Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
I thought the finale was flippin' brilliant.
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
I thought embracing the TV concept was really a great way to finish the series. It allowed them to have some fun at their own expense, and I think it must've been a blast to write and then perform.
I am really surprised that Troy didn't come back. There's no way Donald Glover's schedule was *that* busy that he couldn't do a similar cameo to Shirley's, and I wonder if he was a little more disgruntled than the BTS stories implied.
But I thought it was perfect. All of it. Well done, Community.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
Yeah. I really didn't want this to be the last season. Week after week, I was visiting my friend Laurie, exclaiming that this week was the greatest episode of COMMUNITY ever made. The introduction of Frankie Dart. The crisis room story. The Honda episode. The giant hand episode. The spy movie spoof. COMMUNITY kept hitting new heights of experimental inventiveness. I didn't want it to ever stop. I dreaded the season finale and urgently awaited news of Season 7 --
But then the finale came and it pointed out that Abed and Annie needed lives outside Greendale. That Jeff and Britta might belong there, but Shirley and Troy having left wasn't cause for sadness -- they had to move on eventually. The fact that Jeff and Britta and the Dean and Chang were still at Greendale -- the truth is that they had settled for Greendale, but anyone who didn't have to shouldn't.
And with Jeff and Annie, the show acknowledged that yes, there is a lot holding the characters together. And the fans want to see them stay together. But the story demands that some of them move on, and so does reality with everyone's six year contracts expiring with this season. I didn't want this to be the last episode. But the finale made me feel like it was okay.
The final hashtag made me miss SLIDERS more than ever.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
It was a great season. I also want a season 7 after seeing how good this year was (what other show would do the incest episode?). I hear that there's still a chance for the movie. I guess we'd have to settle for that.
Please be informed that the political, scientific, sociological, economic and legal views expressed in Informant's posts and social media accounts do not reflect any consensus of Sliders.tv.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
I just don't think it was an easy show to work on, it was a 30 minute sitcom that took longer to film than an average drama and after a few yeats everyone was burnt out.
At a certain point as an actor you got to move on or you get stuck, most actors get a decade 10 years from early 20s to mid 30s if they want to have a carrer ot make it. Sohanging out on a show that went from full season to mid season too amazon show is tough.
most of the cast that stayed around was doing the last 3 years as a side job...
so can blame Glover for mot wanting tocome back, youll notice none of the replacement actors mzke it more yhan a season.
the finale was ok, the last season again was ok., amazon always had glitches for me yhe finale 4 episodes every commercial break woild reset the sjow then i would have to rewatch that car commercial loop 4 times to fast forward and see anoyher 8 minutes thrn it eould reset again, or die, so maybeim judging it worse than it was.
Yahoois the worst video playbavk service that is out their.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
Informant wrote:
It was a great season. I also want a season 7 after seeing how good this year was (what other show would do the incest episode?). I hear that there's still a chance for the movie. I guess we'd have to settle for that.
Sounds like the chances are actually pretty high that we'll get the movie.
I'm just not sure if it'd work as a movie. Even the 3-part paintball episode run together would only be a 66-70 minute movie (at most). Even a 90-minute movie (which is pretty short these days, even for comedies) would be a 4 or 5 part episode. Is that too much time? Would it be enough Community-style comedy, or would it also have to have ridiculous action/romantic subplots just to fill time?
I think the cast would do it in a heartbeat, and I'm sure Harmon would love to capitalize on finishing the #sixseasonsandamovie joke against all odds. But I'm just not sure it works outside of the idea itself.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
Slider_Quinn21 wrote:
I'm just not sure if it'd work as a movie. Even the 3-part paintball episode run together would only be a 66-70 minute movie (at most). Even a 90-minute movie (which is pretty short these days, even for comedies) would be a 4 or 5 part episode. Is that too much time? Would it be enough Community-style comedy, or would it also have to have ridiculous action/romantic subplots just to fill time?
I would probably introduce a new character. Probably a 19-year-old girl played by Anna Kendrick or Saoirse Ronan who has experienced some unspecified nervous breakdown that caused her to lose out on real college and have to settle for loser college, and set it up as being just like all those mediocre romantic comedies about college students -- except that in this case, the college turns out to be Greendale and Greendale is completely ****ing insane.
