Black Looks II: No Sense of Community
Twitter is where famous people come to have their asses handed to them. This weekend, Manchester United footballer Darron Gibson shut down his Twitter after two hours of setting it up due to waves of abuse from "fans". In August of last year, I ran into trouble with the comedy genius Graham Linehan for suggesting that he might want to tone down the laugh track on his show The I.T. Crowd, and now this:
Dan Harmon is another comedy genius. He put together one of the brightest sitcoms on mainstream television: Community. However, like Graham Linehan, he doesn't take criticism well, as you can see. This week's episode of Community was a recap show (or a clip show), which is what they call it when a show lazily nails together a stupid plot from recycled clips of shows from the previous season, sometimes with nothing more than a "Remember when..." required to launch into a five-six minute clip we've all seen before. But! BUT! In last week's Community, all the recap clips were things we haven't seen before.
This is undoubtedly a very clever subversion of an established television show device, if not particularly original. For instance, Scrubs had a clip show in which all the recap clips were re-filmed, Babylon 5 made an entire episode revolving around clips from an episode that didn't air until three years later, and some of Battlestar Galactica's "Previously on..." segments were stuff we hadn't seen before.
In any case, a clever clip show is still a clip show, and the central joke, which is that the clip refers to something we haven't seen, is good maybe once or twice. After that, the joke having been established, it's just a clip show. If anything, the gambit could backfire given that your identification with the characters is contingent on sharing their experiences.
So, with my 140 characters, I expressed this to the creator of the show, expecting to be ignored. I wasn't. He called me a "rude dick", which is probably fair. Then I explained further about my concerns regarding comparisons with The Big Bang Theory (something they're clearly concerned about themselves), which in my view jumped the shark as soon as they introduced Amy Farrah-Fowler: full marks on figuring out that Sheldon is the key to the success of the series, zero marks for allowing a female version into more than one episode.
Community is at the end of an extraordinary two-season run. It must have been very difficult to maintain the momentum after the first season - but they did it. And they should be congratulated for that. They set the bar very high, and mostly they have managed to meet the challenge they set themselves. This was the first time I felt disappointed - in any way - by an episode of Community, so maybe it's just an anomaly, or maybe I'm completely wrong.
In any case, a less-than-sparkling episode of Community is still better than a "good" episode of anything else, so whatever.
Related: Black Looks
Dan Harmon is another comedy genius. He put together one of the brightest sitcoms on mainstream television: Community. However, like Graham Linehan, he doesn't take criticism well, as you can see. This week's episode of Community was a recap show (or a clip show), which is what they call it when a show lazily nails together a stupid plot from recycled clips of shows from the previous season, sometimes with nothing more than a "Remember when..." required to launch into a five-six minute clip we've all seen before. But! BUT! In last week's Community, all the recap clips were things we haven't seen before.
This is undoubtedly a very clever subversion of an established television show device, if not particularly original. For instance, Scrubs had a clip show in which all the recap clips were re-filmed, Babylon 5 made an entire episode revolving around clips from an episode that didn't air until three years later, and some of Battlestar Galactica's "Previously on..." segments were stuff we hadn't seen before.
In any case, a clever clip show is still a clip show, and the central joke, which is that the clip refers to something we haven't seen, is good maybe once or twice. After that, the joke having been established, it's just a clip show. If anything, the gambit could backfire given that your identification with the characters is contingent on sharing their experiences.
So, with my 140 characters, I expressed this to the creator of the show, expecting to be ignored. I wasn't. He called me a "rude dick", which is probably fair. Then I explained further about my concerns regarding comparisons with The Big Bang Theory (something they're clearly concerned about themselves), which in my view jumped the shark as soon as they introduced Amy Farrah-Fowler: full marks on figuring out that Sheldon is the key to the success of the series, zero marks for allowing a female version into more than one episode.
Community is at the end of an extraordinary two-season run. It must have been very difficult to maintain the momentum after the first season - but they did it. And they should be congratulated for that. They set the bar very high, and mostly they have managed to meet the challenge they set themselves. This was the first time I felt disappointed - in any way - by an episode of Community, so maybe it's just an anomaly, or maybe I'm completely wrong.
In any case, a less-than-sparkling episode of Community is still better than a "good" episode of anything else, so whatever.
Related: Black Looks