhaps the best “normal” episode that the show has done in quite some time. In future weeks [MINOR SPOILERS] we'll have episodes inspired by Law & Order, one that will replace paint ball wars with pillow fights, someone will die, Chang will rise, and we'll spend some time in the Dreamatorium, but for tonight, this was more than enough.
If there was to be one quibble about this episode's accessibility to the non-initiated, it would be that the two main thrusts of this episode, Shirley's re-marriage to Andre and her going into business with Pierce were both predicated on previous knowledge that casual viewers might not gets. In both instances, there is a lot of pain behind both characters' actions, as Shirley seeks to prove that she is no longer the subservient and unhappy woman that she was during her first marriage, and Pierce is still trying to prove something to his father, a quest that was left unfinished thanks to his death brought about by Jeff. For us fans the show's use of this continuity is a great, enriching move, but I could understand how casual and new viewers might not catch or understand all of the strong emotions at play here.
Everything else though? All of that was pure gold that would work perfectly for newbies while still satisfying long-term fans, even if some of the jokes flew over the newbies' heads. For starters, the show was able to ground all of the action based around Shirley's wedding, which both avoided the tendency of normal episodes to have one good storyline and one middling one, as well as allowing newbies not to be confused by any sort of rubbernecking between plots, or having to keep up with a bunch of different locations.
Although seeing Troy and Abed in the Dreamatorium must have been weird, especially the part where newbies didn't actually get to see it. But regardless, Troy and Abed's attempt to grow up were a story that we've seen dozen times before (Scrubs did it multiple times, in fact), but the show was able to put enough twists on it to make it's own. Long term fans, and probably even some observant newbies, must have caught the meta-commentary here, as Troy and Abed's attempt to “de-whimsify” themselves serves a commentary on the show itself, and Dan Harmon's own personal debates about making the show more mainstream. The ending lesson was about as predicable as one might expect – Troy determines that he and Abed are the happiest just being themselves – but it comes about in a bit of unconventional manner. It's not just that Troy and Abed aren't happy being normal, it's just that there not very good at it either, and that doesn't just make themselves uncomfortable, but also everybody around them, and even pisses off a certain amount of people, however inadvertently.
Elsewhere, we see Jeff and Britta suffer separate identity crises brought on Shirley's wedding, as they attempt or forced to help. In both cases they are brought to the crippling realizations about their life choices, as Jeff realizes that he is emotionally unavailable thanks to his absentee father, and Britta realizes that she can't escape her fates a bride and mother, now matter how much her ideologies may say otherwise. There's not many shows that would date touch the latter matter in such a manner, but it's telling that both of these issues are treated with equal amount of pathos and levity, and when Jeff and Britta end up attempting to marry each other, it's not out of love, but rather them trying to make sure that they will live out their assumed fates with a person that they at least feel comfortable with.
To some of the show's critics, one of the worst things about Community is how you can count on the last-minute emotional resolution to the main stories, and while that's an oversimplification of the pathos that the show can hit, I have to admit that this episode did fall into that trap – although only in part. Jeff and Britta's near-marriage may have allowed Shirley and Andre realize that they can work with a new dynamic in their second marriage and they go ahead and get married right away (and save seventy bucks!), but that's not where the story end. Shirley's planned sandwich shop gets passed over for a chance to install a Subway franchise, which not only destroys Shirley's chances to prove her new-found independence, but also wrecks Pierce's attempts to prove something to his dead father.
It's a dark ending to what was mostly an “up” episode, but it's an important sign to the newbies, as well as a reminder to the long term fans. This season isn't about the lighter side of the group, but the darker side of everything. Dan Harmon's is attempting to unearth all of the group's demons this season, and it's going to take a rough emotional journey to get the job done.
Quotes and Other Thoughts:
Other callback that newbies wouldn't have gotten: the return of Annie Boobs, why exactly Shirley would have been able to start up a sandwich shop in the first place.
Likewise, the reveal of Shirley's sexy voice would only disturb – and thus only be funny to – long time viewers. Man, reviewing watching the series with that knowledge in mind is going to be rough.
*(The prime example he gives is a future episode that takes place entirely within the Dreamatorium, which he describes as either the best or the worst thing the show has ever done, and something so crazy that it wasn't until it got to the editing bay that the cast and crew finally understood what it was supposed to be about.)
For the fans, the three months that the show had off was a flurry of creative activity as they did what fans did best – they memed, and they memed hard. All sorts of illustrations came out, with the cast re-imagined in everything from X-Men to Star Wars to Calvin and Hobbes to Batman to Street Fighter, as well as Valentine's Day Cards. There were of course YouTube mashups, including Arrested Development, Prometheus, and The Dark Knight Rises. Some imagined that mythical theme park that would come after the 12th season. Out of desperation from their Community withdraws, the regular commenters over that The AV Club set up shop at the review of "Regional Holiday Music", eventually racking up over 30,000 comments. (It was an "achievement" so big, it got mocked by The Onion, and even made it's way to at least one of the show's stars.)
