Stasi Comedy

So I found another watchable television comedy, Workaholics, and of course, a reviewer has to piss all over it.

Enter Steve Heisler, the newest agent from the Stasi Bureau of Meaningful, Purposeful, Decidedly Unfunny Television.

In his first two reviews Agent Heisler flashes his T.V. reviewing credentials by name-dropping other shows he’s seen, like The League, Important Things With Demetri Martin, Michael And Michael Have Issues, and The Life And Times Of Tim. You know what these shows have in common? Your readers aren’t watching them. Waving around your breadth of television knowledge, Agent Heisler, doesn’t do anything for your credibility as someone who knows which end is up when it comes to comedy. If anything, it makes you an even less reliable source.

But after the pilot, Agent Heisler, you saw some promise in the show.

Workaholics is, surprisingly, a lot more charming than it's made out to be, and it contains a few welcome twists on the familiar. It's a comedy that knows its limits and strengths and tries its best to play to them.

I don’t normally look for charming or for “welcome twists on the familiar” in my comedy unless I’m watching a Lawrence Welk variety show, but fine, you liked it, I’ll take it. Or did you?

No matter what I say, though, I can't shake the feeling that Comedy Central is going to cancel this anyway.

Is this how you communicate to the higher-ups, Agent Heisler? “Wink, wink, network execs, it’s kind of an okay show, but let me start a discourse about cancellation that you can step right into when you feel ready?”

I chatted with Michael Schur from Parks & Rec last week, and he told me that comedies typically take a long time to build momentum, especially character-based ones.

Well good for you. Last week Oprah braided my hair.

Until you know who these people are, the jokes simply aren't going to hit as hard. …I'm not saying Workaholics is the greatest, most promising comedy to come through, or that the network will definitely be canceling it.

No, you’re not saying that the network will definitely be cancelling it, but in a review of the pilot of a show, you end by wielding a sickle. Way to redeem TV criticism for writers like Schur.

Let’s see what you have to say after the first season.

Workaholics is now an aimless show about troublemakers who make bad decisions just because they can, and their exploits—fueled by an endless stream of pot and booze—are kind of pathetic, like when that 40-year-old dude shows up at the frat house during alumni week, hoping to score with some freshmen.

Holy shit Agent Heisler, you smacked that sickle down! Also, you just described a show I really want to watch. Troublemakers, bad decisions, “an endless stream of pot and booze”? Sign me up! And I don’t know about you, but when a 40-year-old dude showed up at our sorority house during alumni week it was fucking hilarious, but maybe that’s a girl thing.

The central problem with Workaholics is that its characters, even after an entire season, are entirely disposable.

Yup, yup, there we go, a clear transgression of Stasi code 118.37, the characters we don’t cherish. I want to wub my chawacters and snuggle up wif dem!

They’re all essentially playing the same character, so there’s no little comedic game they can play amongst themselves that might even make them feel more like well-rounded people. The focus of the episode, instead, is the game they’re playing with the rest of the world—one three-headed dumb dude vs. The Man, for no particular reason.

God you would have really hated Waiting for Godot. I can barely tell those two apart! They’re just sitting there on stage, struggling against some undefined “Godot” guy. It’s like the fact that the two of them aren’t “well-rounded people” keeps the focus on this inexplicable force they’re opposing! What crap. How absurd.

But what really gets Agent Heisler, I can tell, is the violation of Stasi TV code #1: The Doing of Things For No Particular Reason. What does it all mean?! Why are these insane adolescent douchebags always fucking with everyone around them? Why can’t we all just get along, for Chrissake?

Because that wouldn’t be funny, that’s why. Nor would it be absurd. Or interesting, at all. I know I’m pushing a new, crazy idea on you, Agent Heisler and your Stasi comrades, but pure mayhem—like I don’t know, “an endless stream of pot and booze”—can be really funny when it’s done well. Admittedly, this concept only goes back to the Greek satyr play, but I get it, that’s still pretty green at 2600 years old. Wouldn’t want to spring things on you too fast, Steve, what with all the new episodes of post-Steve Carrell The Office you have to study up on for your credential to determine what qualifies as funny.

But the guys aren’t speaking from any specific perspective other than, “Work sucks and getting stoned is the best,” so the conversations don’t go anywhere. There’s little reason to continue with Workaholics; the show refuses to dig into its premise beyond surface level, and given the plethora of comedy options on TV today, it’s not worth sticking around.

