The dust has settled from last week’s premiere and I’m hoping everyone’s moved on.
Last night’s episode was a very solid episode of Community. It felt much more natural and less forced than last week’s premiere, obviously. They had so much to live up to and get out of the way with the first episode post-Harmon and I don’t know why I have to keep saying this but in the Generation of No Patience, it seems like I’ll have to all season. The tone is different on the show, for sure, but it’s still the same show (for me). I read that the episode, and the one before it, were good but they weren’t that funny. Um…I’ve never really found this show to be hilarious. They’ve had their moments (I don’t think anything the show’s done has made me laugh as hard as the pepper spray scene from the first season) but mostly the show is more entertaining to me than funny. I found last night’s Halloween episode to be very, very entertaining.
It was a sort-of bottle episode of the show and a Halloween episode and that means I very much enjoyed it. There are few Halloween episodes I dislike and I could teach a class on Holiday episodes of sitcoms (oh my god this is the best idea I’ve ever had). I liked the set up for the episode, and I liked that it included as little Pierce as possible, even though he was what the whole episode was focused on. I loved all their costumes, especially Troy & Abed as Calvin & Hobbes (I’m surprised it’s taken this long for them to do this). I love that Shirley was given something to do (my favourite scene of the entire episode was probably the one with her and Troy in Pierce’s “secret gym”). I loved when Abed was watching Jeff & Britta arguing via security cam and muttered to himself, “I remember when this show was about a Community college”. So, you see, there was a lot I loved about the episode and not much I didn’t like.
Did I think this entire Scooby-Doo episode could’ve been even better in the hands of the show’s creator? Oh, of course. But this is not his show anymore. This show is in new and different hands and while it’s the same show, at some point we’re going to have to stop longing for the glory days and take it as it is because in 10 years from now I don’t need to read an article from The AV Club that tells me that the fourth season of Community was actually pretty good in hindsight. Let’s appreciate how good last night’s episode was now.
The Reel Times 