“I love being able to watch a show where women get to be just as goofy and wrong and hilarious as the men.”

This is why I like It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.  Sweet Dee is just as reprehensible as the other characters.  Kaitlyn Olson kills.

Fucking exactly! Like many straight men, Allison Brie is, to me, attractive. Having that scene go down the way it did had me rolling in my seat because of how perfectly they skewered my initial gut reaction to seeing her in that outfit (“Hellooo, nurse!”), slowly building the horror from “Okay, the baby voice is kind of creepy,” to “Sweet jesus make it stop.” Who says humor and feminism can’t be friends?

It’s understandable that people are really upset that it looks like Community isn’t going to get a fourth season, but realistically it shouldn’t even have lasted this long. The ratings are bad and pretty much always have been.

On any network other than fourth-place NBC it wouldn’t have gone beyond its initial 13 episodes.  This is just further proof of why people who want to make television for a niche audience should work in cable.  Sure the budgets are smaller, but so are the ratings expectations.

I almost fell on the floor laughing during that scene with Annie.  It was such a great take down of the “sexy but non-threatening” image pushed on women.  I also loved how Britta had zero compunction about stepping in for Ahbed in the christmas musical even though she didn’t know anything about the part.  Having that kind of confidence sans talent is usually reserved for male characters as well.

I have to imagine community can find a home somewhere….but then I thought the same thing about arrested development.

NBC isn’t even fourth place; it regularly comes in fifth, also falling behind Univision, which the English-language media tends to ignore.  The general low ratings have weirdly helped, as shows with little viewership but heavy critical praise like Community, 30 Rock and Parks and Rec would probably not have lasted as long as they have anywhere else; but sadly it looks like they’re turning to the more conventional along with reality shows (like the return of the horrid Fear Factor).  I wonder how much this comes from the Commcast merger and a possible change in programming strategy.

Britta’s epic failure on stage was an insanely brave piece of comedy. It somehow managed to elide the cringe factor, probably because the actress gave herself entirely over to the gleeful anarchy of the moment. Nothing against cringe comedy, but man, that was just pure hee-hawing.

I think one of the best bits with Britta was in the episode with the seven different time lines.  Britta goes to the bathroom and Abed comes up as she opens the door.  He asks her, “What’s that smell?” and she says, “Abed, you don’t ask someone that, it’s not dignified.”  Then the pizza arrives and she does a stupid little dance and sings about “Me so hungy! Me so hungy! Want pizza in my belly!”  Dignified!

So great. I also love that Britta wears aggressively unsexy Halloween costumes. Of course she does. Dan Harmon says she’s the character he channels himself through the most.

According to an interview I read, I think on the AV Club, Britta’s pizza dance was a Gillian Jacobs creation which makes me love it even more, especially with the kinda reprise in her Christmas episode dance.

I like that the writers have made an effort to re-ground the characters in their season one personae, which they had gotten away from a bit in the big season two concept episodes.  Initially it seemed a little forced, Annie went from being Doc Holiday in Fist Full of Paintballs to throwing a childish tantrum in Geology of Global Conflict, but now it looks like the Community folks don’t just want their characters to transcend their initial archetypes but also confront the more problematic elements of those archetypes. 
(God damn, someone should break my hands for typing that awkward goddamn sentence.)

Amanda:
I was disappointed we didn’t get to see them dress up this year.

This episode is the essence of the anarchy of Barney Miller:  He’s the center of sanity while things slowly get crazy around him.

Years after Danny Arnold ended production (because he could not see any way to continue without repeating storylines; the show was not cancelled by the network), Barney Miller retains a devoted following among real-life police officers, who appreciate the show’s emphasis on dialog and believably quirky characters, and its low-key portrayal of cops going about their jobs. During his appearance on Jon Favreau’s Independent Film Channel talk show Dinner for Five, Dennis Farina, who worked as a Chicago policeman before turning to acting, called Barney Miller the most realistic cop show ever seen on television. Hal Linden has told interviewers that he is still occasionally called “Captain” by working police officers.[citation needed]

The bit with Shirley and kids who were suffering from the separation of church and state also made me laugh.

“The bit with Shirley and kids who were suffering from the separation of church and state also made me laugh.”

Yvette Nicole Brown has done such a tremendous job relatively little to work with this season.  Her line readings on “I farted” and “The word he’s looking for is ‘sassy,’ and he better pray he never finds it.” were stellar.  I’m glad Shirley got an episode before the hiatus.