Jeff is the Dean. Craig is teaching gender studies. Britta is the school counselor. Annie washed out of the FBI and is now running school security. Shirley runs the cafeteria. Troy returned but lost all of Pierce's money investing in something stupid and is now a janitor and Abed has rebooted himself into a first-year community college student in the belief that he can start again. And our new character finds herself involved in the usual Greendale craziness.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
Interesting. I think I'd go in a different direction. Go with what the show does best and pick a genre and "Community-ize" it. I'd pick a "quest" movie.
It's 3 years after the failed season seven. Greendale is thriving under Dean Pelton (demoting the dean seems cruel, even if someone else would do better and he might thrive in a different role). Enrollment is up, and it's even annexed City College as a satellite location. A new study group has taken over the study room, and the old study group is the stuff of legends among the school.
INCITING INCIDENT - something happens and only one person can save the day - Jeff Winger. But former-professor Winger hasn't been seen in a couple of years. He left one day and never came back. To save the school, Dean Pelton and the kids have to go on a quest to find Jeff. They find Abed in Los Angeles - he's an indie director who is having some success but misses random misadventures. He doesn't know where Jeff is, but he's happy to join in. They try to find Annie, but she's away on some important investigation. They try to find Britta but she's also in the wind. They can only find Shirley, who hasn't heard from any of them in years. A list of random characters (Magnitude, Leonard, Garrett, Elroy, Frankie, Buzz, Duncan, etc) are no help either. Abed wishes the Troy was there, but they randomly stumble upon a normal-acting Chang. He's become a rich tycoon, and he decides to use his vast resources to help find Jeff.
Chang, Pelton, Abed, Shirley and the new study group keep looking for clues when they realize that the new study group is slowly disappearing as they're getting replaced by the old one (the pop culture guy disappears when Abed arrives, the weird one disappears when Chang arrives, etc).
As they get to Chang's mansion and start using his network of resources, Annie shows up. The big case was Chang, and he's stolen the identity of someone else. From then, he starts acting more Chang-like. They ask Annie to help them find Troy, Britta, or Jeff. And she's already found Troy! So they all go to try and find Britta, who they think is the key to finding Jeff.
I don't really have an ending, but in Community fashion, they'd find Jeff instead of Britta....forget about Britta (who finds them instead). And Jeff and company spend the rest of acts 2 and 3 on an exciting adventure to save Greendale once and for all. And the original study group is completely replaced and never spoken of again 
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
I did not understand anything you just wrote, so I think it must be absolutely brilliant.
I admit, having a new female character serve as an entry point to an existing property is something of a crutch for me.
But. I think COMMUNITY, after six seasons, is designed to take place on the Greendale campus and that's probably where the movie should be set.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
Yeah, I think that'd work too. Maybe they have to go find everyone and then bring them back for one more adventure on the campus. But I think the show displayed (correctly) that these guys need to grow and evolve beyond Greendale. So we shouldn't engineer reasons for them to be back on campus full-time. A return? Cool. Full-time? No.
Although now I like the idea of a superstar cast as the study group that gets replaced. Imagine some of the top young actors just unceremoniously getting removed in favor of our cast. I think Harmon would love that.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
I don't think it can be avoided that some of the cast are permanently Greendaled. Jeff, Britta, the Dean and Chang are probably lifers and that's fine. They're adults, they bounced around out in the world and Greendale is where they ended up. So maybe Annie is spending a year teaching a forensics class at Greendale as a working sabbatical and Troy came to campus to spend two days installing a new fire sprinkler system and never got around to leaving and Abed is on campus shooting a college romantic comedy and decides to make our new character the leading role and use that as an entry point to Greendale's craziness.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
Why is Britta stuck? I've never really gotten that, and I think Britta's character was never really developed, honestly. I think, organically, it makes more sense for Britta to be the one floating around in the world (not Troy). Heck, it might've made more sense organically for Britta to end up with Troy on his trip. Gillian Jacobs was fantastic, but I feel like Britta got lumped into this weird gray area where her character was simply a punchline. Was she still going to be a therapist? Is she just a lazy bum now?
It would be interesting to see her end up as the next generation's Pierce/Elroy or, god forbid, Chang.
But outside of that, I see Britta as the type who would move to Europe with no real plan. Waitress here a bit. Find weird Europeans to let her crash on their couch for a while. End up in a civil union with some French con artist until she gets the idea that she needs to go back to school and finish her degree
Which is another Dan Harmon-like idea. Five minutes of exposition saying that everyone failed outside of Greendale, and they're all working to get new degrees. Hard reboot haha.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
My Christmas present to the board:
You're welcome.