Ugh, yes, that code of Stasi codes Agent Heisler begrudgingly has to enforce, the show that doesn’t “go anywhere.” It just exists, opposing the man for no particular reason, relishing absurdity and inebriation, and skimming the surface of absolutely everything in order to bring it all together into one joyously comic revel. There’s just a “plethora” of comedy options doing anything that smart or absurd or transgressive anywhere on TV right now. Thanks for being part of the reason why, Agent Heisler.

The Danger of Words with More than One Meaning

I'm back! (That sheepshearing took a lot longer than I thought).  And guess what?  Neil Genzlinger is back too!

Remember Neil?  He’s the guy who writes the same terrible article over and over again for the Times.  Here’s his formula: Take a meaningless “development” on television, like bad mothers, or using the word “really?” too much in comedies, and write a piece bemoaning how that “development” foreshadows the end of civilization.  Write the article in a vaguely tongue-in-cheek manner in an attempt to avoid criticism for making such an asinine “point.”  And then go on and on and on and on (1155 words for this latest beaut).

I’m not the only one to take offense.  No, the one and only Tell Funnier Jokes hero Jerry Seinfeld has written in to complain, and not so surprisingly he really nails it.  I particular like his criticism of the “wrap your head around it” phrase Neil uses.  Here’s Neil’s immortal line:

Back when Einstein first announced that energy equals mass times the speed of light squared, the “Reallys?” that resulted were saying: “I am astounded by your discovery, so much so that I can scarcely wrap my head around it. You, sir, are a genius.”

Yup, Neil, nothing works better in an article that tries to skewer a cliché than using a particularly egregious one yourself!

Seinfeld kinda took care of this one (“your column was so deeply vacuous that I couldn’t help but feel that you have stepped into my area of expertise”), but there’s just so much that’s terrible here I couldn’t help but single out a couple of other particularly stupid moments.

So Neil’s premise, if you can call it that, is that TV shows use the phrase “Really?” too much.  “Really?” in a mocking, condescending manner.  Like—“so the Times sought fit to devote one thousand one hundred and fifty-five words to this article.  Really?”

In example number infinity, Neil criticizes Veep’s use of “Really?”:

John C. Calhoun and who knows how many other oratorically inclined former vice presidents turned over in their graves.

So for your example of great vice presidents of the past, you chose notorious slavery defender John. C. Calhoun?  Really, Neil?  Even Spiro Agnew might have been preferable.

But then things get real.  Real stupid.

“Really?” was once an expression of wonderment that also acknowledged a gap in the user’s knowledge. 

Ah yes, the halcyon days when boys were boys and “really” was “really.”

The word also spent time as an interjection, an expression of dismay. “Really!,” a stuffy aristocrat might have said when she saw young people jitterbugging. I’m no etymologist; I don’t know when that exclamation point became a question mark and was wrapped in sarcasm. But “Really?” wasn’t the first to undergo the transformation from innocuous to malicious.

First off, the difference between “Really!” and “Really?” is barely anything—they both express contempt or disapprobation.  But I know, Neil, you’re not an etymologist.  Far be it for you to actually find the answer to that question you pose.  That would take you far too much time, I’m sure, and you’re clearly pressed for time having written an endless ass piece.  You know how long it took me to find the answer to that question? THREE MINUTES.  You don’t have access to the Oxford English Dictionary at the Times.  Really? 

And guess what, when you look shit up in the OED you find out some interesting stuff.  Did you know that Neil Genzlinger is included in it?  It’s true!  I’ll give you the entry:

Neil Genzlinger. n.  A known idiot who writes for The New York Times.

You know what else I found out?  (Again, three minutes this took me).  You know when the first recorded reference of “really” meaning “Interrogatively, expressing surprise or doubt” took place: 1753.  In everyone’s favorite novel, Sir Charles Grandison (almost as long as one of Neil Genzlinger’s articles!).  That was the closest definition to Neil’s “expression of wonderment that also acknowledged a gap in the user’s knowledge.”

But what about this newfound sarcasm, this “Really?” that’s destroying the foundations of American society?  How about “expressing asseveration, protest, or dismay”—that sounds like what you’re criticizing, right?  First use of that meaning? 1604.  So the sarcastic “Really” predates the earnest one, despite Neil’s lament of when the exclamation changed to the sarcastic question.  In other words, Neil Genzlinger is an idiot.  You couldn’t have looked this shit up?  Again, three fucking minutes!

