I am still finding it kind of a serendipitous and unimaginable fact that NBC's Community was renewed for season 2. Then imagine my complete astonishment that a third season is forthcoming. An unfair comparison would be to say that Community is to sit-coms what Late Night with Jimmy Fallon is to late-night talkshows. I mean, there's kind of an angle there, because both shows are recent entrants to their format, somewhat irreverent and Modern-Quirky and all, but it's an unfair comparison to both shows. Mostly because Community was possibly an even longer shot, and it came out of the proverbial darkness, and it airs less often which makes it easier to love.
Yeah, a third season. It's so good I ought to tweet it, but alas, nobody gives two fucks about my twitter account – myself included. I use it primarily as a sort of 'one-way mirror facebook including celebrities and nonsense'. I don't know how to work that system. I guess I'm a failure. Or, maybe, 140 characters per post doesn't fly with my propensity for lyrical largesse*.
(* - also available on Twitter, see user: FitzQuatzlevsky)
Obviously the real and serious matter at hand is to praise the one television program that's brought me any joy, and to write a little more about it. In order to do this I have to take notice of what has been said about the show's creator, Dan Harmon, who allegedly considers the second Halloween Episode to have been too much, too soon, too far, or some other overweening gesture. I can see whereat he draws the line: how the fuck does anyone cure a zombie outbreak with no plot-related casualties? It's outrageous.
But then again, look at how the season ended. Yes, the finale duo of episodes was entertaining, funny, and hit many of the right notes. The scene with Abed and the janitor seems evocative of whichever of the shows admirers were feeling let-down or burdened by the recurrence of a paintball apocalypse. You shouldn't have been. But, then again, people complained about the Christmas Episode at first. How they sobbed and bitched.
As if the show owed them less effort than what went into that impressive stylistic gesture. Even the opening credits (which include a song that almost nobody I know can stand) were changed for the Christmas episode. People still bitched. There was still doubt, and that's alright, because people have different ideas about thing. By the way, Harmon's discomfort with the Halloween episode is reflected in the plot when Chang does not end up being the father of Shirley's baby. That's some metavision shit wherein he says: "Nay, the father is the character representant of progress; not the character representing madness."
I really dug the zombie outbreak episode. It wasn't perfect. Yes, other things might've happened. Whatever. It's a TV show. It does not belong to a single person, and no single idea rules it (except perhaps the sudden aversion to making it the Jeff Winger show). So the episode was great, for me, especially the scene with the cat towards the end, or, well, basically any part of it. There's not much I'm able to take from Halloween 2010, except for a sense that I was cheated out of glory once again.
Then they topped that off with a wicked Christmas episode and the Paradigms of Human Memory (or whatever) episode. Holy shit, it's still alive! Therefore, ultimately, the show becomes its own zombie episode, and you know there will be a vampire pastiche next Halloween.
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