For critics, it was a time to see just how far they could stretch their writing muscles, as many, many e-words were used to endlessly discuss the show, it's fate, and why it should be renewed. It also seemed like another chance for the show's detractors to kick the show while it was down, or for the more fair-minded, to begin an honest conversation about why the show just isn't for everybody. (There were of course some well-reason rebuttals.) Alan Sepinwall whittled away the cold, Community-less weeks with weekly posts about what he missed about the show. The AV Club taunted it's readership by continually including Community tags is the seemingly unrelated posts, which would then appear in registered users notifications. And that's to say nothing of all the pre-air posts that appeared this morning, urging any random viewer to watch if they hadn't done so already. (Or in some cases, not.)
For NBC...well, they didn't do much for the first couple of months, perhaps trying to whether the shitstorm of internet negativity that they kicked up. But around the time of Jim Rash's Oscar win, NBC suddenly became very invested in marketing the show, in a way that it hadn't previously. In December, a deal was struck to put the show's entire back catalog on Hulu Plus. Then, there was the “Jim Rash won an Oscar” ad. Then there was the long-form ad that premiered on The Soup (which is on E!, which is part of the NBC-Universal family). And then NBC stealthy snuck in another commercial on their website. And soon these things were no longer resigned to just the internet, as the commercial from The Soup began to appear during commercial breaks for other NBC shows. In the week before the show returned, a three-part animated webisode was rolled out on Hulu. Yesterday, a deal was struck with Comedy Central to start syndicating the show. It's almost as if NBC (and more likely Sony, who produces the show) wanted Community to succeed, no doubt brought on my 30 Rock bombing in the same slot. Hell, Joel McHale appeared in the opening bumper before tonight's episode.
That is a lot of pressure to put on a show that got benched for not having enough viewers in the first place, and no doubt all lot of these instances were mostly just exercises in preaching to the choir, so the extent to which these things would be successful was highly questionable. But then a funny thing happened. Tonight while the episode was airing, the show managed to rack up FOUR different trending topics on Twitter, and while Twitter obviously isn't the best metric for ratings and veiwership, that was something the show has yet to accomplish. Sure it could be chalked up to an extra-vociferous fan-base, but it could also be an increase in overall viewers, who were actually enticed by all the fan activity.
Somehow Community became The Little Show That Could, and luckily tonight's return episode had the goods to back it all up. Given the way production schedules work out, we can't really give the show credit for this, but it certainly was fortuitous that the first episode back, the one that would have the chance to hook any potential new viewers, was one that was a fairly “normal” episode, and perhaps the best “normal” episode that the show has done in quite some time. In future weeks [MINOR SPOILERS] we'll have episodes inspired by Law & Order, one that will replace paint ball wars with pillow fights, someone will die, Chang will rise, and we'll spend some time in the Dreamatorium, but for tonight, this was more than enough.
If there was to be one quibble about this episode's accessibility to the non-initiated, it would be that the two main thrusts of this episode, Shirley's re-marriage to Andre and her going into business with Pierce were both predicated on previous knowledge that casual viewers might not gets. In both instances, there is a lot of pain behind both characters' actions, as Shirley seeks to prove that she is no longer the subservient and unhappy woman that she was during her first marriage, and Pierce is still trying to prove something to his father, a quest that was left unfinished thanks to his death brought about by Jeff. For us fans the show's use of this continuity is a great, enriching move, but I could understand how casual and new viewers might not catch or understand all of the strong emotions at play here.
Everything else though? All of that was pure gold that would work perfectly for newbies while still satisfying long-term fans, even if some of the jokes flew over the newbies' heads. For starters, the show was able to ground all of the action based around Shirley's wedding, which both avoided the tendency of normal episodes to have one good storyline and one middling one, as well as allowing newbies not to be confused by any sort of rubbernecking between plots, or having to keep up with a bunch of different locations.
Although seeing Troy and Abed in the Dreamatorium must have been weird, especially the part where newbies didn't actually get to see it. But regardless, Troy and Abed's attempt to grow up were a story that we've seen dozen times before (Scrubs did it multiple times, in fact), but the show was able to put enough twists on it to make it's own. Long term fans, and probably even some observant newbies, must have caught the meta-commentary here, as Troy and Abed's attempt to “de-whimsify” themselves serves a commentary on the show itself, and Dan Harmon's own personal debates about making the show more mainstream. The ending lesson was about as predicable as one might expect – Troy determines that he and Abed are the happiest just being themselves – but it comes about in a bit of unconventional manner. It's not just that Troy and Abed aren't happy being normal, it's just that there not very good at it either, and that doesn't just make themselves uncomfortable, but also everybody around them, and even pisses off a certain amount of people, however inadvertently.
