Community (NBC, 8 p.m.) — Season premiere. And it’s about damn time.
Parks and Recreation (NBC, 8:30 p.m.) — “Ben asks Tom, Chris, and Ron to help him select a caterer for the wedding.” Ron Swanson would not get along with Ron Donald.
The Office (NBC, 9 p.m.) — Let’s get back to Community for a second. The early reviews are…not good. The NY Times and Grantland said the show’s a mere shell of its former self (the word “zombified” is used), while the AV Club, the only other website that rivals WG’s passion for all things Greendale, gave the episode a B. The highest profile positive review came from Splitsider, which said it’s “still the same weird, wonderful show.” I’m terrified.
Deadliest Space Weather (Weather, 9 p.m.) — Season finale. F*cking space, man.
Archer/Legit (FX, 10 p.m.) — We already discussed tonight’s Archer, but don’t forget about Legit. It’s like the solid deep cut after the greatest hit that is Archer, which to further complicate the metaphor, makes it the “Ain’t No Fun (Waiting ‘Round to Be a Millionaire)” to Archer‘s “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.” Or something.
LATE NIGHT GUESTS: Sally Field and John Harbaugh on Letterman; Amy Adams and Adam Carolla on Leno; Dr. Phil and Jacoby Jones on Kimmel; Amanda Peet on Ferguson; Joel McHale and Al Roker on Fallon; Chris Tucker and Brian Posehn on Conan; Neil Barofsky on Stewart; and Benh Zeitlin on Colbert.
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Season 1 Ron Donald and Season 4 Chris Traeger would get along swimmingly.
Sepinwall said the first two episodes felt like an attempt to preserve Dan Harmon’s idea of the show but without his spirit, or something like that. I’m willing to give them a pass on the first few episodes and see if the new creative team finds their voice as we get further into the season.
We’re all terrified, but we’re in this together.
IMPORTANT PARKS NEWS: Crazy Ira and the Douche are in tonight’s episode. [twitter.com]
Any place where I can catch up on Legit?
Available on FX’s website. [vod.fxnetworks.com]
Oh shit. Way to go FX. I always hate it when there’s no place to catch up (for free) on in season TV. On Hulu I at least watch ads, on Netflix/Torrents you’re not getting SHIT out of me for catching up.
What they have them on their website? Rad
I thought October 19th would never come.
Even if tonight’s episode really does turn out to be not all that great I say we wait awhile before the panic button starts getting pounded on. This show has never had good openers. The Piolt, Anthropology 101 and Biology 101 are all average at best. Heck Season 3 didn’t have a decent episode until Remedial Chaos. I’m with Peter Cavan in that we should give this new crew a couple of episodes to find their bearings.
Also Grantland? Who cares? It’s Bill Simmons personnel ego project for Christ sake.
I was just going to say something similar. There’s simply no way tonight can live up to the hype. Even for us. That’s why, instead of asking people to tune in tonight, I’ve just been handing out my DVDs of Seasons 1-3.
That said, it’ll be great to have the Human Beings back.
Grantland is great, and has numerous staff members with differing opinions. Greenwald wrote the Community review and he’s a very respectable TV critic.
plus, Bill Simmons is awesome and I will fight every insufferable hipster who hates him.
Actually as the big name sports writers go (king, Whitlock, Gregggggg. ect.) Simmons is the most tolerable. Though I;d advise you to stay away from KSK dissident. You’ll find yourself up against the entirety of the very drunk and belligerent Kommntariet. None of whom are hipsters, I’d put real $ on that.
The visual representation of the Kommentariat right now.
My feelings for Grantland are mixed, too, but Andy Greenwald is great. As for Simmons, let’s not get into all THAT, otherwise we’ll be bombarded with Beverly Hills 90210 and Hoosiers references for the rest of time.
Grantland has some good writers. I think they guys who write about TV and file are pretty good. Greenwald and Todd VanDefWerf at the AV Club are my two favorite TV writers.
VanDerWerf is great too. The only notable tv critic i really don’t like is Alan Sepinwall. he’s just a goober.
I use to wonder why a camera crew was filming an Office for 9 years. After last week’s episode I now wonder who has been paying a camera crew to film an Office for 9 years.
So now that Pierce is gone any chance we can get Harmon back? Also now that NBC realized that it sucks ass at making shitty TV shows can we get more Harmon?
No, his firing wasn’t about Chevy.
I thought Chevy was a factor in his firing? Or did the media just Britta that up?
Harmon was constantly having issues with the network, he was difficult to work with and quite unprofessional apparently.
Season 3 of Community was mostly unimpressive and self indulgent and that had Harmon as the show runner. I’m not confident this season will be any better.
As long as there aren’t any pointless and unfunny side plots about guys named Kim leaving notes that existed purely to get uselessly petty revenge on some executive, I’ll give it some slack for a few episodes.
For me, it’s just them running jokes into the ground until only the fans get it. It’s not surprising that they’d get low ratings at this point when most of the material exists for the cult audience. I’m not saying it should be broader, but they should move away from repeating the same ideas. “The Hunger Deans” bit in the trailer was a perfect example of an ongoing joke being worn out.
First two seasons were pretty good to great. Then, kinda like Happy Endings, they started to get seemingly full of themselves with how many references could be jammed in. HE just addressed this in a recent episode, so hopefully Community does too.
