still watching Community

[kindkit]

I've now finished series 2. (My hours have been cut at work, so I'm spending a lot of time at home with no money to do anything. This makes it possible to get through a lot of 20-minute sitcom episodes every day.)



I've mostly adjusted to Jeff, who has improved a bit and whose schtick now is "talks like a douche, mostly acts like a decent human being." I'd probably be more annoyed by him if it weren't for Pierce, who spends most of S2 being evil, OMG EVIL. I'm hoping he really is gone. (Don't spoil me please.) I know comedies need antagonists, but I'd much rather have the antagonist characters who, though awful in their own special ways, aren't actually cruel mind-gaming 100% racist sexist and homophobic assholes. I love the Dean, I love Professor Duncan, I'm weirdly fond of Ben Chang, but I'd be glad to see last of Pierce. (ETA: Crap. I was just checking something on Wikipedia and got spoiled for the fact that he'll be back next season.)

S2 is less typically sitcom-y than S1 and has some great episodes (the space simulator, the zombies, Troy's 21st birthday at the bar, the Christmas ep, the Dungeons and Dragons ep, Abed's birthday where he has dinner with Jeff). I liked the idea behind the "clip episode" of references to things we'd never seen, but it didn't quite gel for me, and neither S2 paintball episode approached the brilliance of the first one in S1.

It's nice to see Abed, Troy, and Annie get more time. Britta is a potentially great character being wasted by writers who don't know what to do with her.

The show keeps freaking me out with episodes that make me want to ship Abed with Jeff. Like the above-mentioned dinner one (I know there were more but the details are blurring). Abed/Troy makes sense--they really love each other. Abed as asexual would also make sense, though the show keeps unconvincingly trying to sell his heterosexuality. Abed/Jeff does not make sense, and yet despite myself, I keep seeing chemistry.

Speaking of pairings: I love the Dean, but it must be admitted that he's kind of a joke/villain character, and since he's the only queer character on the show so far, this bugs me. The show is pretty good (not perfect, but pretty good) at giving personalities and agency and story time to characters who aren't male and/or aren't white. Not so good at characters who aren't straight.

I'm curious about S3 (which I'll start watching tomorrow) since people say it's the best season and quite different from the first two.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

Yeah, Pierce really irritates me in exactly the way I thought Jeff would. That said, I didn't find him as bad in most of season 3. And I would love to see more queerness in the show, though I do like that Abed and Troy don't care if people think they're a couple.

[kindkit]

*nods* I also have liked how, when Pierce is saying in his homophobic, insulting way that Jeff is gay or Britta is a lesbian, they don't react homophobically by getting offended.

[vilakins]

I loathe Pierce too, even more than early Jeff. He doesn't appear much later on and I think I heard he'll be gone in new eps. Please be so.

I totally agree about the paintball eps: the first was sheer brilliance that I had to watch twice; the other two just weren't up to it. In fact I agree with just about everything you said. I'm glad you hung in there for the good stuff.

[kindkit]

Glad he's around less later. It already feels like the show has backed itself into a corner, in the sense that if they want to have an episode without someone doing anything really really horrible, they have to keep Pierce out of the way. The episode where Shirley has her baby is an example: Pierce gets the side plot of Indecent Proposal-ing away Abed and Troy's handshake, but he's mysteriously uninterested in the huge opportunities for inflicting emotional pain that Shirley's situation offers.

[hannah]

What really bothers me about Pierce is that there's the occasional hint of dimension and depth, as demonstrated at the end of the second season. And they never do anything with that. If he was a one-note cartoon of a character, I still wouldn't like him, and I'd be able to compartmentalize him and push him away. If they explored that depth and let him grow along with everyone else, I'd be happy. They didn't do either.

[kindkit]

Good point. And Pierce is so manipulative that I'm also unsure if I'm supposed to believe the moments of depth when they happen.