Differences between Dan's COMMUNITY and David and Moses' COMMUNITY
Some of my friends said that COMMUNITY's Season 4 premiere felt wrong to them. Or at least different. Some of my friends disliked it for feeling wrong, some didn't mind it but did feel the show had changed. I'd be interested in knowing: what did you guys find *different* about the Season 4 premiere compared to the styles of previous episodes?
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I feel like Community's "thing" is to play off well-established tropes and make homages to television and movie classics. The classics referenced may be obscure, but they've stood the test of time in some way or another. The Hunger Games is so recent it felt more like the writers were dumbing down the pop culture.
I'd imagine if Harmon were to have gone a similar story route he wouldn't have used anything more recent than The Gladiator at best, and would have played more on a genre than a specific title. If HG was to have been referenced, it would have been a smaller bit part in the grand scheme of things. Although, granted, the whole Jeff having to compete for balls storyline seemed rushed and underplayed anyway....
I also feel there were missed opportunities. Pierce essentially did nothing the whole episode, and I think it would have been more "trope-ish" if Troy and Britta's story had explored ironic wish-making. Like, if Troy discovers someone who doesn't know what thumb war is and he loses it until Britta unwishes her wish and in her and Troy's arguing over whether or not that's even possible to do, they discover that they're essentially at war with each other and thus balance has been restored. IDK that's probably terrible (and a horrible run-on sentence), but hopefully you get the idea?
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Completely. I think the error here was that instead of choosing an A-plot and a B-plot, the episode had an A-thread split in two through Jeff's competition and Abed's dream world, a B-thread in Shirley and Annie pulling pranks and a C-thread in Britta. That's four separate plots with two separate parodies within a 21-minute show and far too much to do any of the material justice. It's like the product of writers trying to assure their audience that they will script all the characters well by giving them all their own plots, fearing the criticism that any marginalized character will be marked as the one the new writers just don't get.
Which makes recasting Pierce even funnier to me...
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