The Community Conundrum

So, I've been watching Season 2 of Community for probably the fifth or sixth time, and it is still impossibly hard for me to understand just why this amazing show is not more successful. Oh, sure, you can point to the Dinner With Andre episode or the Hearts Of Darkness episode as examples of how esoteric the show can be, but for every episode like that, there are ten that are incredibly funny in a remarkably simple way. People constantly talk about how smart Community is, and they're right, but that's not the ONLY thing it is. It's not usually smart in the way that Arrested Development is smart - a sort of tricksy, dirty, pulling-one-over-on-the-censors kind of way (sometimes Community does do these kinds of jokes, and I love them, but that's not the point). Community's comedy is mostly just really funny, straight-up jokes. What differentiates it from other, non-mockumentary sitcoms like its timeslot competitor, The Big Bang Theory, is that Community's jokes are well-written. Awesomely-written, in fact. The writers and producers have a vision and a great deal of investment in their characters and they write incredible jokes for them. On top of that, Community has a stellar cast of comedians with some of the best improvisational skills, with Donald Glover leading the pack. Did you know "Set phasers to 'love me'" was an improv? He's stupendous. What makes people call Community "smart" is that they're simply not doing the same tired jokes that sitcoms have been doing for years. Once you scratch the surface, one Chuck Lorre sitcom is pretty much exactly the same as another - tired jokes about gender roles or fat people where glorified assholes are dicks to and then sleep with women much more attractive than they are. Throw in some thinly-veiled homophobia and you've got 83% of sitcoms on the air. Community's brand of comedy doesn't generally require the viewer to think or be knowledgeable about anything erudite or complicated - it just requires an openness to jokes that don't reinforce all the stupid, previously-constructed concept of what a sitcom is. Sitcoms don't have to all be "Men and women are so different! How will they ever get along in this crazy world? Also, don't get too close with that good friend of yours or people will think you're gay!" Community proves these shows can be silly, whimsical, creative, heartfelt, and, best of all, surprising, while still being continuously laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Emmys, Premieres, And One Blogger's Eternal Struggle

The Emmys are tonight, and Monday marks the real return of real television (The CW's fall season minus Gossip Girl started this week, but we don't count that). This means that, in addition to working, studying, and having a life that involves life-size, tangible people, I've got a shit-ton of shows to watch, recap, and opinionate on. Don't get me wrong; I'm super-excited. But just to give you a sense of what I'm up against here, these are the new shows that are showing up on my Sidereel schedule this week:

How I Met Your Mother

Castle

Glee

Raising Hope

Parenthood

SVU

Up All Night

Modern Family

CSI (on Wednesdays???)

Person Of Interest

The Big Bang Theory

Community

The Office

Parks & Recreation

Archer

Fringe

A Gifted Man

And that doesn't even count the summer shows I'm still watching like The Big C and Project Runway, or the shows that decided to do TWO premiere episodes like the effing Big Bang Theory (it's never the ones you hope for), or the shows that already premiered that I haven't watched yet, like Up All Night and Parenthood. So, you can see that it's gonna take me a little while to get through it all, and that posts will, by necessity, hopefully be somewhat abbreviated. It's actually kind of a good thing that the brand new shows mostly look like crap, because otherwise I'd be completely bogged down. I will do my best to watch everything and post in a timely fashion, but some shows' fall evaluations may have to wait until next week.

Now on to The Emmys. I won't say too much about it because most of my frustrations with the whole Emmy system are expressed in this post, but I will say this: The Emmys are broken. I do not, as of yet, have a solution to the problem of how to get Emmy voters to watch more than one or two episodes of a series, but I'm working on it. The system wherein shows submit their favorite episodes for consideration completely ignores the painstaking and incredible continuity work that goes into a show like Community, and instead rewards those shows who display a complete LACK and DISREGARD for continuity, aka Glee. I'm not surprised Glee got an Emmy nom; there were a couple good episodes this past season (if you ignore the rampant biphobia and absolutely awful and nonsensical character arcs for EVERYONE and focus instead on that one time Gwyneth Paltrow sang a Cee-Lo song), but there is no way it was a better over-all season than Community. Or Episodes. Or Archer. Or any number of fantastic shows that did not receive a nomination. This system of selecting single shows for judgment also totally dis-favors shows like Fringe and Lost that have season- or even series-long plotlines. Now, I know it's silly to rail against something as ultimately meaningless as The Emmys, but it really does make me sad when I see programs and actors that I know are great and deserving because I have watched ALL of their episodes lose to programs and actors that I know are equally undeserving because I have suffered through all or most of their episodes (ugh The Big Bang Theory UGHHH). So here's hoping that tonight will be all about Mad Men (The Best), Parks & Recreation (The Best next to the infuriatingly ROBBED Community), and Louie (also just The Best). Down with Boardwalk Empire (unless the Emmy is for set direction), Glee, and The Big Bang Theory! Give the rightly deserving all that they rightly deserve.