Also, you know where that first reference to “Really” expressing “asseveration, protest, or dismay” showed up?  Motherfucking Hamlet, bitches!  Neil Genzlinger just said that Shakespeare was a hack.  Oh no he d-in’t (I hope you felt that glottal stop there.  It was an angry glottal stop). 

And it gets worse:

This linguistic co-opting cannot go on. For one thing, having words with more than one meaning is dangerous — who among us hasn’t been slugged after offering a pre-“Jessie” “excuse me” that was interpreted as an age-of-sarcasm “excuse me”? For another thing, there are only so many words in the language. Soon the only emotion we’ll have words to express is disdain.

Personally, I have not been slugged because of a linguistic misunderstanding.  But then again, I tend not to provoke as strong feelings of anger as Mr. Genzlinger’s articles clearly do in me. 

But let’s back up a second.  Because the above paragraph contained by far the stupidest sentence I have ever had the misfortune to quote on this blog.  Can you guess which one?  That’s right:

For one thing, having words with more than one meaning is dangerous.

Really?!  I can’t stress this enough: that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.  Let’s just take one random word: hip.  So confusing!  I went in to get an operation to help me with some problems I was having walking and when I came to they had implanted a chip in my brain that just played Arcade Fire and Twin Shadow.  So embarrassing!  And so dangerous! 

Let’s try another!  Fuck--kind of a lot of different meanings to that word. And what about radical?  They’re coming to deport me, cause they think I’m a radical trying to undermine the government, when all I was doing was talking about square roots with my friend. 

You know how many meanings of the word “form” there are?  Thirty-two.  (and that’s just the noun form).  Most of the time we know what other people mean.  But Neil may just be a little slow. 

Also, by the way, it depends on the estimate, but there are a lot of words in the English language.  171,476 entries in the OED, and by recent estimates 1,013,913 individual words.  I think we’ll be able to express things other than disdain.  When it comes to discussions of Neil Genzlinger’s articles, though, maybe not.

File Under Unnecessary

It’s a return engagement with our favorite presumed WASP, Hampton “Fuff” Stevens!  And I don’t even have to feel guilty about mocking him, since, at least judging from this article, he’s kind of a misogynist douchebag.  Way to go, Hamptons!  What model of cogent argumentation can you provide us with today?

Last night, though, for the second time in its six seasons, 30 Rock was broadcast live from its namesake building, 30 Rockefeller Center. [. . . ] If the writing was typically sharp, the targets of the humor were a tad familiar. A spoof of The Honeymooners lampooned the sexism in 1950s sitcoms. A send-up of NBC's Nightly News in the 1960s mocked the sexism in broadcast journalism. 

Because there are so many shows that lampoon the sexism on television.  I get overwhelmed trying to keep track of the hundreds of shows created by women currently on TV.  Of course those shows never cause sexist reactions, right?

Also, remind me: were those spoofs funny?  Yes, yes they were.  As Hampton says, the “writing was typically sharp.”  But how quickly I forget—as delineated in Section 1, paragraph 4, line 5 of the dumbass TV reviewer handbook, praising a show for being funny or smart is only a prelude to criticism. And laughter and intelligence are certainly unimportant qualities to Hampton Stevens III, Esq.  

But the larger problem—one that made this episode such an admirable failure—was another quality typical of 30 Rock—the lack of depth in the characters or a believable story. 

Lack of depth.  Believable story.  Oh, for fuck’s sake.  I want my characters as deep as the Mariana trench.  I want a major life revelation every five minutes.  And from now on every episode of 30 Rock is going to be a Dardennes Brothers film about the Belgian working class.  Sure, it won’t be funny, and the pace will be glacially slow, but it’ll be believable as hell. 

For all the sharp writing, beloved stars, and technical accomplishment, Fey and company didn't make much of a case for live TV. In fact, 30 Rock Live perfectly illustrated why the tagline "shot live before a studio audience" has gone the way of rotary dial—and it isn't money.

Wait, what?  It makes my head hurt trying to follow your “logic.”  I thought you were talking about your idiotic reasons for not liking 30 Rock, even though it’s really fucking funny.  But no, you’re talking about why it didn’t make a case for live TV.  You realize that making a case for live TV and making a funny fucking comedy have nothing to do with each other, right?  Any show could be done live, and many have done stunt live shows.  So the “case for live TV” is totally separate from your feelings about 30 Rock.  Anybody home? Hello? 

