Community, Season Three

Community, sit-com extraordinaire, has returned to grace network TV with madcap hijinks and rapid-fire reference jokes. It's like a gorgeous hipster chick with severe personality disorders, and also she is kind of a pariah. Excuse that sentence... it doesn't seem right somehow.

But a third season was unthinkable two years ago. In fact, a third season was unthinkable a year ago. Truthfully it's still kind of unthinkable, so when I watched the premiere I watched carefully, as if holding a priceless, ornate, fragile thing with my eyes.

The season opened with a completely ridiculous musical piece which promised a very normal, happy, and good year that would be different from the other two years. This is because lots of people complained about the show being wacky. Some people don't like crazy shit on TV. Community courts this disaster of cognitive dissonance because some episodes are serious while others include scheming, simulated warfare, imagination, or madcap hijinks. I'll explain quickly - some episodes do not have zombie invasions and some episodes do not have characters confronting inner demons and other problems d'esprit.

The show's approach has meant that certain characters have changed from being near-sympathetic to unthinkable jackasses. The show has toyed with characters who are annoying catchphrase shouters. The show plays with identity because life plays with identity. If the game becomes a neon-lit nightmare where raw humor is overtaken by spectacle then it attracts some viewers and disappoints others. So, in essence, the show is probably the most challenging show out there. Even if you want to try to catch more than half of the references in an episode, for the watching to be worthwhile you need a belly laugh at least once.

For me, the show has delivered. It has had low points, certain characters been uncomfortably weak, and some situations and premises did not interest me. I watched regardless. I kept my distance from the hype/anti-hype machine of fans on the internet. In a way I treat Community as I treat Minecraft, except that Community has no risk of overdose. The once-a-week model fits it perfectly. There is suspense, there are character arcs, there are laughs and even though the first season will always be assessed as superior: it's only because it came out of the blue, because it was new at the time, and because of nostalgia.

I haven't said much about the show's third season. There's only been one episode. It reminded me a lot of the previous seasons' first episodes. Lots of promise, no way to know what's going on, and mild disappointment. But the first season took a few episodes to start rolling, and it rolled like a beautiful bastard all the way to its finale. Season two managed to function under the sophomore curse. Season three has looked back and laughed about the past, which implies self-consciousness and purview. This could mean anything.

Community: The Retrospective

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.

2010 Retrospective, pt. 3: Television vs. Extinction

My enthusiasm for television has never really changed. I lived without a TV up until the point someone asked me, "Are you one of those people who watch TV?" At that point, of course, I knew exactly what my life was missing. That said, I never really watched much. I did the thing where I would stare blankly at the television for a while, using it less as a source of information and entertainment (and never the twain should meet) than as a slack, mutable canvas on which to view my exact context in history.

Now one autumn day in 2009, following my usual after-work routine, I encountered a shock. I stumbled into an episode of a show that I had some dim awareness of. Slick dialogue and editing; snappy and unerringly clean characters; white male lead - yep, another bland and demoralizing situational comedy show. American TV at its best, in the most savage satiric sense. So kept watching, irritated that anyone had the gall to pull this kind of leprous rabbit out of the sleazy magic hat of television. It appeared to be unoffensive, silly, acceptable writing... and wait a minute, that's Chevy Chase, isn't it? And who is that free radical?

Community thus gained a faithful viewer. This show which was on nobody's radar at all, that I hadn't even seen on many network ads, actually entertained me. Sure, I knew about 30-Rock, the other sitcom on NBC, which was always good for a laugh but obviously a glass cannon. I had been getting tired of How I Met Your Mother, because I'd seen enough episodes to know that its main conceit was a red-herring, and that it was really just a very, very impressive remake of Friends. The rest of my faith in network programming had been slain by the enthusiasm over The Big Bang Theory, the appeal of which was lost on me.

With all of those odds stacked against it, plus the internet, television still managed to hook me. Thursdays I knew where to go to shake off my boredom. Community really is unimpressive on paper: Cynical failed lawyer goes to school, accidentally creates a study-group in order to get laid, finds out that the consequences are heartwarming but inescapable. It also has a really flat title, the sort of title that could've easily belonged to another 100 Questions. 

But the first season of Community was worth every episode. By the end of the Halloween special I knew what I had suspected when Troy and Abed first rapped together en Espagnol. The hippest of you are saying, "That was 2009, and standards were different. The 'meta-goldrush' is over, and meta-humor is played out and lame." Well, in 2010 I watched Community regularly. That show owned 2010. I know this because nobody else thinks so, and nobody else says so, but I couldn't find a single DVD of Season 1 when I went to the store recently. So what if it was on sale?

Which begs the question, "Is it shameful to admit you like Community?" Local 'TV Critics' who are published in newspapers did not mention Community in their predictable 'Best of 2010' lists so the show obviously lacks critical praise. In more realistic terms, maybe a third (33%) of people I know watch the show, and the rest do not care for it. I will watch that show until it's cancelled or someone steals my TV. When the season finale aired I actually (and this is shameful stuff) wished there were more episodes - and the show ended on a tone-perfect idiot note. The reruns were sobering reminders of what I might have missed if I thought that television was objectively bad, which in itself is kind of depressing, because I could've been an anti-TV rebel.

Season 2 of Community has been difficult. Three hundred people literally felt betrayed by the recent Christmas episode. Some accuse the program of being too clever by half, which is at least half of its charm to begin with. My opinion is that they have done no wrong at all, and that this season is at least as good as the least of the last one. There are some high points they'll never hit again, but they'll replace them with other distractions. Chevy Chase could quit, Dan Harmon might even drive the show off a cliff out of sheer perversity, or meddling hands will destroy it, but nothing can kill what they quoted, alluded to, or made fun of - especially 80's rapists, Goodfellas, and Cookie Crisp.