Community - Season 5 (3 Viewers)

[Todd H]

So many small things...Jeff's diploma on the wall being an Associate's instead of a Bachelor's...Troy signing the lawsuit with an x...the small asides that take 2-3 viewings just to catch...welcome back Community! I missed you.

 

[joshEH]

On rewatch, I started cracking up at the muted, ambient Cage grunting/yelling when everyone's sitting around watching the first assigned movie. I'm thinking that it was Pudi recording it.

"I know it's unrealistic to think that we can eliminate riots completely, but, I've been crunching the numbers, and I think we can reduce them down by 40%."
"Let's hope The Man doesn't target you for dreaming this big."

 

[Patrick Sun]

I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed staring at Alison Brie on a TV show. Welcome back, Community!

 

[joshEH]

Anyone else catch the Star Fox shirt Abed was wearing at the beginning of episode 2?

"All right, there are two things I don't do well -- apologies and drawing duckbills."

My wife is going to hear that line SO often. I'm actually contemplating picking a fight just so I can use it as an apology.

 

[Joe_H]

Agreed with the other sentiments. So glad this is back for real.

Also, I absolutely loved the fake Vertigo poster in the Cage class:

However, upon looking it up I discovered it's been a prop in many different shows and I just never noticed:

 

[joshEH]

We also need to give props to Kevin Corrigan as Professor Garrity. I love his performance in that role. In the absence of Will Ferrell as James Lipton discussing Nicolas Cage, he's the next best thing.

His "That was brilliant" at the end got an even bigger laugh from me than the Cage-impersonation. He delivered that perfectly.

 

[TravisR]

We also need to give props to Kevin Corrigan as Professor Garrity.

I love that dude. He has one of my favorite lines in Goodfellas, "I'm stirrin' it."

 

[Quentin]

"It would be like me blaming the owls for how much I suck at analogies."

I'm STILL laughing at this line! This is pure Harmon, and the kind of 2-3 viewing hilariously offbeat stuff that I love about this show at it's best.

 

[Quentin]

ET TU BRUTE!

 

[joshEH]

Bunch of new stills from tomorrow night's episode ("Basic Intergluteal Numismatics") released:

A slightly-spoilery image, featuring a certain returning character:

Spoiler

The Ass Crack Bandit was first mentioned waaaaay back in the Season 2 episode "Intro to Political Science" (the student government election episode), where Annie was running for student body president, and apprehending the bandit is one of the major campaign promises she makes.

I love these bizarro-absurdist episodes of Community so fucking much; ones like the "Secret Garden/Trampoline" episode (which, not coincidentally, might be my favorite Community episode of all time, and certainly the most frequently-quoted one) where completely-batshit things are at stake.

 

[Joe_H]

From looking at Twitter, looks like I'm one of the few, but I wasn't a fan of this one at all.

That being said, it felt like an ambitious swing and miss to me, which I do appreciate compared to some of the stuff last year.

 

[TravisR]

I found this episode to be sort of in the middle of the road (both the previous episodes were much better) but I do agree with:

That being said, it felt like an ambitious swing and miss to me...

I think that sums up what is great and bad about Dan Harmon. He's always swinging for the fences but doesn't always make it. That's not really a knock because a) who else even tries to do what he's doing?, b) even if the episode doesn't work out as well as hoped, it has some redeeming factors and c) the times that he does nail it, it's a work of genius.

 

[David Weicker]

I'm just wondering about the color scheme/lighting. It seem like all of these new episodes are either underlit or desaturated (or have some kind of unnatural lighting).I realize tonights episode may have been done as an homage to something (although I'm not sure what).

Still, three episodes, and all have looked weird to me.

 

[Josh Dial]

I'm just wondering about the color scheme/lighting. It seem like all of these new episodes are either underlit or desaturated (or have some kind of unnatural lighting).I realize tonights episode may have been done as an homage to something (although I'm not sure what).

Still, three episodes, and all have looked weird to me.

the first two episodes looked "normal" to me, which is to say they had that typical "NBC comedy" colour scheme and levels. The third episode was clearly desaturated (among other things) so it looked like countless police procedurals and cop dramas (especially Fincher's Se7en and Zodiac). The final scene with Jeff and Annie in the rain was straight out of The Killing.

I thought it was a tremendous episode.

 

[joshEH]

Agreed with my twin Josh, that was incredible. I forgot how amazing Community could be, but not just with humor. The insane, tiny-meta-conceptual stuff was obviously all Harmon, too.

"Got it. The stables. We have stables?!"

Evidently, this was actually the fifth episode shot for this season, and thus was technically Donald Glover's final work with this cast and crew (for the foreseeable future). Judging by the Twittersphere right now, some people are already up in arms over the "inappropriate" Troy rape-survivor imagery.

Loved that the Dean instantly assumed Abed would have magical crime-solving powers because he's on the spectrum, and that that pissed Abed off. The Bridge and Hannibal, off the DVR.

“We know that he hates money or loves it or doesn't care about money and hates butts or loves them.”

"I hope you enjoyed my work again. You can't stop me, because what are you going to do -- not have butts??"

 

[joshEH]

Also, Reverse-Chang eating an extra-long churro is the stuff of nightmares.

 

[Patrick_S]

Loved this episode from start to finish.

 

[joshEH]

AV Club is saying that this week's episode feels "out of place," because they're lucky bastard sonsofbitches who have already seen next week's episode and declare it glorious.

(Next week: Goggins.)

Did I somehow miss it, or did Troy's amazing "It touched my butt's mouth!!"-line from the preview not actually make it into the episode?

Duncan was absolutely on fire in this episode: "...Oh, American high-five. Sorry."
This is probably the most quotable, densely-packed episode in ages. So much background stuff going on, so many great throwaway lines -- I think it's going to take me several viewings to drink it all in.

 

[Patrick_S]

I know some people did not like this episode but I'm going to add to my previous comment, this was brilliant. I definitely will be watching this one again over the weekend.

 

[joshEH]

Holy crap:

Community actually gained in the ratings last night, from the second episode of last week's 1.2 to a 1.4. They added half a million viewers from the previous week. It's currently NBC's top-rated comedy, which, apart from their Blacklist ratings, is actually a very good number.

It also helped to elevate Parks and Rec up to a 1.4 (compared to last week's 1.0), and evidently even boosted Sean Saves the World and Michael J. Fox up to the 1.0-range, as well.

Next week, The Big Bang Theory is off, so maybe Community can grab some of that audience-spillover action, too.