You also realize that “shot live before a studio audience” is not the same as actually being live, like this particular episode? Cheers, Seinfeld, The Tonight Show—all “shot before a live studio audience” (you can’t even get the phrase right!), but not broadcast live.  That may sound obvious, but I’ve learned not to take anything for granted when it comes to Hampton.

The episode quite naturally was clunkier than 30 Rock's usual well-lit, well-edited, and nicely scored world. That's a realm where actors are free to retake scenes a dozen times until they get exactly the desired effect. Sure, the live format is exciting. But the tension and energy isn't worth the trade-off in staginess. The format's rushed pace, along with the applause and laughter from a live crowd don't give the actors very much room to be subtle. Then again, most members of the cast aren't actors. Fey, McBreyer, and Tracy Morgan came out of sketch and improv comedy.

Yeah, that’s all true.  The live format doesn’t play to 30 Rock’s strengths, which was a big problem for the first live show.  But on this second attempt, they seemed to realize the limitations, and so made it more of a sketch show—a really fucking funny sketch show.  Again, it’s not like 30 Rock is in danger of doing all its shows live.  There are 124 episodes of 30 Rock.  Two are live. I know you’re worried about that growing 1.6% of live shows here, but I think we’re all pretty safe.  Not really sure what you’re arguing here, Hampton (can I call you Ham? Hambone? Just checking). 

Fey, brilliant though she may be, has always seemed more interested in skewering the sitcom than in making one and has never seemed able to commit to characters as real human beings.

Whoa, hold it there, Hambone.  Again, this has nothing to do with the question of live TV.  Do you really think these ideas are related? 

Newsflash—Immabout to blow your mind.  Did you know that Liz Lemon doesn’t have a social security number?  Neither do the characters of Modern Family.  It’s almost like they’re not “real human beings.”  They’ve been pulling the wool over our eyes all this time!  Now I understand—wow, I’ve really wasted my time hanging around 30 Rockefeller Plaza hoping to catch a glimpse of those “real human beings” Jenna Maroney and Tracy Jordan.  I met this guy named Tracy Morgan once, and he really did look a lot like Tracy Jordan, but he seemed kind of smarter, so I guess they weren’t the same person.  I really hope that Tracy Jordan pulls his shit together, though.  He’s really, really funny, but I’m more concerned for his health as a “real human being.”  Think of his children! 

And Hambone, I’m glad that you have pledged yourself to defending the honor of the sitcom against the likes of those who seek to skewer it.  Hold that shield high, Mr. Stevens!  No joke is too clichéd that it should not be defended against those who seek to stain the mantel of that most sacred of institutions, the situation comedy! 

Fey is too self-aware—and too much of an improv comic—which is why 30 Rock can never go two minutes without a character saying something wildly incongruous, or self-conscious, or otherwise breaking the fourth wall and reminding viewers that they are, in fact, watching a TV show.

It can’t even go two minutes without being really fucking funny!  What’s the deal with that, Tina Fey?  Can’t you slow it the fuck down?  It’s hard for a Hampton to keep up with the pace of jokes. It’s kind of vertiginous for him to realize that dude, he’s like watching a TV show, man.  Hampton keeps putting his hand up to the TV screen and trying to give a big bro high five to Tracy Jordan, and it’s disorienting to realize that he’s just a pattern of LEDs. 

God, breaking the fourth wall!  Reminding readers they’re watching TV!  30 Rock—too avant-garde for the tastes of Hampton Stevens.  The ideal sitcom: a comforting bowl of cream of wheat.  Preferably served on a yacht. Don’t challenge me with your jokes, Tina!

I lie awake at night out here in Fort Wayne plucking flies out of my beard wondering where Bertolt Brecht is when you need him.  He may be a small man (and a dead one), but I’m sure he’d be able to kick Hampton’s ass. 

The thing is, viewers of scripted TV shows usually don't want to be reminded they are watching an illusion. Usually people want to lose themselves in the character's lives. That's hard to do when, as on 30 Rock, the audience is always being reminded otherwise.

Hampton Stevens—the new Don Quixote. When you find him wandering the halls of 30 Rock dressed up in a page uniform, you’ll first want to call security, but now you’ll at least understand why.  He’s … not very smart.