I had my annual viewing of "Regional Holiday Music". Every year, I think that I've seen the episode so many times that it can't possibly make me laugh as much as it did before. Every year, I am wrong.
Please be informed that the political, scientific, sociological, economic and legal views expressed in Informant's posts and social media accounts do not reflect any consensus of Sliders.tv.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
I can't get over the documentary episode of Season 6. Even watching it now, I keep failing to notice that Abed isn't actually in it; it feels like he's in every scene.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
I recall at one point Transmodiar and I listening to the commentary to the Season 6 paintball episode where Harmon expresses confusion and says that the plot makes no sense and he's not even sure who the silver paintball firing gunman even is. Transmodiar then called Dan Harmon "a self-loathing tool" and "a drunker, more ridiculous Torme," a shockingly inflammatory, horrifically caustic and completely correct assessment.
(This gives the impression that Transmodiar and I visit each other in our homes to watch half hour audio commentaries on the sofa together while his wife asks me to please take away The Box of Sci-Fi Channel press clippings that's blocking access to furniture in the garage.)
Funnily, Transmodiar thinks poorly of the spoofy and absurd episodes and in the commentaries, Harmon is constantly saying in commentaries that he's gone too far and the show is ridiculous and he wonders how he ended up doing an episode that's presented in terms of 8-bit video game graphics and expresses dismay at how he finds the third act listless and how he doesn't understand what's going on and has lost control of the plot.
On the old forum, Transmodiar criticized Season 5 for making Jeff Winger a teacher and only showing him teach in one episode. In the commentaries, Harmon criticizes himself, saying he first had to come up with an excuse to get everyone back to Greendale for a fifth year, then had to write Pierce out as Chevy Chase was banned from the set, then had to write Donald Glover out of the show, then got so caught up in writing and rewriting a D&D sequel that he forgot about Jeff's arc for the year. "Why were we trying to do Meow Meow Beans?" he wonders to himself. "Why didn't we just do some more episodes about Jeff as a teacher? That would have been a lot easier."
Harmon and the directors also talk about how they designed the study room, student lounge, cafeteria and hallways so that they could easily be redressed to offer other locations and at times, they'd wheel in trucks and cars into the cafeteria set so as to film driving sequences and how Pierce's crazy house in Season 4 was actually the Greendale set and how they would perform tricks like flipping the shot because they didn't have as many hallways as they wanted to have. I keep thinking of the Chandler Hotel and feeling sad.
Anyway. It's interesting that Harmon and Transmodiar seem to have very similar opinions of the show.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
I do see COMMUNITY as the spiritual successor to SLIDERS (no, it's not THE ORVILLE) -- but one thing SLIDERS struggled with in Seasons 4 - 5 was a reason for the characters to be doing whatever the hell it was they were doing. (By Season 4's finale, they've found three separate superweapons yet failed to use them to liberate Earth Prime; in Season 5, they have the coordinates to bypass the slidecage and a path to Kromagg Prime yet spend three episodes meandering.)
COMMUNITY seemed to hit the same problem in Season 5. It was the much heralded return of the creator which received positive reviews but was described by its own showrunner as listless and devoid of energy in his own commentaries. He explained much of that as failing to follow up on Jeff as a teacher because he got wrapped up in the DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS episode and a LOGAN'S RUN homage, and then episodes like Britta at a charity function with Duncan and the Save Greendale Committee putting on a bear/dog dance were conceived with the empty desperation of putting the characters in a standing set and giving them an argument.
Season 4, whatever its faults, had a clear purpose: the characters were trying to complete their degrees and graduate, Jeff attempting to do so in 13 episodes because he didn't have a full 22 - 25. Season 5 had our graduates return to Greendale to attempt what students taking more than four years to complete four year degrees call "a victory lap," but after one episode of Jeff teaching and Annie studying, academics seemed to evapourate. The Save Greendale Committee had a lot of meaningless busy work. Episodes were conceived in terms of a concept (a heist, a dance, a sci-fi dystopia, a treasure hunt), but with little to no attention to what the characters were trying to accomplish at Greendale or if they'd made any progress.
To Harmon's credit, he acknowledged this in the two-part finale where Jeff remarks that Annie and Abed aren't ready to leave Greendale as they're from a generation where post-education adulthood doesn't really begin until after the age of 30, and he had an insurance assessor declare that the Save Greendale Committee had turned Greendale from an insurance liability into a worthwhile property. But from episodes 3 to 11, there was the strong sense that Greendale was a safety blanket the show should have outgrown.
