Thom Bitches About "Community": History 101

Danny Pudi

Like most people, I was skeptical about what Community without Dan Harmon would look like. His inane fantasy of a community college was so meta and well structured that anyone who would come in would probably not do the show justice. However, it has happened, and Community is back with former Happy Endings show runners. Is it capable of finding its footing with new controllers, or is this the end? In Thom Bitches About Community, we will attempt to figure that out with sporadic thoughts on season four. Hey, maybe it's not all bad. Maybe it's better? Check back every week for further commentaries, and please feel free to add your own thoughts.

I will not bore you with the history lecture of how Dan Harmon stormed out of Community at the end of last season. In fact, I won't even go into how Chevy Chase left the show because it was beneath him (but Vacation-parody ads aren't). Instead, I will share the little bit of insight into what I was looking forward to.

Around season two, things just clicked. I understood why the show was excellent. It wasn't so much weird, as it was constructed around complex humans, pop culture references, and the attempt to be the most meta thing on TV. Thanks to Abed (Danny Pudi) and Troy (Donald Glover), the show managed to show a different kind of nerds than that akin to the Big Bang Theory. They were cool and they had their own world. This continued to grow in an equally ambitious season three and the concept of new timelines and discovering Pierce's (Chevy Chase) family life through video games seemed ground breaking.

Still, that could largely be thanked to Dan Harmon. Since he left, the show has been on indefinite laundry list of problems. Before tonight's episode, the last episode aired in May. That is almost nine months off the air. Maybe it was because of schedule conflicts, and 30 Rock took higher priority. Maybe it was the consistent changes of shows that intended to move NBC into a more respected atmosphere, before cutting off the Olympics Closing Ceremony for a Go On episode. Either way, Community getting pushed back from a September return isn't the worst of their problems. With 30 Rock gone and the Office not too far behind, their replacements aren't exactly boding well. That is, unless someone can tell me that the New Normal, Whitney, and 1600 Penn are the next big things.

In a sense, I was optimistic about tonight's episode because I personally believed that Dan Harmon, by way of his podcast Harmontown, was over the show. His consistent disputes with Chevy Chase and final falling out just made me believe that if he stayed on for another season, it wouldn't be much worse than this. In fact, it could have arguably just been him saying "I don't care," especially since the show got moved around so badly, it may as well have been on Saturday mornings. At least with new faces, things may stand a chance of improving.

Yes, an actual still from tonight's episode

Right off the bat, things were noticeably different. Abed was making jokes about hipster glasses as everyone walked in wearing a pair. There was even a laugh track and comments about how something felt off. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, but even this attempt to be meta about new showrunners wasn't terrible. Not incredibly genius, but at least gave me faith that something would go right. Add in a terribly cheesy Community opening credits as sung by Abed about what goes on inside his brain, and things began to look troublesome.

However, not as much as what was to come. I dreaded this moment ever since I saw a picture for it in Entertainment Weekly. They were doing an episode based around the History of Ice Cream. It's okay, the show has done weird concepts before, like a class on Who's the Boss? Yet the concept of ice cream just felt a little easy for a premiere episode. Add in the way that things progressed, and it still felt like the show was on track to be different, but maintain its weirdness.

Then there was the decision to let everyone realize that they are seniors at a community college. Annie (Allison Brie) is so excited to be doing pranks with Shelly (Yvette Nichole Brown), but something doesn't feel right. I couldn't quite put my finger on it at first, but then it made sense. It is subtle, but it feels like the episodes are being played at 1.2x faster rate. When people talk, it feels a little unnatural, and that gives off a sense that everyone is winking at the camera. Annie was the worse about it because as goody two shoes as her character has been established, her glee wasn't exactly portrayed in a very satisfying way. She had almost too much energy.

Also, it is a shame of what happened to Abed, even if Britta (Gillian Jacobs) logically revealed that she is the one who did it. Basically, he goes to a happy place, which is the forced sitcom that we see at the start of the episode. Forget Inspector Spacetime. Forget six seasons and a movie. We are forced to believe he has an internal bad sitcom in his brain as well as a Muppet Babies parody a layer deeper (which thankfully wasn't used for more than 30 seconds). Abed's inability to seem his normal self in this episode is the most telling element, as he feels like the show creators have destroyed him, and have decided to comment on it with a typically meta way. That doesn't exactly make it more interesting.

However, this is all fine until you get what is possibly the biggest, most desperate grasp for straws that the show could do. Sure, it has done numerous pop culture parodies in its previous three seasons, but what followed was so assinine that it almost felt like it sunk the show before it had a chance to begin...

Left to right: Jim Rash and Joel McHale

It honestly felt like the show was trying to appeal to the mainstream. I wouldn't blame them, but the decision to turn things into a Hunger Games parody (and a poor one at that) felt a little desperate. First, you take Dean Pelton (Jim Rash, who has won an Oscar), put him in the familiar Jennifer Lawrence drag, and force stupid, unestablished games on students who are fighting for something that is revealed to be his error. We are used to Dean Pelton in drag, as it comes with his character, but this was just pathetic. There wasn't so much effort as a blatant dress-for-dress parody from the movies. Also, there wasn't anything deeper in terms of humor from it.

In fact, the other characters seemed normal in comparison to the other errors. Troy wasn't really an issue. He still had his tendencies to make a wish for a thousand wishes. Britta still seemed like her average self. However, the show's desire to become weird and odd just fell flat.
The problem is that the show isn't so much weird. I accept that progression into an actual personal voice will take a few episodes. However, doing a parody of the Hunger Games was quite the issue, as it wasn't really that clever, established, or featured the cast doing interesting things. The choice to make Abed catatonic for most of the episode was also an odd choice that I feel is representative of where the show could be. It could slowly be working off the weird elements until suddenly... BAM! We have either cancellation or an average show that is beloved by people who knew nothing about the show prior to "History 101."
In fact, the trouble with this episode is that I don't know if I have objections to it because it is under new management or it was just a bad episode. The Greendale Babies thing was a torturous call back to when the show creatively used animation to its advantage. Here, it was just a cutaway joke that just didn't work. Also, with everyone talking 1.2x faster, the story wears out faster, and even Pierce's racism feels flat. However, the choice to have Fred Willard cameo was interesting. Still, I feel like the show was grasping for straws and desperately wanting to be LOVED as opposed to liked with their first time out.
Of course, if the show loses that dumb Hunger Games level of pandering, it may get better. Like I said, I don't think every character is especially ruined. Troy seems like he can be salvaged. However, I feel like Chang (Ken Jeong) will just become more and more of a disgrace to the Asian community by the end of the season. Hopefully this is just a bad episode and not a precursor to what's to come. However, when jokes are so meta that it feels like they're making fun of the new hands, it is possible that we're stuck with this.

I promise you that not all Thom Bitches About Community columns will be this long. Hopefully, many will be shorter, or even more positive. I just feel like I need an outlet for talking about the show, and what better place than this blog? See you next week.