tv meme day 3

[marrow_sky]

Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this t.v season)

I've just finished bingeing on this show today. It's this thing I do where if I get hooked on a show, I go on a crazy binge of all the episodes and I did it with all 25 amazing (some less amazing than others) episodes of Community, the only new show from the latest season that I've watched (no I haven't watched Glee maybe I will someday). I wasn't even sure if I would have a show for this category because up until now I had absolutely nothing and therefore I was going to choose the most recently released television show I watched (Fringe) then I saw this and here it is!

It's good! It's really good. And I really, really like it, I do. You should watch it right now. It's about the most heavily fourth wall cracking show you'll ever find, unless it's actually a reality show - Abed makes references to almost every movie all the time and he compares his life to television, so. Yeah. It does get meta. Really meta. Really, really meta. In fact, in one episode (the third one, even) he talks about the fourth wall and how they leant on it pretty hard last week (he was talking about how he sees his life as a tv show) and then proceeds to say "I guess I can stay low for an episode." And then he does. Quotes and tropes and lampshading abounds - I hope you know your pop culture, because if you don't you are DOOMED. DOOOOOMED. Well not really. The show's very funny anyway. You might also want to turn your sensitivity metre down, though... I understand if that sounds stupid, but Pierce does get pretty over the line, and sometimes I wince, although it's made very clear by the show that he's definitely from a generation before and is extremely politically incorrect to the point of most of them ignoring him.

I've heard people describe it as surreal, but it's not really... surreal - in fact knowing surreal shows, being how I totally love and geek out over them, like Green Wing, Scrubs (although the surrealism was very specifically tied to JD's fantasies), and... don't laugh... Ned's Declassified Survival Guide, this show is actually pretty tame. It's not so much surreal as it is incredibly aware of itself, and as the TV Tropes page for this show points out, they pretty much purposely bring in tropes then immediately identify them or walk around them/run into them anyway, despite knowing what they're running into and it just makes it funnier. The reason why I like the fact that it lampshades everything and points out its own tropes because of how often they do suddenly just walk around it, which throws you into a whole new kind of loop. Or they try to. It sort of makes it new, while not being new, while being realistic, while being surreal.

... Well I think I've summed up the show nicely. And confusingly.

It's... not perfect. As much as I hate to make the comparison - it's no Arrested Development. I would grant you that Arrested Development had a few mingers (I personally didn't hugely enjoy the Mr. F plotline, but hey each to their own), but it's still just out of reach from this show - maybe they'll get better, maybe they won't, but even if they don't, please don't do that gay joke with Pierce mind-reading Jeff's mind ever again. It wasn't funny. At all.

It's a big cast again, the main characters are seven and are backed up by quite a lot of supporting cast members which does include John Oliver from The Daily Show. He plays a psychology professor. Yes that is as destructive as you think it is. If you could imagine, there's Senor Chang. He's worse. Yeah. This show's awesome.

I really like Jeff - I understand why people wouldn't like him in the first episode, but I remember John Cleese once being asked by Americans who watched Fawlty Towers "well, who's the character the audience can relate to?" and he had no answer, because there wasn't a relatable character and that would have destroyed the point. And it's true - a lot of American sitcoms have one main character that is "like us". Flawed, but a normal human being that isn't bad or good, just trying to get somewhere. He can be a jerk, but he learns his lesson - he's certainly never (or at least very rarely) a selfish, self-aggrandising money-grabber who can be charming but is undeniably a terrible person like Blackadder.

Jeff... isn't really like that. Well, he isn't until later episodes. In the first episode he's a real douchebag and he knows but he doesn't care. He's selfish, vain, egotistical, womanising, sickeningly charming, extremely manipulative and a control freak who is very unsettled when he loses that control. He's also an ex-lawyer, so that explains a lot. (BOOYAH THANK YOU I'LL BE HERE ALL NIGHT. ... CRYING.) Basically Jeff was such a sweet talker that he managed to convince everyone that he had a university degree. ... Which he hasn't. So he's being forced to go to community college for four years to get his bachelors, after which he'll get his license back. He basically introduces himself to us in the first episode by hitting on a blonde girl from Spanish class by pretending to be a Spanish tutor (though he has no idea how to speak it) and then trying to blackmail a former client into giving him the answers to every single test for all of his classes that semester.