In Harmon's defense, his plans had been to do Season 4 as a "dress rehearsal" for a Season 5 where the group wouldn't need the Greendale campus to be in the same room (not necessarily the study room) on a regular basis. That was why he had Abed, Troy and Annie living together by Season 3 and had Shirley, Jeff and Pierce go into business together with Shirley's Sandwiches. The offbrand feel of Season 4 had Harmon decide to set Season 5 at Greendale at which point the campus became the focal point of the show instead of the study group which had lost Pierce and Troy. Harmon would later say to The Hollywood Reporter, "I needed to convince myself that Donald leaving wasn't the death of the show, but now that it's all over, I think we can agree that it was."
I don't agree with that. Glover's absence was followed by some below-average Season 5 episodes (which, compared to most TV, are still pretty good), but the problem wasn't the lack of Troy but rather the lack of clarity as to what the group is doing and if they're advancing or backsliding, and without direction, it feels like filler.
I haven't gotten to all the Season 6 commentaries yet, but in interviews, Harmon confessed that he was burnt out and tired and that Season 6 was also not his best work. I have very fond memories of Season 6 and recall that introducing Frankie (Paget Brewster) as a consultant to raise Greendale's reputation to professional stability gave the show new direction: it wasn't about saving Greendale through vaguely relevant filler tasks, but about working with Frankie to make Greendale a decent college in *addition* to being a halfway house for troubled dysfunctionals.
This gave COMMUNITY a sense of clear direction and it seemed less important to wonder about when the characters would get their degrees. There was still some confusion, however, in that Abed seemed to be getting paid for his work for Greendale as Frankie at one point threatens to fire him, Britta works on the committee yet has to clock in at a bar and Annie seemed to be taking blow-off classes like Ladders. However, Abed highlighted this in a fourth-wall leaning monologue about how it was a question as to how the characters get their money but one that he found deeply uninteresting. I remember Season 6 being superb and splendid and thinking that Harmon's disenchantment certainly didn't show in his work.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
COMMUNITY movie announced:
https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/commun … 235389233/
Dan Harmon and Joel McHale will be executive producers. No word on which cast members will be returning.
I confess, there is a lot of COMMUNITY that makes me uncomfortable today, most of due to an extremely uncomfortable interaction I had with show creator which was entirely my own fault, but also the behind the scenes revelations about the creator sexually harassing a writer which has affected my former fondness for the Jeff/Annie relationship.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
I thought I read that everyone was on board except for Glover and Yvette Nicole Brown, both of who stepped away. And Chevy, of course.
I'd still make the movie if they can't get Glover or Brown, but I'd hope they'd return in some capacity. I know Glover is super busy, enough that he can't even appear on his own show all the time (Atlanta), but I'd like Troy to at least make an extended cameo.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
We'll see! I'm happy for the fans.
On my end of things... the Jeff/Annie relationship was my favourite thing about the show. I was not a shipper; I just I liked their partnership and interaction and conflicts and self-imposed sexlessness (which was highly appropriate as Annie was 19 and Jeff was 34) and the mutual respect matched with the acknowledgement that they were an odd friendship resulting from peculiar circumstances that made them out of step with their ages, Annie having to grow up sooner and Jeff having mentally rewound or, in some ways, having been an arrested adolescent for years.
It is no longer my favourite thing because it's become very obvious today that the Jeff/Annie pseudoromance is a fictionalized version of the male showrunner's romantic obsession with a female staff member who was 12 years younger than him and who was in a position of subservience to him.
It's obvious to me that the Jeff/Annie relationship is how the showrunner imagined his fixation on this staff writer while the reality is that the showrunner harassed his staffer, showering her in unwelcome attention, invading her personal space, contacting her outside of work hours, making sexual overtures while insisting that it was just work, verbally abusing her when she rejected his advances, verbally abusing her for the supposedly-poor quality of her work after she'd rejected his advances.
I find it difficult to watch the Jeff/Annie relationship in light of these revelations and I am deeply disappointed by the showrunner. I hope COMMUNITY fans get a great movie and I hope it's everything they want it to be, but... I am undecided right now on whether or not I would watch it.