Seriously, though, you do not want to be in my house if Mad Men doesn't win best drama for their spectacular fourth season, because it is an indisputable FACT that everything about that show is meticulously awesome and even Friday Night Lights (which I have heard is great and is the only other nominated drama I will even slightly concede to) doesn't have the total package of top-notch writing and acting and directing and costumes and set direction and lighting and cinematography and EVERYTHING that Mad Men has.

My Glee issues do not extend to Jane Lynch, whom I LOVE, and who I am very excited to see host tonight. I love how the major awards shows just get gayer and gayer every year. Here's hoping for some excellent pantsuits.

Ok, I'm off to get some sun and live some semblance of a life before the season of opinions officially begins. Expect outraged commentary in the morning!

"See You Next Fall"

I'm so sorry it's been a whole week since my last post. But this is my third job, and the only one I don't get paid for, and it just so happens that my other two jobs are also culminating in these last two weeks of May, meaning that I barely had time to watch all the season finales this week, much less write about them. So - here's another big-ass Sunday morning post, just for you.

How I Met Your Mother

Not a bad episode, overall. Kind of a nothing plot leading up to the so-called cliffhanger, but that's 6th season HIMYM for you. Even Chi McBride and Dave Foley, two of my favorites, couldn't really do anything to help the episode beyond just being in it because the writing wasn't there. I did really like Barney and Robin coming together to keep Ted from getting back together with FJM, but the above picture may be the best thing to come out of the whole episode. I thought the pregnancy reveal was illogical and un-clever - just because you're a television character doesn't mean you would continually return to a restaurant that makes you sick (and Marshall & Ted's favorite pizza joint doesn't count - they were in COLLEGE). If that were true it would make humans dumber than the animals that don't eat monarch butterflies because they look like other, poisonous butterflies. So.

Robin and Barney are going to get together eventually, like I predicted. The problem with this is that it was already a cliffhanger two seasons ago - but then the writers freaked out and had NO IDEA how to handle their relationship and concocted the dumbest breakup story ever. I'm pretty sure that episode was the shark-jumper for me. Oh, sure, there have been great moments since then, but the overall quality of the show has been in decline ever since. The truth is that I can't really get completely behind any CBS show these days - and the new fall lineup doesn't show any improvement (except that new show with Ben Linus! That I will watch). It's just such milquetoast, hypocritical programming - they're afraid to do anything edgy in their comedies, but have gotten progressively more disgusting and disturbing with their crime procedurals. I love Bill Irwin and all (my mom went to clown school with him) but his SEASONS-LONG storyline on CSI has sucked almost all of the fun out of it - though most of the blame should be laid at Laurence Fishbourne's feet. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I miss Numb3rs, and I miss the days when HIMYM felt like it was getting away with something. Now it just feels like a show that comes on before Two And A Half Men reruns that doesn't give NPH nearly enough to do.

"Shut your ass!"

Best episode of The Big Bang Theory this season definitely. Maybe of all time. And I'm gonna say that it is all because of Mayim Bialik and her hilarious portrayal of Amy Farrah Fowler. Amy has breathed new life into Sheldon, and their relationship has consistently been the best part of a particularly weak and sputtering season. "The Herb Garden Germination" put them at the center of all the action, but still allowed space for every character (even Priya, who is a snooze) to be at the top of their game.

"Follow the gossip" is a sitcom trope that has been around for a long time - I'm thinking most notably here of Ross trying to keep Rachel from finding out about the girl from the copy place. But the way TBBT approached it was unique, and truly something that only this particular show could have pulled off. Of course Sheldon and Amy look at gossip from a sociological point of view, and the idea for an experiment was brilliant. At the beginning of the episode, we follow the gossip about Bernadette and Howard from person to person, getting each of their individual responses to it. Then, we follow the scientifically-planted Sheldon and Amy gossip, again from person to person. This culminates in first the scene with Sheldon and Amy in the kitchen, and finally the proposal. The kitchen scene is what makes this episode the best - I'm gonna transcribe it here in full, but you really should go watch it for yourself:

"Bernadette just asked about my sexual encounter with you. The meme has reached full penetration."

