Tuned InUncategorized
Spoilers for last night’s Community coming up:
You knew that “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” was going to be a special episode of Community, because it was structurally different (as many of its best episodes are), because it had a stripped-down (and thus budget-saving) setting and because, well, most of the episode involved a single …
Tuned In
Throughout its second season, Community has weekly redefined what its half-hour comedy can look like: there was a Christmas stop-motion episode, an Apollo 13 parody, a study-group mystery involving a stolen pencil and an honest-to-God zombie episode. Tonight, the show plays—literally—with its structure again by constructing an entire …
Tuned InUncategorized
[vodpod id=Video.5451784&w=425&h=350&fv=]
So here’s the deal: Now that Parks and Recreation is back and Archer has returned, on Thursday night we have several sitcoms that are capable of delivering a killer episode. Last season I tried for a while doing a picture gallery of Thursday comedies with paragraph reviews, but I felt I managed …
Tuned InUncategorized
Another round of headlines from the Television Critics’ Association winter press tour, which is winding down at the lovely Langham Hotel in Pasadena, and it was NBC’s turn to face the critics and reporters…
* …except no executives were on hand to do so. NBC has a new team coming in to run the network once the deal with Comcast is …
Tuned InUncategorized
There’s a delightful little detail in “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas,” last night’s stop-motion holiday episode of Community, that fascinated me. When characters “appear” and “disappear” from the Planet Abed fantasy world, they open a little curtain in the fabric of the fantasy, through which you can see—the study room, which they …
Tuned InUncategorized
I’ve already seen grumblings in some TV blog comments that last night’s episode of Community, “Mixology Certification,” was not funny enough. I suspect that I may have liked the episode for more or less the same reason that other fans didn’t: that is, I agree that it was lighter on the jokes and absurdity than recent episodes, but to …
Tuned InUncategorized
Late Friday night, in a surprise move, Fox announced a midseason schedule with a big, big change: American Idol will move from Tuesday and Wednesday nights to Wednesday and Thursday nights. The move has already been hashed out well at some more biz-minded sites, but it deserves a Tuned In post, for your discussion/mourning if nothing …
Tuned InUncategorized
[vodpod id=Video.4944541&w=425&h=350&fv=]
Last night’s blissfully weird Community, “Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design,” was a buildup to two elaborately constructed payoffs: the twist-within-a-twist-within-a-twist conspiracy ending, and the chase through Troy and Abed’s teeming blanket-fort city. The latter was one of those …
Tuned InUncategorized
There are a lot of things to love about Community, but as I wrote back when the second season debuted, for me it boils down to the sense that everyone involved simply has such a fantastic time at their jobs. Individual episodes have their ups and downs, but there’s an amazing level of craft to the show that goes beyond simply writing …
Tuned InUncategorized
Very mild spoilers for tonight’s Community follow:
Do you know what a bottle episode is? You will by the time tonight’s Community episode, “Cooperative Calligraphy,” is done. The term describes an episode of a series done in a limited setting—say, the classic trapped-in-a-freezer scenario—to save money. (Example: Breaking Bad’s …
Tuned InUncategorized
[vodpod id=Video.4837268&w=425&h=350&fv=]
Brief spoilers for last night’s Community coming up:
A good episode of Community is all a matter of how you see things. Literally. On one level, an episode like “Aerodynamics of Gender” can seem fantastical, what with Abed’s Robo-Bitch-vision and Jeff and Troy gamboling in a magical trampoline …
Tuned InUncategorized
Proving that there are still a vast amount of costume gags yet to be mined in the sitcom genre, both Community and The Office (and Outsourced, but I’m going to pretend it didn’t happen) delivered Halloween episodes last night. Proving that the supply of said costume gags is not unlimited, both episodes featured essentially the same …
Tuned InUncategorized
[vodpod id=Video.4623253&w=425&h=350&fv=]
Spoilers for last night’s The Office coming up:
So last night, my laptop seized up and died on me as I was watching, appropriately enough, the death-themed Community on DVR. (I am having the machine vaporized and sealed in a lava lamp.) It was a fairly strong episode—see especially the Abed …