As is typical of this kind of argument, Hampton the Yachtist doesn’t seem to realize the difference between comedy and not-comedy.  To him, it’s all “scripted TV shows.”  Um, Hampton.  Comedy works differently.  It’s about whether or not it’s FUNNY.  That’s kind of the point. 

This live episode was a stunt—and a very smart one, beautifully executed by extremely talented people.

Again, this is meant as a criticism?  

The episode was fun—for nostalgia's sake and daredeviltry of it.

Daredeviltry. Nice. Your mother teach you that one?

But the attempt mostly served to illustrate why sitcoms aren't shot live anymore—not even "live on tape" in front of a studio audience. All that laughter and applause seems stiff to an audience increasingly demanding shows with a look and feel closer to real life. Don't expect a widespread return to live comedy, like Uncle Miltie's day is coming soon. Modern Family, say, seems unlikely to follow suit.

Holy shit, this just reached a new level of ineptitude.  This is gonna take a while.  Hold on there.

First off, we’re back to “why sitcoms aren’t shot live”?  You realize your asinine criticisms of 30 Rock have nothing to do with that issue, right? 

Secondly, the “Straw We,” Hampton Gladwell. We don’t expect a widespread return to live comedy.  No one does.  We’re talking about one experimental episode of 30 Rock.  There aren’t live dramas or sitcoms anymore.  There haven’t really been since the early 1950s.  No one’s saying there should be.  Next week I’m going to write an article about how we shouldn’t expect a return to Betamax tapes.  And after that, my ground-breaking report on why we shouldn’t be crossing our fingers for the return of army cavalry regiments: spoiler alert, they don’t stand up well to IEDs. Or you know, guns.     

Thirdly, “all that laughter and applause seems stiff to an audience increasingly demanding shows with a look and feel closer to real life.”  I assume by “look and feel closer to real life” you mean single-camera, non-laugh-track shows like Modern Family.  And, I might add, 30 Rock, in every other episode.  Seems that I remember that the two highest rated comedies are Two and Half Men and The Big Bang Theory.  Yeah, they’re not live (cause nothing’s live).  But they are multi camera, laugh track comedies, so they kind of resemble the genre of live TV.  Yet somehow, they’re really fucking popular (who knows why).  Um, maybe shows that “look and feel closer to real life” aren’t as in demand as laugh-track ones.  One thing’s for sure.  You have nothing to say. 

People will always watch sports live. Nobody wants to see a Super Bowl three days after the fact. People will watch reality TV result shows. With narrative, scripted television, though, there's simply not that much value to immediacy and topicality, or the electricity of a live broadcast. With scripted shows, the character and story are what matters most. Case in point: The Andy Griffith Show is still in reruns 40 years after it first aired.

Wow, Andy Griffith is resilient.  So are a lot of old sitcoms.  Is that because they were on tape?  No.  It’s because they hold up.  It has nothing to do with how they were filmed.  You know why we don’t watch live sitcoms anymore?  It’s not some groundbreaking statement about the condition of our culture.  It’s just because, for the most part, they weren’t preserved, or they were only preserved on low quality kinescopes.  It’s not some inherent issue with the “liveness” of the format.  It has to do with how successful the sitcom is.  Ever watched Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows? It’s brilliant, but unfortunately the image quality is pretty bad, and a lot of episodes have been lost.  But now we have DVDs, so thirty years from now, we’ll still be watching 30 Rock, and you know why?  Because it’s really fucking funny. 

The Moron Melange

Guess what?  It’s not just Todd VanDerWerff who’s the problem (although he’s the worst—the absolute worst.  I still can’t get over him stealing my goat).  Prepare yourself as we go around the internet (and print media)!  Shit’s about to get asinine.  

First stop on the tour d’idiocy: The Washington Post’s Hank Stuever, finally coming around to Community, after two and a half seasons.  

My mistake had been judging “Community” through an outmoded format — the half-hour story arc — and not by the tiny sketches sliced and diced from it, zipping past us in nanoseconds. In extracted form, online, “Community” can be whatever you want it to be. It can speak to a new era of satire, but it also doesn’t have to mean anything at all.

Sir, you are an idiot.  Apparently you believe that Community is an internet salad, involving a whole lot of slicing and dicing.  Also, nanoseconds: those are kind of short.  I don’t think you’d be able to follow the show if it were really that “sliced and diced.”  