"Pun intended?"

"No. Happy accident."

"This is remarkable. Less than 24 hours!"

"I should let you know that she asked for details about our daliance."

"Interesting. So it went beyond the mere fact of coitus to a blow-by-blow, as it were."

"Pun intended?"

"I'm sorry, what pun?"

"Not important. I described your lovemaking as aloof but effective."
"Now I wish you hadn't done that! That's going to make me a chick magnet, and I'm so busy as it is!"

A laugh-out-loud scene delivered with incredible comedic timing by two actors with a great rapport.

"I have goosebumps - feel!"

Hooray for Thursday night comedy!

I grew up in a time when NBC's Must-See TV Thursday night line-up was booming; Friends and Will & Grace were hugely popular in addition to being at the top of their game, and the block of comedy was followed by a not-yet-irrelevant ER. This was the time that NBC would like to see return ("Make it 1997 again by magic or science"). As a result, Thursday nights just feel like comedy night to me. So, while I am saddened and angered by the NBC/Comcast merger that will most likely guarantee that episodes like last night's 30 Rock will never make it to the air, I am so, so happy to see the shuffling off of the blight that was Outsourced to a timeslot no one will watch and the return of Parks & Recreation to its rightful Thursday night spot. I'll be writing another post about Parks & Rec as a whole, but for now I want to focus on last night's funny in particular.

Community

"I agree with brown Jamie Lee Curtis"

"Surf, sun, and..." "Sandwiches?"

Alright, bitches. I've gotten way behind and there are some shows about which I don't have much to say, so we're gonna knock a few out of the way right now.

The Big Bang Theory

You know, everyone talks about how smart this show is, but just because they make references to science and Star Trek doesn't really make it smart. In reality it's just a basic, formulaic CBS-style sitcom with jokes written to appeal to nerds. Now, that doesn't mean that I don't like the show; I do. The problem is I only really like one part of the show and that is Sheldon Cooper. He's so strange and Asbergers-y and "Bazinga" is a catch phrase that cracks me up like no other catch phrase because Jim Parsons' timing and delivery are incredible. Last week I was talking about how Geoffrey Arend's talents were being wasted on Body Of Proof; and here we've got another Garden State scene-stealer who just won an Emmy (which I actually think he deserved!) for being funny. Parsons really is great on The Big Bang Theory; I just wish that everyone else on the show was as good.

The problem is that the rest of the cast are either abhorrent, obnoxious, pathetic, or just a sad clump of stereotypes smooshed together into a person-shape. I can't stand Howard Wolowitz (See: The Emily Valentine Problem), which is sad, because I loved Simon Helberg in Studio 60 and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. So, you know, I'll watch the show but it's probably never going to be one of my favorites - the premiere was alright, but compared with all the other comedy I watched last week, it was near the bottom of the list. In fact, all you really ever need to see is right here.

PS: CBS changed their schedule and are trying to use TBBT to kill Community. This shall not stand!

CBS Fall Lineup - Hulk Smash!

Wherein I bitch about competing scheduling.

Before I start, I'd like to state for the record that I'm not a fan of CBS as a network. While they produce How I Met Your Mother (premieres tonight!), their shows tend to be some of the shows I hate most (Everybody Loves Raymond; A Man, An Ugly Teenager, And A Douchnozzle, etc). Now, CBS knows how to turn out a crime procedural like nobody's business - and I will freely admit my love for OG CSI, Numb3rs, Cold Case, and Without a Trace - but they have traditionally been a more old-school, conservative network. Their fall schedule looks neither new nor especially exciting. But, you know...let's take a closer look!

$#*! My Dad Says

You know, everyone's been saying that this looks horrible, but the preview doesn't look that bad (maybe I just love Will Sasso). I think the ultimate problem this show is gonna have is that CBS cut off its balls. I never read the Twitter account, but I believe that it was full of hilarious profanity. I mean, the fact that you can't say "shit" on TV is already ridiculous; now you have a TV show that emphasizes broadcasting censorship. FAIL.