God I loved that musical number. It might be one of the best bits in Community ever, but maybe that’s too far, because this show is amazing.

The whole “TV characters are all apolitical” thing has always bugged me too and it’s one of the aspects of both 30 Rock and Parks that stood out to me from the get-go. I will say that as great as Ron Swanson is as a character, I already think he’s jumped the shark, if the entire show hasn’t already.

Not to derail, but Parks really had a shining moment during the episode where Ann was trying to get back into dating after Chris dumped her and after Donna gave her some Game 101 lessons, Ann, the nice pretty actually kind of boring female character got freaky with several dudes all in one episode and NO ONE batted an eye about it. There was no “nice girl goes TOO far with sexyface and becomes a Fallen Whore, learns lesson” even hinted at. For that I will always be grateful. I don’t watch a lot of TV, but I’m having trouble thinking of many instances where a female character has a lot of casual sex and isn’t portrayed negatively, or at least as a Free-spirited Slut character who isn’t taken seriously. I also like that they don’t make Having Sex With An Assortment of Dudes as a “character trait” of Ann’s (even though she could use a lot more development!) but it was just something this character happened to do at this particular time, you know, like most regular people who can have casual sex at some point in their lives and more serious relationships at others.

I’m going to continue the derail on old comedies; especially since Firefly fans will recognize a young Shepherd Book in the Barney Miller clip.

I’ve been extolling the virtues of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (at least the clips I’ve seen on youtube)—comedy so deadpan you weren’t really sure it existed. For those readers a half-generation older than me, was this syndicated along with its sister show Fernwood 2-Night?

I don’t agree that Parks and Rec has gone soft this season. I think it’s been slow, but not soft. I don’t think the show knew how to handle some of the story lines they created for themselves, and they needed to get Tom into the office again, but they took time to explore what he was doing outside of the parks department. When you look at the first half of the season as a whole, you see that a large part of the arc was building the story with Leslie and Ben, and setting a definite ‘before’ picture of Leslie’s campaign. The story line gave characters the time to react to what’s happening.

I’ve always loved it when Community uses awkward Britta. She’s so awkward, and that awkward energy is something that’s not really on TV any where else. Community can be such an awkward show, and endearingly weird, but I think there could be some hope of it getting moved to another network. There’s a fan base for the show, but it hasn’t gotten the critical acclaim of Modern Family or 30 Rock. It also won the ‘fan favorite’ show for TV guide, and if people keep talking about how great community is, it might have some time to circulate around the internet and on reruns to get a wider audience.

never liked the show much. seemed that they used absurdity and referential humor to cover for a lack of depth with many of the characters.

As for current shows, I should get back to watching them every week, or having the discipline to watch no more than a disc’s worth at a time on the season-length boxed set.

Because I wanted to strangle most of Community’s cast after I overdosed.

I’ve never seen it, but I’ll pick it up “on demand”.

Comment #17: hlynn117 - I don’t watch Community, but I want to chime in and agree with you on P&R. The story line of Tom and Entertainment 720 was grating, but now that he’s back in the office things are getting much better again. You’d be hard pressed to find such feminist story lines as the woman (Leslie) keeping her job and the man (Ben) losing his job after sex scandal accusations. And Brenda not only has lots of sexual partners and suffers no shame for it, but she is black and fat while doing it.

I liked Community a lot at first, but I’ve sort of gotten tired of it. However, I really love Annie’s musical number that you posted here. Such a great take-down of those types of songs. Reminds me of the song Santa Baby that they still play on the radio.

“Her biggest struggle is the conflict between a humanist morality that tugs on her and her Christian beliefs.”

I’d say her biggest struggle is between her love and obvious talent for being a marvelously awful human being and her desire to be—and to be seen as—a good person. It’s why she’s so doggedly Christian: she doesn’t trust her own instincts to lead her towards morality.

The whole song was like “Oh, my god how long can that go on, it’s really uncomfortable.” Then, I almost died at “Badoopadoop sex.”

In my dicatatorship, people who do sexy baby talk would occupy the social position of furries, ie opened to ridicule and mockery completely out of context.

I so want to watch Parks & Rec, but I just can’t bring myself to love yet another struggling comedy.  It’d be like adopting a sickly kitten while I already have a sick puppy who may or may not get better, and I won’t know before spring.