But wait, it’s not just your writing style that’s terrible: it’s your ideas too!  Don’t you get it—it’s precisely in the realm of the “half-hour story arc” that Community is so ground-breaking and successful.  It transforms that traditional “story arc” into a Law and Order episode or an action film, etc, etc.  It you’re just watching it for the “nanoseconds,” you’re really missing the point. 

And yeah, of course it doesn’t “mean anything.”  Haven’t we established that already?

Mostly it’s a way in which members of a vast, savvy tribe recognize and salute one another.

This discourse particularly bothers me.  It’s not some endless self congratulatory in-joke.  It’s a really fucking funny show.  If you want to characterize this “vast, savvy tribe,” why don’t you just call them by what they are: smart people.  

Moving on . . . . How about the far more VanDerWerffian musings of Huffington Post exploited laborer Maureen Ryan:

 

What my favorite episodes of "Community" do is tie the big conceptual conceits to the characters' relationships and, dare I say it, their emotional journeys (though I fear Jeff Winger is going to appear and mock me for writing that phrase). 

He is.  And that man knows how to mock.  See, the VanDerWerff influence is making itself known—it must be stopped!  “Journey”—that dreaded, comedy-draining phrase.  But what I find particularly bizarre here is the conflation of emotion and journeys.  I have no problem with emotions in sitcoms (well, I kind of do, cause I’m a dick—but admittedly there are legitimately funny sitcoms that carve out a place for genuine human emotion).  But “journeys”?  That’s bullshit, Mo.  Every one of Jeff Winger’s big emotional speeches are exactly the same: “We need to be better people, we need to stick together.”  That’s the show at its most static.  It’s emotion, but it’s most definitely not a journey.  You want growth, you want journeys?  Stick to the comedy.  That’s where the show is ceaselessly re-inventing itself, growing and changing.  And besides, Winger is funnier when he’s mocking people like you.  

Everything that happened built on the show's perennial themes of loyalty; the search for, yes, self-actualization; and the ways in which the group tries to stick together and stick up for each other, despite their personal flaws and some challenging circumstances, including their exile from Greendale. 

Personally, I like my perennial themes made up of daffodils and rosebuds on wallpaper borders, not on my television.  And really--self-actualization? Mo, you don’t only want a therapy session; you want a particularly banal therapy session. Next up: Abed’s purpose-driven life. Chang’s five languages of love.   

"Community" is at its best when it ties pitch-perfect concepts to themes that touch on how hard it is to get perspective on your life or to reach some kind of cockamamie maturity, and you know a show is on its A-game when it can use a videogame, an undercover mission and a courtroom parody to do all that.

Writing tip number two: Don’t use the word “cockamamie.”  Unless you’re writing a Leave it to Beaver parody.  (And by all means, go ahead and do so: that’s what our culture is missing these days).  

Wait—she’s not done with her floral themes!  Here’s another article by Maureen. When you’re writing content for free, might as well write twice as much!  

When an episode's meta-commentary aspects are intrusive and/or the show continually points out its homage elements, I tend to lose interest, whether it's a high-concept episode or not. 

So you’re saying, if a show makes you actually have to think, that hurts a wittew bit in your bwainy pawts. Awww. Take some fucking Advil. 

For me, there has to be something at stake for the characters, and I have to be on board with at least a few characters' goals for me to get fully invested in an episode of the show. 

Pausing just to add: the moment people start invoking financial metaphors like “investing,” you know they have absolutely nothing to say. 

When 'Community' is clinically dissecting something in pop culture and the characters don't seem at least a little bit three-dimensional, well, that's when the show tends to lose me.

Or in other words: when the show isn’t what the show is, then I like the show. Why don’t you spare yourself some headaches and watch another episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. 

Oh, they cancelled that!  What a national tragedy!  Who’s going to replace the shoddily-built houses of the nation’s poor with more shoddily built-houses and drive up their property tax rates now? 

But for the pièce de resistence, let’s turn to The Atlantic’s Hampton Stevens (some name!—WASP, anyone?  Do friends call you Duck?  Is your Aunt named Fuff?)   After yachting through a largely intelligent opening, Hampton hits the last few paragraphs like a coral reef and takes a belly flop into a swimming pool full of bullshit.  (Did I just mix a metaphor?—well, just preparing you for Hampton’s prose.)

