Christopher Robin Has Left The Study Room

I've been avoiding writing this post.

I have now seen the first two episodes of the new season of Community and honestly, I don't have too much to say.  It's not great.  It's not the show I fell in love with.  It is instead a Bizzaro version of the Greendale world that resembles far too closely the traditional sitcoms it used to skewer so well, and even the actors, whom I adore, seem to be fumbling to find out who their characters are now that they're not a pure embodiment of Dan Harmon's neuroses.

Donald Glover is handling it the best; all of the even-approaching-funny lines last night came from him ("Things.") and he's such a brilliant comedian that's he's making the best of a difficult situation.  Danny Pudi seems to be struggling to find the right tack to take - he's still playing Abed, but Abed is being written very differently now and you can sense his discomfort with the changes.  The character faring the worst is definitely Britta, who was a delicate and complex balance of awkward to begin with and has now become clumsy and obvious.

But it's not just the writing of the characters that's off - it's the staging.  Harmon knew when to pull out all the pop culture stops and when to scale back and focus on relationships, and these first two episodes try to mash it all together with very little success.  Everyone on Twitter was talking about how the Valloween episode was "a REAL Community episode" but it felt hollow compared to "Epidemiology" or even "Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps". Abed and Troy's Calvin and Hobbes costumes were a great visual joke that made me smile but were tragically never used or referenced to any other comedic effect.  The Dean wearing a wig for his ring-girl costume just felt WRONG, like a joke from some other show.  There was an attempt at a Clue reference that was hasty and half-assed and the big reveal of Hawthorne Manor wasn't anywhere near as exciting as the glimpse in to Joan Callamezzo's bedroom that Parks & Rec gave us last year.  And the through-line of Jeff's daddy issues was painfully forced and completely inauthentic to his character.  Remember in "Advanced Documentary Filmmaking" when Jeff straight-up BEAT UP PIERCE because of his anger at his dad (and, to be fair, at Pierce)?  If the new Community insists on having a selective memory towards its characters' motivations, it is going to fail.

Surprisingly, one of the things I miss most about Harmon's absence is his skill at incorporating the right kind of music into a scene, whether it's ambient or the Dean's Abba/grocery playlist.  Watching these first few episodes the scenes felt empty, like they were missing a character - the character of Harmon.  I know that Community still has some of the same writers and directors, but, for me at least, every scene feels like an attempt to recreate a magic that simply doesn't exist anymore.  It lacks the childlike joy that Harmon  imbued into the entire show.  Community has become The Thousand Acre Wood without Christopher Robin - a bunch of characters who like each other alright but are missing the one person whose imagination created and connected them in the first place.

I held out hope for the new Community, but the sad truth is this astounding show was so wonderful because it was hilarious yet bursting with heart - the heart of a man named Dan Harmon.  Without that injection of honest and passionate emotion, Community is just another sitcom on a network that increasingly does not understand what young, intelligent viewers want to see.  And even though Donald Glover can still make me laugh, the empty, unbearable sadness that blankets every Harmon-less scene has turned my favorite show into something I dread even having to talk about. 

So I'm gonna go listen to some Harmontown and turn that frown upside down.

Image via reddit

"The Perfect Last Christmas Party"

I realized a few days ago that I haven't really been talking about my shows much this fall - by that I mean the shows that are my real favorites, like Parks & Recreation.  Partly it's because I've been so busy, and partly it's because Community's not on the air, but it's also partly due to the fact that I've been watching with a more over-arching point of view, instead of simply evaluating shows on an episode by episode basis.  And with that in mind, it is time to talk about The Office.

Now, I have loved The Office for a very long time, and I was never the hugest Michael Scott fan.  I even thought the show had the potential to improve in his absence.  But they made some bad decisions along the way and cast the wrong people and went way too far down the Robert California rabbit hole and last season the show was, let's face it, bad.  Very bad.

But then this season came around.  And since we all know this is the final year, the show has been given a chance to get back to where it started as well and demonstrate how far it's come.  At the center of all that is the combination of relationships between Dwight, Jim, and Pam.  Oh, sure, there's Erin and New Jim, and Angela and Oscar, and all the rest in between and they're great, but resolving the Dwight/Jim/Pam relationships is clearly the documentarian's goal.  As someone who knows the early seasons to an obsessive point it is absolutely captivating and joyful to watch the pleasantly gradual denouement of these characters.

The Office's first Christmas episode was a classic in both the Michael-is-a-clueless-jerk and the Jim-and-Pam-are-tragically-in-love veins, with the Yankee Swap and the teapot and the shameless-but-apt iPod promotion and the Meredith's boobs.  It set the stage for many, many more great Christmas episodes - the dueling margarita/nutcracker parties (which includes my favorite Creed line: "I don't care which party I go to. Once you've danced naked at a hash bonfire with the spirits of the dead, all parties seem pretty much the same"); the Morrocan Meredith Intervention Christmas (which I believe was also the Princess Unicorn episode - "My horn can pierce the sky!"); the one where Phyllis is Santa.  The Christmas party is a time where the employees of Dunder Mifflin open up and get drunk and embrace the holiday spirit, and it's always a highlight of the season.  Last year's Christmas episode was a bright spot in a dark, glum year.