Here’s why i’m troubled by the general perception of tonight’s Community: People tune in for the first episode because there’s a buzz. Ratings will be up over last year because of the buzz. The show will not be as good as we, the faithful, claim it is. Fewer people will tune in the second week when the new showrunners are starting to feel their groove. It will be a “catastrophe” that fewer people are watching community. By the time it reaches the prior levels the casual viewers who were roped in initially will be gone. In the end, when the network pulls the plug just the loyalists are there. Finally, for years thereafter, it’ll just be us, alone in our respective houses, in our underwear, remiscing about the time Britta and Annie almost kissed.
̶F̶i̶n̶a̶l̶l̶y̶,̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶r̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶a̶f̶t̶e̶r̶,̶ it’ll just be us, alone in our respective houses, in our underwear, remiscing about the time Britta and Annie almost kissed.
The fact that Marino’s character was named Ronald Donald was funny enough by itself, but when the crew finds out his full name is Ronald Wayne Donald I just lost it.
I’ve seen it in this thread a couple of times, but I want to second the notion of giving the new producers a few eps before we declare it “Not as Good as it Used to Be!!”
I’m sorry, I just don’t get it. This show had a few laughs but was overall pretty dull and looked like it was trying too hard. It’s a shame because I think the cast is one of the best ever, including Chevy Chase.
go away
The fact that splitsider gave Community a positive review is only more reason to be worried. That site literally loves everything except for Daniel Tosh.
Oh god yes. especially SNL. Every week’s recap: “A couple of misfires but, overall, a really solid episode!”
exactly what i was thinking of. buncha hacks over there.
I just want to see Alison Brie on TV again. I would watch paint dry if she sat in front of it.
Was the phrase “heaving bosom” mentioned in any of the reviews….
Anybody catch the license plate?
Anybody get a look at the driver?!
I liked it.
It wasn’t bad. There was a definite energy missing, but not anything that would keep me from enjoying the show and seeing how it goes. Then again, I did watch every season of Night Court, so I may not be the best judge of when to let go.
Dan fielding as the phantom of the opera, that was a shitty season
but i still stuck with night court, so I’ll stick with community to the bitter end
I was content until they turned the volume of the Dean/Jeff axis to maximum. The beauty of that relationship was the the not so subtle subtlety, which is all but gone. To compound things further, they decided to go “Full Sitcom” with the move. Argh.
I thought it was fine. I may be in the minority on here but, while I love the show, I don’t consider it to be all that consistent. This episode wasn’t anywhere close to as good as the best Community episodes, but it wasn’t as bad as some of the worse episodes either.
I really enjoyed the episode. Dunno what they were notching about, Alittle off but still a fantastic show.
I’ve gotta go make an old man eat a big bowl of spider webs
Archer won the night. That show is about as solid as they come.
Community definitely felt off, it had moments where it was it’s old self. The Abed piece of the episode seemed fitting for how Abed would handle the changes, but it still felt a bit off. I think Abed is going to suffer the most without Harmon. As for the Hunger Games thing, Community has done plenty of other equally absurd things, but usually they build up to them so they don’t seem quite as absurd, this time around they jumped right to the escalation point it just came off as very forced as did the Jeff Winger speech, even if it was actually just in Abed’s head.
That said, how Jeff and Annie and how they were handling the last year of Greendale thing, felt dead on so that was good. Troy also as always was solid. Hopefully as the season progresses they don’t come off as trying so hard as they did in the premiere. Still enjoyed it though and hoping they’ll find the right new balance.
Let me ask you a question (and I promise I’m not being snarky) but…
What is wrong with the world? It’s a sitcom, and a good one at that. But it is a sitcom. Were you watching it like any other one, or were you just trying to find flaws so you could faint to notice the departure of Harmon? Why would you try and dissect every single second of a show? Don’t you think it has little to nothing to do with the inherent quality of History 101, but really it’s about you putting yourself in the mindset of criticizing it, instead of simply watching it? That episode could have been in the middle of the 3rd or 2nd season and you would have just enjoy it. So, yeah I know it is more than one question, and I guess I might have let off some snark, but my advice : just enjoy it.
if it’s just a sitcom i could ask you a version of what you are asking me – why are you also taking it seriously to the point that you need to defend it’s honor and tell me that i have to enjoy it. telling somebody that they should enjoy something is a bit obnoxious no? why must i enjoy it because you enjoyed it? and how can you assume the first thing about my mindset of watching it?
i dissect shows like that because that’s how my mind works, it’s not forced, while i am entertained i also have the ability to appreciate consciously of what’s being done on screen. perhaps you cannot do this which is fine, my brain works differently, also fine.
that said, guess what, i enjoyed it. but it felt a bit different and off, it’s okay to point that out. i dont have to love every episode of Community even if I love the show as a whole. its also tough for me to say whether or not i was looking for problems knowing the Dan Harmon thing, it’s impossible to know because i cant undo knowing the Dan Harmon situation. It looked, sounded and felt different than the Dan Harmon version, but it was one episode and they are adjusting to a huge behind the scenes change, it’s perfectly expected and acceptable.
Was it just me, or did Annie seem a little more….ample than usual?
Nobody can just sit down and enjoy a great show anymore. I thoroughly enjoyed the first new Community episode in 10 months, and laughed more than I have at any show in pretty much that same amount of time. I feel sad for the people who can’t enjoy one of the few good comedies on network tv.
I agree. I had no problems what so ever. Thought it was great, glad it’s back.
Amen.
Also I would watch the shit out of Blind/Bonde
I was just happy to be in Greendale again I do have two negative things to say:
1.- They did too much of the Abed TV, they should just done that bit one or two times and just have Abed retreat to it without showing whats going on there, that would be funnier
2.- Greendale Babies was the stupidest piece of shit I’ve seen them do since the dreamatorium episode, we need less of that a lot less of that.
other than that, I really liked that episode
Yes, yes and yes.