I could imagine the showrunner doing a great job of mining that in a screenplay that is hypercritical of the Jeff/Annie relationship and reveals it as a facade for the depravity that it concealed... but I'm not sure I would want that either because Jeff Winger took on a life of his own that was connected but separate from the series-creator once Joel McHale embodied the character and it would be a mistake to conflate the character with the writer.
And I'm not saying the showrunner should never work again; he confessed and apologized and his victim forgave him. I'm just saying that on an individual level, I am not sure I would (personally) revisit the Jeff/Annie relationship at this point by watching a COMMUNITY movie.
Others may wish to and I hope they will find it rewarding. Anyway. I wouldn't post these thoughts on a COMMUNITY fan forum. I'm happy for people who want a COMMUNITY movie; every revival means a chance that SLIDERS could be revived too.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
Jeff, Annie, Britta, Abed, Chang and the Dean are locked to return as their actors are in.
Yvette Nicole Brown has neither confirmed nor denied that Shirley will return but has expressed great enthusiasm for the movie. No word on whether Troy be back as Donald Glover is quite busy.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
They need to get John Oliver back - his star has exploded since the show started, and I think he could be great in a smaller role.
I think Donald Glover and Yvette Nicole Brown need to be in it. I understand that Glover is busy (so busy that he sometimes doesn't even appear on Atlanta, his own show). But work around his schedule, pay him whatever he needs to be paid, and film something. The show is meta enough that they can make it work with whatever amount of time Glover can spare. Shoehorn him in - make him the post-credits sequence, whatever. He made it to the table read and he seemed to have a great time so I think he'd make something work.
Same with Yvette Nicole Brown. I don't know if there's another reason she didn't sign on, but she needs to appear to. I'm almost of a mind that Chevy Chase needs to return (just so it's complete), but I know that will never happen.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
Last I heard, Yvette Nicole Brown's mother died and her father has dementia and she takes care of him. Presumably, the money and residuals from her previous acting work lets her devote her all her time to her dad. I imagine she needs to ensure she'd be spending all the time she needs to with her father first and that the COMMUNITY movie would be a ninth or tenth place priority.
My understanding is that Chevy Chase is contractually banned from ever returning to the set of any COMMUNITY production past, present or future. But even then, the showrunner was able to film a cameo with him in Season 5 by renting a separate studio and filming Chase against a bluescreen to be added into a hologram image later.
My grasp of movie production is that since movies (and mini-serieses) are filmed over extended periods instead of a week for a TV episode, they can often film with in-demand actors for isolated scenes even if they're not immediately available at the start. This happened with GILMORE GIRLS (Melissa McCarthy, Jared Padelecki) , X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (James Marsden, Famke Janssen, Kelsey Grammer, Elliott Page).
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
I didn't know that about Brown (very sad) or Chase (very funny). But I'd love to see them both return. While Chevy was a bit of a weird fit at times, he was certainly a great foil. The times that the show let him be a straight-up villain (like in the dungeons and dragons episode) were great. And one of my favorite scenes (Pierce at the broken ice cream machine) is just Chevy by himself.
Re: Community: Welcome to Greendale, you're already accepted!
Chase is a talented performer. Another anecdote recently came to light, however: as we know, Chase was thrown off COMMUNITY in Season 4 for a racist incident. Paradoxically, Chase was protesting the racism of the scene where Pierce was using the offensive Mexican hand puppets. It's now been revealed: Chase started shouting that he was sick of Pierce's defining trait being racism and then howled, "Is he going to call her a 'N-----' next?" while gesturing at Yvette Nicole Brown.
Brown quietly turned away and walked towards the exit and informed a producer, "I am not coming back until that man is off the show."
A few hours later, security escorted Chase from the set. It was his last day filming with the entire cast. It clearly wasn't the first time he'd treated Brown like a prop defined by skin colour. It takes a rare talent to be opposing racism with a protest that is racist in itself.
He made a few appearances after that to wrap up his role which staff writer Andy Bobrow said was very difficult because (due to the unstated need to keep Chase away from Brown in the shooting schedule), they often didn't know if they would have Chase for a day or an hour and would often receive little to no notice as to his now restricted availability.
Eventually, Chase was released from the show and, as Brown demanded, had to sign a contract where he was banned from ever setting foot on a COMMUNITY soundstage again. I think it's safe to say that if Brown is in, Chase is out (or will have to do another bluescreen cameo).
"I am not coming back until that man is off the show." I can just hear Brown saying that in her real voice (as opposed to her Shirley voice). A voice of calm, firm, resolute determination.