In an age when even the simplest human interaction is colored by media-created expectations, when our flesh-and-blood romantic relationships are judged against the standards of TV and movie love affairs, Community asks if it's even still possible to make an authentic connection? Probably not. But we shouldn't quit trying.  Neither should Community. The danger, for people, and for this remarkable TV show, is in no longer trying to authentically connect. 

And if your meaning wasn’t bad enough, you had to wrap it up with a split infinitive. I’d expect better from a Hampton.

Also, who knew Dan Harmon was supposed to be the second coming of E.M. Forster?  “Only connect,” y’all.  Next season the Greendale students will be moving into a provincial mansion that may or may not be a microcosm for the declining British aristocracy.  

Yes, I just got highbrow. Continue, Fuff. 

Consider a very different kind of sitcom. How I Met Your Mother, nearing the end of a hugely successful run, hasn't been on the air for nearly a decade because it wittily critiques life in the mass media consumerist simulacrum. How I Met Your Mother thrives because audiences feel emotionally connected to the characters on it.

Guess what?  How I Met Your Mother:  not that good.  A traditional, solid, kind of boring sitcom.  By all means, let’s reduce Community to How I Met Your Mother.  You know what sitcom must foster an emotional connection to its characters?  Two and a Half Men.  I guess a lot of people feel a deep bond with fart-joke-making misogynists.  Why couldn’t Community be like that?  More fart jokes, more emotional connection.  I mean, I love a good fart joke—they keep me entertained in the cold Cedar Rapids nights.  And we definitely need fewer shows that critique “life in the mass media consumerist simulacrum.” They’re crowding up my DVR! I get that every week on The Amazing Race.  Also, just because you may have heard of Baudrillard doesn’t mean you should be throwing around the word “simulacrum,” particularly as you’ve clearly only read the first paragraph of his essay during commercials of HIMYM. (Or maybe you just watched The Matrix.)  

If Community forgets that, they're in trouble.

Grammar!  It’s fantastic!  Community, apparently, is a plural noun.  Copyeditors, apparently, are no longer employed, even by The Atlantic.

No matter how inventive they may be, if the sight gags, puns, one-liners, pop culture name-drops and media-on-media meta-critique overwhelm the relationships between characters, Community will take a one-way trip to Flash-in-the-pan-ville.

I’ve actually been to Flash-in-the-pan-ville, where I had a really satisfying dinner with the Buggles.  They were so much fun.  Fortunately, I had a round-trip ticket, so I was able to get back out, but boy, they do try to keep you there.  I had to fight off Vanilla Ice and the Baha Men. When I visited, though, I didn’t notice that any residents were characters from sitcoms that had been on for three seasons.  Seems like Community kind of made a detour past Flash-in-the-pan-ville and reached The City of Enduring Classics That Will Remain Watchable on DVD (that’s actually the place Christian tries to get to in my new movie treatment of Pilgrim’s Progress 3—look for it in a theater near you!).

Oof—that was an exhaustingly poor extended metaphor.

If the show, in a gargantuan irony, stops offering viewers a sense of community, all the innovation in the world won't keep us watching.

Holy shit Hamptons, you just blew my MIND! Dude, it’s not just about a community college, man, it’s like the whole idea of community, of togetherness and shit.  Man, you’re clearly appreciating this show on a whole deeper level than me! But I’m confused. We don’t want puns right? Puns are the devil’s playthings. Doogie would never pun.

How many times do I have to say it, Hamptons, Community is great because it’s different—it shouldn’t be the same, it shouldn’t be normal.  And I’m not the only one who thinks so.   Here’s someone who gets it, who agrees that Community shouldn’t be normal (and I’m not just saying that because I know her):

“Community” is not normal, and being not normal is what it does best. However well executed the more muted episodes are, the big, insane spectacles are what make “Community” so special.

Exactly.  And here’s Mike Hale, in the New York Times, demolishing Hampton’s attempt at argument:

The real danger for “Community,” from a critical standpoint, isn’t that it will go too far into fan-boy arcana but rather that it will overly indulge the sentimentality and neediness at its core — which, as in so many of our real lives, the endless chatter about movies and music and TV is designed to cover up.

Yes!  Yes!  Finally!  Someone who makes sense, who realizes what makes the show what it is.  Mayhem. Insanity. Satire. Too bad the VanDerWerfs, the purveyors of journeys and neediness and normality, have won, and Dan Harmon, the man responsible for all that was great in the show, has lost.