Elsewhere, we see Jeff and Britta suffer separate identity crises brought on Shirley's wedding, as they attempt or forced to help. In both cases they are brought to the crippling realizations about their life choices, as Jeff realizes that he is emotionally unavailable thanks to his absentee father, and Britta realizes that she can't escape her fates a bride and mother, now matter how much her ideologies may say otherwise. There's not many shows that would date touch the latter matter in such a manner, but it's telling that both of these issues are treated with equal amount of pathos and levity, and when Jeff and Britta end up attempting to marry each other, it's not out of love, but rather them trying to make sure that they will live out their assumed fates with a person that they at least feel comfortable with.
To some of the show's critics, one of the worst things about Community is how you can count on the last-minute emotional resolution to the main stories, and while that's an oversimplification of the pathos that the show can hit, I have to admit that this episode did fall into that trap – although only in part. Jeff and Britta's near-marriage may have allowed Shirley and Andre realize that they can work with a new dynamic in their second marriage and they go ahead and get married right away (and save seventy bucks!), but that's not where the story end. Shirley's planned sandwich shop gets passed over for a chance to install a Subway franchise, which not only destroys Shirley's chances to prove her new-found independence, but also wrecks Pierce's attempts to prove something to his dead father.
It's a dark ending to what was mostly an “up” episode, but it's an important sign to the newbies, as well as a reminder to the long term fans. This season isn't about the lighter side of the group, but the darker side of everything. Dan Harmon's is attempting to unearth all of the group's demons this season, and it's going to take a rough emotional journey to get the job done.
Quotes and Other Thoughts:
Other callback that newbies wouldn't have gotten: the return of Annie Boobs, why exactly Shirley would have been able to start up a sandwich shop in the first place.
Likewise, the reveal of Shirley's sexy voice would only disturb – and thus only be funny to – long time viewers. Man, reviewing watching the series with that knowledge in mind is going to be rough.
More details to entice you for the rest of the season: John Goodman will return, and we will also get appearances by John Hodgman and Giancarlo Esposito.
“Wireless racism: the future of the past is now.”
“I have loved you since there was a Soviet Union and only one Damon Wayans.”
“Let's hope is more of a Bale than a Kilmer situation.”
“No, she's just pro-anti.” “No to both of you.”
“Somebody tell Britta what an analogy is.” “I know what it is. It's a thought...with another thought's hat on.”
“Inspector Spacetime ended up marrying himself as a baby.”
“We'll trying not to embarrass you at your community college library wedding.”
“I could go as Normal Man, and you could go as my trusting sidekick Ordinario.”
“Was there a misunderstanding? I mean, from my butt.”
“In the words of my 9th grade English teacher, 'There is always a reason not to follow your dreams.' At the time, he meant that I wasn't of the age of consent.”
“She's half urban.”
“We don't call it pink. We don't call anything by it's name. That's like day one floral arrangement school stuff.”
“You once convince Troy that turtle necks are made of actual turtles' necks.”
“That's me! Where did I get all of that money I'm holding?”
“This may surprise you Annie, but I come from a long line of wives and mothers.”
“'Webster dictionary defines' is the Jim Belushi of wedding openings: It accomplishes nothing, but everyone keeps using it, and no one knows why.”
“I shouldn't be saying this, but I cannot believe you learned all of this at Greendale. You are so professional.”
“Shut up Leonard! Those teenage girls you play ping-pong with are doing it ironically.”
“What about babies?” “What about them?” “How many?” “Pick a number, dick. Like it's up to me.”
“Remember that time he threw a temper tantrum when realized that Adam Sandler 'stole' his idea for Jack and Jill?”
“Wireless racism: the future of the past is now.”
“I have loved you since there was a Soviet Union and only one Damon Wayans.”
“Let's hope is more of a Bale than a Kilmer situation.”
“No, she's just pro-anti.” “No to both of you.”
“Somebody tell Britta what an analogy is.” “I know what it is. It's a thought...with another thought's hat on.”
“Inspector Spacetime ended up marrying himself as a baby.”
“We'll trying not to embarrass you at your community college library wedding.”
“I could go as Normal Man, and you could go as my trusting sidekick Ordinario.”
“Was there a misunderstanding? I mean, from my butt.”
“In the words of my 9th grade English teacher, 'There is always a reason not to follow your dreams.' At the time, he meant that I wasn't of the age of consent.”
“She's half urban.”
“We don't call it pink. We don't call anything by it's name. That's like day one floral arrangement school stuff.”
“You once convince Troy that turtle necks are made of actual turtles' necks.”
“That's me! Where did I get all of that money I'm holding?”
“This may surprise you Annie, but I come from a long line of wives and mothers.”
“'Webster dictionary defines' is the Jim Belushi of wedding openings: It accomplishes nothing, but everyone keeps using it, and no one knows why.”
“I shouldn't be saying this, but I cannot believe you learned all of this at Greendale. You are so professional.”
“Shut up Leonard! Those teenage girls you play ping-pong with are doing it ironically.”
“What about babies?” “What about them?” “How many?” “Pick a number, dick. Like it's up to me.”
“Remember that time he threw a temper tantrum when realized that Adam Sandler 'stole' his idea for Jack and Jill?”
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