Andy, you should try my approach, which is to watch shows that are wretchedly bad in a sort of horrified fascination to see how long they last and how crappy it gets, until their cancellation is a welcome relief. This year’s contenders are Grimm and Once Upon a Time.

oh good. After watching this, my friend and I had a discussion of favorite songs. His was “Jehovah’s Most Secret Witness” where as mine was “Teach me about christmas.”

I agree with him that Jehovah’s Most Secret Witness was the most compelling, as a song. But the contortions going on in “Teach Me” (in addition to Straight Man Jeff, which really are some of Jeff’s best moments in the episode “Eventually, you reach a point of diminishing returns on the sexyness”)

Also, can we really call this a Glee parody? I mean, they do actually write all original songs.

One of my absolute favorite scenes from this show was when they were trying to pick bio lab partners, and someone suggested doing it by age, and Shirley pointed out that Jeff should be in the older people group because he’s only a few years younger than she is.  I actually felt a genuine tinge of sympathy for the character of Jeff even though he’s not a real person, because I can just imagine how hard that must have hit him.  And yet, it was so subtle that it was easy to miss.  That’s what good humor is.  I will miss this show.

I’d like to kick the ass of whatever genius opted not to offer Community on Hulu.  I don’t know if it would’ve been enough to save the show, but I also can’t believe that it was the network’s decision.  NBC is part owner of Hulu.

The entire run just got added to Hulu+ (not sure about regular Hulu). It still doesn’t have 30 Rock (or the Simpsons). I don’t know how they decide what gets made available. The vast majority of what’s on there (especially the movies) is terrible, but at least it’s pretty cheap. It offers like eighty-bajillian anime shows, if you’re into that (which I’m not).

The last 5 episodes are on Hulu. The rest are on Hulu Plus.

The worst thing about Annie’s Christmas song is that it’s incredibly ear-wormy. My partner and I have been going BWAIN HURTY UNDERSTANDY CHRISTMAS at each other for days. Allison Brie is an incredibly gifted physical comedian, which people tend to overlook.

Both Allison Brie and Gillian Jacobs are incredibly gifted comedians. Actually, this is the best damn sitcom ensemble I’ve seen in ... well, forever. They’d better at least keep their pledge to broadcast the rest of the season!!

The first several seasons on 30 Rock has been on Hulu from the beginning.  Supposedly, it’s up to the producers of the show, and if that’s true, Community’s producers needed to get with the program before their show started facing cancellation.

The whole song was like “Oh, my god how long can that go on, it’s really uncomfortable.” Then, I almost died at “Badoopadoop sex.”

The whole Betty Boop image as it has worked its way through pop culture is worth looking at in itself. I’m hoping Amanda gets around to pulling on her Doc Martens and taking a good kick at it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Boop

For those readers a half-generation older than me, was this syndicated along with its sister show Fernwood 2-Night?

Fernwood 2-Night was syndiccated, as was America 2-Night, it’s successor.

According to the Wiki, Allison Brie has had experience including working as a clown and stage experience, and studied in Glasgow at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama for a while, presumably before/after she got her college degree.  Her chops were honed well by all of that, IMHO.

I think the part I liked best was where she tried to eat the mistletoe.

I think I’m the reason shows like this get canceled.  The vast majority of shows I like for two seasons and then lose interest.  You can blame me.

I love Community and will hate to see it go, but I’m also not sure how, pragmatically speaking, they could carry it past four seasons. Everyone but Pierce (who’s doing courses for interest, not a degree) would presumably have to fail all of their courses or graduate.

This said, it is the only show on TV that makes me laugh.

Egnu Cledge, I am really into anime, but since I live in the u.k. my free legal streaming options are pretty limited compared to the u.s…. america: Come for the best selection of official English subtitled anime in the world, then leave after 2 weeks when you remember about the restrictive abortion laws (I know a lot of other countries have restrictions, but the u.s. is one of the worst examples among industrialised nations) and the lack of public healthcare (canada is kind of a reverse situation, yeah it’s got public healthcare, but it also has a lot of anime censorship, and personally speaking I’d like not to be arrested for watching cartoons, though this can still happen in the u.k., and they’ve just got major egg on their face for censoring a scene in an episode of an anime called Code Geass that’s considered suitable for teenagers under 18 in japan).

Anyway, I haven’t watched much of Community, but based on what I have seen of it it’s a smart show that didn’t deserve to be cancelled.  Maybe if all the fans buy the DVDs they’ll resurrect it (I know not everyone can afford to)?