A Very VOMITROCIOUS Christmas

Oh my god, that was possibly the worst episode of Glee I've ever seen. I really think that this time I might be done for good.

Two weeks ago was the Santana debacle, which I can't even go into because it was SO BAD, and the student election BS, which was such an unbelievable plot manipulation that it doesn't even merit talking about because I can guarantee no one on this show will ever mention it again. Last week was sectionals, which was remarkably boring and predictable and the music was all my least favorite kind of Glee music, the note-for-note karaoke cover. Look, karaoke is great, I love it and it is totally the best. But watching professional singers do covers of songs that do not alter the arrangement in any way is flat-out boring. My favorite Glee songs are the ones they've put their own spin on - "Dancing With Myself", "Borderline/Open Your Heart", "Toxic", etc. - and if I do like a straight-up cover, it's because I haven't heard the original enough. But "I Will Survive" was a snooze, and even though I love me some MJ and I liked how everyone got a chance to shine in their medley, it was super dull. I know what "Man In The Mirror" sounds like! And it sounds better when Mark Salling keeps his mouth shut.

Anyway, that's all just to say that Glee has been losing me for a while now. Where are the jokes? Where is the edge? I wish this show had just died a quiet death at the end of Season 1. But sadly, it did not, and last night's episode still exists as a blight on the world.

"It tastes like feet!"

Happy Thanksgiving! I am celebrating by watching all the T-Day episodes of Friends, and by reading this excellent article by Emily Nussbaum about Whitney Cummings and the two atrocious shows she has on television right now. Oh, and by eating a ton of food. And by cracking open a bottle of wine once the National Dog Show starts at noon. And by watching this, over and over again:

I am thankful for all of you, and for everyone who reads, or has read, or laughed once at this blog. I am also thankful for Community. #sixseasonsandamovie

Enjoy your days of gluttony, however they might be spent!

A Christmas-Themed Movie Snack

Oh Frabjous Day, calloo, callay! How I Met Your Mother is back in top form. Maybe not Hot-Sister-Carols form, but "False Positive" is pretty awesome nonetheless.

"That's exactly the element of whimsy this celebration of love needs!"

"Music and cookies and liquor and trees, that's what Christmas is for"

I know that three days is SO LATE in the internet game, but sorry internet, I have a life and right now it is CRAZY and it's been all I can do to maintain my sanity, much less write blog posts. But I took notes so that I could write something once things died down a little. SO.........

Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas review starts now! Well, a few paragraphs from now.

Let me begin by explaining a little about my family and our Christmas celebrations and my relationship to Christmas pop culture. My dad does not like Christmas, a fact that made known to me once he deemed me old enough, which was around my 10th birthday. My sister and mom were a little indifferent to the whole thing, and then there was me. I LOVE Christmas - well, I love MY version of Christmas. I love picking out the perfect gifts and hanging stockings and cooking with my family and singing carols and unwrapping presents and the rainy weather and lights and the smell of the tree and pretty much anything Christmas that doesn't have to do with Jesus. My sister celebrates Chanukah and my grandfather celebrates the solstice; this year, due to a fortuitous typo, we've decided to refer to our December 25th holiday celebration as Xams, so as to remove it as far from Christ as possible. Because my family are atheists and agnostics and one converted Jew, we tend to avoid stuff about angels and pageants and miracles and the weirdness of worshiping a baby, and focus on the good stuff: eating and giving. Carols were always one of my favorites because I love to sing, but they drove my dad crazy and I've had to find good, non-annoying versions of my favorite Christmas songs to fill up my awesome winter playlist.

But this meant that I didn't watch a lot of Christmas movies/specials when I was a kid, partly by choice and partly because my dad would not give the TV up for that stuff. Rudolph and The Nightmare Before Christmas creeped me out, Charlie Brown didn't really captivate me, Miracle On 34th St. was boring, and I still, to this day, have never seen It's A Wonderful Life. Oh, sure, I watched The Grinch and Home Alone, but the holiday movie I probably saw the most was the animated version of The Snowman (quiet and nondenominational and thus inoffensive to my dad). As I got a little older, I started watching Friends and their holiday episodes became some of my favorites - and some of the best, with moments I can still instantly recall. Friends handled the holidays awesomely by either making a classic bottle episode, or by putting the Friends into stressful, emotional, and/or drunk situations. Always pitch-perfect. As I got even older, I started making my own traditions and found my trio of current all-time favorite holiday movies: Die Hard. Lord Of The Rings. Elf.