So no. Jeff isn't a good person. He is basically forced to be one in later episodes, as his friends slowly begin to feed him poisonous thoughts of pity and compassion, but Jeff started as a total douchebag.

But did you know that he's really really fit?

Sorry, that's not... relevant. Except it is. Trust me, half the show is showing off how damn good Joel McHale looks. He even manages to be good looking while going through a "mangy shirts and unshaved" phase. He plays pool. Naked. When the TV Tropes page has his name for the Estrogen Brigade Bait trope - it is for a damn good reason.

If this keeps going on, I'm going to have my "shallow" tag for all these stupid posts.

The rest of the group might not be much better, but they do try to be good people, unlike Jeff, who tries to look out just for himself (this changes) and ultimately gets pushed into something he doesn't want to do. Britta, the girl he initially wants to have sex with, is basically emotionally insecure about herself - she's one of those very severe feminist types that I believe she believes in, but sometimes am ambiguous about whether she isn't holding it as a front for all her problems. Unlike Annie, who has no front for her problems and prefers to show it by being absolutely adorable when she breaks down. She goes on in one episode about how she's happy to be repressed, but I feel like she's less repressed than Britta - when Annie says she's repressed, she knows she's repressed, she doesn't exactly try to hide it from anyone. Shirley is motherly but she pushes her instincts on the rest of the group, along with her problems and emotions with her husband, who left her then came back to ask for the engagement ring back to give to his new girlfriend.

Ouch.

Troy is some weird mix of feminine and masculine, but he pulls it off really well and as soon as someone clears him on the fact that who he is is nothing to be ashamed of, Troy doesn't really hesitate. But he's also pretty selfish. Pierce is crazy and racist and ... racist, but sometimes he does have the best insights of the group, for being a very old man and going to a community college - it must put things in perspective for him, even if he does act twelve.

And Abed. You have to love Abed. Between him and Jeff I really couldn't choose, but Abed certainly is... Abed. He is the most insightful, he knows what he's doing and why he's doing it - but sometimes it's so obvious how desperate he is to have friends and keep them, even if it's to make them unhappy, especially if it's to make him unhappy. As the tv guru and basically a mortal god in the show, he knows why he does it too, and why he has to. He doesn't make any hesitations. It's for his friends. So he does it. My favourite scene of his is after he stayed twenty-six hours in a psychology experiment where he sits in a room waiting for someone to tell him that they're about to begin (although the waiting is the experiment), but he doesn't move from his spot until all the psychology students breakdown (especially the professor) and Annie tells him to go. When Annie asks him later if he wasn't annoyed at all, he calm says, "Yeah, I was livid." And when she asks why he didn't say something then, he replies, just as calmly as before, "Because you asked me to come and said we were friends."

Oh Abed. I guess there are some characters in tv shows you relate to, but Abed isn't me - he's so many of my friends.

I could go into a long rant about the ships in this show and I'm sure it would be very... deep and meaningful (lies), but the show speaks for itself really. You know how you watch something and ship everyone/everyone? Well welcome to Community. Where they encourage it.

I would like to say two things though.

Internet, where is my Jeff/Abed and my Abed/Annie. Where is it. I would also like more Abed/Britta.

And two and SPOILERS FOR THE SEASON FINALE-...

I really like how Jeff is indecisive about Britta and Slater and how he described it. In so many shows when you're given a choice like that, it's obviously going to be one of them. You might not want it to be, but the writers are damn transparent, you know? Like the whole Guy vs. Mac thing in Green Wing. It was always going to be Mac, please. But with Britta and Slater... it's not obvious. Both have their ups and their downs, both will probably change him for the better or for the worse and it's totally believable why he would just walk out of that room and runaway. Neither of them are bad people and both of them care about him. So he runs out and... ends up with Annie. Might not be the best human quality in the world, but considering he was faced with two options he both wanted but felt like he couldn't have, and suddenly there was a third option that he'd been getting increasingly close to (and increasingly aware of her hotness) since 'Debate 109', well.

/SPOILERS.

Basically you should check out this show. I can't say that it's the greatest show I've ever seen and that it's flawless and that I'll have a crazy obsession with it (I already do), but it's definitely something to check out. The opening sequence is nice and there's an Asian guy who doesn't go on about honour. ... Well he does once. But he had a point. Someone cheated on the test. And he lampshaded it before hand. Of course.

To sign off, instead of a clip or an official music video, have an unofficial music video that I haven't been able to get out of my head.