Brilliant! I don’t think I had seen that one before.
These are excellent. If anyone has any other Community deep cuts, please, do share!
I am watching the episodes at random, but I just rewatched Messianic Myths and Ancient People. That was such a sweet ending.
I still remember watching the My Dinner With Andre episode and just being astonished something like that was on primetime network television. Talk about risky! Brilliant, brilliant show.
Well, that’s the best car commercial ever.
Truly a high point even within the golden age of Community.
That Honda commercial above was one of the last high points the show gave us. The Honda episode itself was probably the only good one in the middle of season 6. At least its final trio of episodes was strong.
Another deep cut came from the many false starts NBC made about canceling the show.
Edit: I just stumbled across this one for the first time. Looks like it’s from season 3.
Watching this for the first time with my son for our Friday night beer/movie night and it’s fantastic. This scene from S02E17 made me want to laugh and cry at the same time:
Menzo
2728
I’ve been re-watching from the start again and it’s just soo good.
Well, except for season 4, which was just OK. And season 6 is not awesome, but everything else is just solid gold.
I’ve developed a much better appreciation for Jim Rash on this watch-through. He just goes for it in every scene.
Oscar-winner Jim Rash! Yeah, he is fantastic in this. The character could so easily be insufferably irritating, but he’s not, and Rash strikes just the right balance between self-contained and weirdly, publicly unhinged.
Honestly, I thought Season 6 was probably one of the better seasons. I really enjoyed the episode about the Hacker.
Menzo
2731
I guess it’s just relative to the brilliance of the other seasons. I mean seasons 1 and 2 are so jam packed with amazing. I think season 3 shows some strains of what happened with both Chevy and Dan Harmon, but it’s good stuff.
Season 6 is the only one I haven’t finished. I’m not sure what it was about the audio on that season, but it seemed like a lower quality production to me because of the audio, and that really bothered me. I’m not sure if they got inferior microphones or had less music in the background or what. Something felt different about the audio, it seemed more soap-opera like.
It does say something that almost every time something makes me want to track down and watch a specific episode of Community it almost always ends up being from the first two seasons.
Weirdly the first worked way less for me than 2 & 3. There’s still an absurd amount of heart in it, but Harmon was also still clearly figuring out how far off the reservation he could go, the character dynamics and archetypes were still being established, and, as I noted a few dozen posts above, the consistency and severity of Pierce’s rarely punished racism/sexism just really rubbed me the wrong way during the re-watch.
I liked S4 just fine, but really dug S5. Hickey was a great addition. I wish they’d managed to hang onto Donald, obviously, but the return to form on the emotional elements + the condensed season schedule leading to what felt like a ton of concept-density was excellent. It really felt like Harmon was writing like he might never get a job on TV again in S5, so by jove, he was going to go all in.
Rewatching. S3. Only the men have daddy issues.
Pierce - Klan member control freak who never loved him.
Jeffrey - dad abandons him. it’s a running joke that Brita keeps trying to get him to confront daddy issues
Abed - single father. Can’t connect with Abed.
Troy - ???
Annie - ??? Has asked parents for money once?
Shirley - ???
Britta - probably hates her mom. Not sure. Parents probably loving which she hates.
Britta gets an episode in season 6 (it’s one of the low points, sadly) where she’s shown rebelling from her parents… who are only trying to help her & have grown to be perfectly decent people. But she’s Britta, so she can’t cope with a healthy dynamic. I guess we can file that one under self-imposed parent issues.
Whew. Just got to the end of S6 again. Actually the first time I’ve made it all the way to the final finale since it originally aired on Yahoo. S6 reaches and tries to do a lot in a very limited time with what felt like a very limited budget. The sound editing is hella weird and the music is often eerily silent, if nothing else. They go back to some well trod wells again, including the well of being self aware about returning to wells, but Harmon’s usually clever enough to keep the wheels on. The emotions don’t always hit quite as hard, but the last episode is a real gut punch, or at least always was for me. The finality in the air is palpable, and I’m far more Jeff about it than it’s probably reasonable to admit. Those loveable dorks, in all their various iterations over the years, are almost like a family, and watching that family pull apart and go their separate ways and become their own people might just hit a little harder now that we’re all stuck in our homes and never see each other as more than faces on screens anymore.
Harmon made a hell of a thing, and I’m deeply grateful for getting to share with him and the cast in it for as long as we did.
Alright, you got me to hit play on Community’s pilot episode on Netflix. Maybe it’s been long enough?
After watching that, I can definitely say, wow, yes, it’s been long enough. I didn’t remember any of those jokes, or even how the group had originally come together. That was really great. Jeff gives his big speech that’s inspiring, Pierce is creepy and racist, Abed with his movie references. Brita was great too, since this is before they started making fun of her constantly. Annie, Troy and Shirley didn’t get much time in the pilot.
I really enjoyed it. It’s going to be tempting to keep coming back to this now, even though I’m supposed to be watching new content on Netflix.
