Apatowin'
Community - Seasons 1 and 2 (2009-2011)
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
In episode 2.13, Pierce decides to steal the spotlight at an anti-drug rally and in doing so makes himself the only character that an audience of "at-risk teens" enjoys, the point being (I thought) that D.A.R.E.-like programs are stupid. But that's not the program that Annie, ever a well-intentioned former pill popper, wanted to direct, and she's sad that the selfish old man went and ruined her effort to get a message across to kids. So far so good.
The gang, inevitably, decides to right Pierce's wrong. But instead of Jeff chiming in with something like, "Let's finish the play the way Annie wrote it so that she feels good about herself," he rallies the troops by arguing that any kid who leaves the rally thinking marijuana is "cool" will wind up as a meth addict someday. Implying, I guess, that kids who take drugs in high school are more or less junkies by graduation.
The teetotaler angle is a trend. Not two episodes before, Troy turns 21 and his study group takes him out for a drink. Mean things are said over the course of the evening, Troy learns that booze robs the fun from friendship, and a gay stranger has the temerity to try and pick up Abed by starting a conversation about Farscape.
I find Community weirdly moralistic and oddly conservative, and the lessons that Dan Harmon insists on imparting each episode, however sweet they might seem, are more often superficial and saccharine. Jeff Winger is the root of the problem. He is almost never allowed to be the heartless egoist everyone says he is, and a better show would make his unflappable self-regard the straight man to two seasons of hilarious comeuppances, instead of a trait that comes and goes with the wind.
If anything, the second season is worse than the first, when by my charts (I have no charts), shows I support trend in the other direction. Which isn't to say Community isn't funny, but just that I hear a lot of people praise it and not enough criticism. Most often I look to characters like Professor Duncan or Dean Pelton for the low-life charm that Winger's A-team sadly lacks (except Pierce, comfortably the bad guy). But when all else fails, play paintball, right?
Speaking of the good life at the bottom of the barrel, let me spare you a separate post on True Blood and say that I wish all of Season 4, which I enjoyed, had been as great as the last episode. To 2012!
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
In episode 2.13, Pierce decides to steal the spotlight at an anti-drug rally and in doing so makes himself the only character that an audience of "at-risk teens" enjoys, the point being (I thought) that D.A.R.E.-like programs are stupid. But that's not the program that Annie, ever a well-intentioned former pill popper, wanted to direct, and she's sad that the selfish old man went and ruined her effort to get a message across to kids. So far so good.
The gang, inevitably, decides to right Pierce's wrong. But instead of Jeff chiming in with something like, "Let's finish the play the way Annie wrote it so that she feels good about herself," he rallies the troops by arguing that any kid who leaves the rally thinking marijuana is "cool" will wind up as a meth addict someday. Implying, I guess, that kids who take drugs in high school are more or less junkies by graduation.
The teetotaler angle is a trend. Not two episodes before, Troy turns 21 and his study group takes him out for a drink. Mean things are said over the course of the evening, Troy learns that booze robs the fun from friendship, and a gay stranger has the temerity to try and pick up Abed by starting a conversation about Farscape.
I find Community weirdly moralistic and oddly conservative, and the lessons that Dan Harmon insists on imparting each episode, however sweet they might seem, are more often superficial and saccharine. Jeff Winger is the root of the problem. He is almost never allowed to be the heartless egoist everyone says he is, and a better show would make his unflappable self-regard the straight man to two seasons of hilarious comeuppances, instead of a trait that comes and goes with the wind.
If anything, the second season is worse than the first, when by my charts (I have no charts), shows I support trend in the other direction. Which isn't to say Community isn't funny, but just that I hear a lot of people praise it and not enough criticism. Most often I look to characters like Professor Duncan or Dean Pelton for the low-life charm that Winger's A-team sadly lacks (except Pierce, comfortably the bad guy). But when all else fails, play paintball, right?
Speaking of the good life at the bottom of the barrel, let me spare you a separate post on True Blood and say that I wish all of Season 4, which I enjoyed, had been as great as the last episode. To 2012!
posted by NPK at 8:20 AM
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