It's Started

As a huge fan of Arrested Development (who, aside from AV Club staffers, isn’t?), I’m obviously very excited about the return of the show.  95 percent of that excitement is based on the opportunity to see new, hopefully hilarious episodes.  The other 5 percent?  The chance to make fun of the myriad dumb-ass articles that Arrested Development’s return will inevitably produce. 

Wait, you say AD hasn’t premiered yet?  Don’t worry—the idiocy has gotten started early!  Take it away, AV Club, for a colloquy between Josh Modell (reasonable) and Erik Adams (the horror!). 

Even though The A.V. Club hasn’t taken the “Oh my God, of course it’s going to be the best thing ever!” tone, we’re still a little bit guilty of building up the hype machine to unreasonable proportions. On the other hand, it’s our job to report on the stuff that we’re excited about, and that our audience wants to know about. Erik, are we doing anything wrong by contributing to this hype?

This is the dumbest possible idea for an article.  Let’s examine why, by going through the possible answers for the question that Josh asks.

Option 1: No, we are not doing anything wrong by contributing to this hype. 

Great!  Hype it up!  It’s Arrested Development!  It’s awesome.  No need to waste space through useless agita.

Or, Option 2: Yes, we are doing something wrong by contributing to this hype.

Then don’t continue to do so by writing this article. 

Actually, both options have a certain something in common.  Let me summarize: Don’t write this fucking article.

But they do:  so, Erik Adams, what are your concerns about the upcoming season?

The seven years between new episodes essentially rendered Arrested Development into a brand new show,

Oh, a brand new show, is it?  That has the same title, cast, creator, writer, and narrator as the original?  Is this some Borgesian “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” thing where the new AD will entirely resemble the original in every respect but somehow be transformed by the passage of time and the varying intention of its new author?

and it ought to be treated as such, as something that may have to take its time to find its feet and locate its voice.

Do they give out talking points at the AV Club?  Whatever show any reviewer is talking about, gotta say that it’s “new” and that it needs to “locate its voice” like it’s a first year Fiction MFA student.  Because you realize this is verbatim what our good friend Todd said about this season of Community. 

Only problem?  This point makes even less sense when applied to AD.  Because you realize that this isn’t a traditional linear series, right, where one episode was filmed after another?  From what I’ve read, it sounds like the episodes were not made in sequence, and they’re not even necessarily supposed to be watched in sequence.  So it’s not going to “find its voice” after a couple of episodes, like Todd kept insisting Community would.  Don’t keep applying the same dumb-ass points when they don’t work with even the most basic material circumstances of the series.

Then again, you can supposedly watch the new episodes in any order you want, so maybe this is all moot.

Yeah, it is.  So don’t write it, then.  

Intention be damned, it’s difficult to refrain from adding to the mountain of hype because the prevailing conversation around the series has been nothing but hype for nearly a decade.

You seem not to fully understand the meaning of “hype.”  If by hype, you mean “deserved praise,” then yes, the last decade has been filled with hype for Arrested Development.

We’ve seen an echo of this in the heir to Arrested Development’s “much loved, little watched” throne: Community, which, in a bit of portent that means absolutely nothing, just wrapped its own divisive fourth season.

If by divisive, you mean abjectly terrible, then yes, this season was divisive.  I’m glad that you included that “bit of portent that means absolutely nothing.”  Totally essential. 

Also, I love Community, but Arrested Development is at least twice the show that Community is. 

But since there’s no middle ground when it comes to talking about Community, it was not enough to stick with the show during its awkward season-four adolescence:

Not a fucking adolescence!  No, no. You will not anthropomorphize a show. Now you’re saying even the shows themselves go on “journeys.”  NBC fired Dan Harmon, for fuck’s sake.  The fourth season of Community was more of a prolonged and pitiable death spiral. 

Community had to be “defended” or “saved,”

Let me explain something to you about your supposed “argument.”  Presumably you’re arguing that discourse about Community is polarized—people either want to defend it or attack it.  So the choice is, “defended” or “attacked.”  Not “saved.”  I have no fucking idea what that means.  Sounds kind of similar to “defended.” 

and that led to a lot of un-nuanced bickering beneath Todd VanDerWerff’s reviews and across the Internet at large. . . . There’s no such thing as “talking about Community”—you’re either contributing to the hype or trying to burn the thing down.

Well, if you’re looking for un-nuanced bickering across the internet, you’ve come to the right place.

Actually, you can talk specifically about what works and what doesn’t about Community.  You’re basically enforcing a bizarre hivemind on everyone, where if anyone disagrees with Todd they’re just trying to “burn the thing down.”  And it was Todd who was trying to “salt the ground” of Community.

It’s great to be connected to people through shared interests, but what happened to Arrested Development while it was away was something different, and something distinct to the Internet age: A complicated, death-defying high-wire act of a television show was distilled down to a few easily identifiable tricks (or “illusions,” in the sense that repeating the show’s punchlines gives off the illusion of creativity—something I’m certainly guilty of).

Yeah, cause really caring about a comedy and quoting lines from it to your friends is something distinct to “the Internet age.”  When were you fucking born, Erik? 1994?  Ever heard of the proverbial “water cooler,” where we’re all supposed to gather and swap our favorite lines of Seinfeld the day after?  I grew up before the Internet, and everyone was “repeating show’s punchlines.”  Ascribing things to the “Internet age” is the laziest crutch you can possibly lean on. 

It’s the GIF-ification of the sitcom, and the contributing factor to my greatest fear about the new episodes: That, rather than continuing and improving upon the derring-do of Original Flavor Arrested Development, the Netflix episodes will be one long parade of fan service, a constant pat on the back for remembering jokes the Internet wouldn’t let me forget.

Oh you did not just use the phrase “derring-do.” I don’t know whether that or “GIF-ification” makes me less able to keep down my goat’s milk.

Remember the “Abed-ization” of Community?  Neologisms don’t make you smart—just lazy. 

And “fan service” is an AV Club term that means nothing.  You act like any callbacks to previous jokes or previous episodes is just pandering.  Yet everyone at the AV Club is all gung-ho about serialized seasons and knitting episodes together over the season.  What gives?  It’s like you think humor is “fan service,” some lower level of evolution.

Even Josh Modell, your interlocutor, similarly disagrees, though in a more restrained, less profane manner:

I really can’t imagine it being all “fan service” jokes—I’m sure there will be plenty, but you have to keep in mind that that’s an inaccurate description anyway.

I have to disagree a bit that season four of Arrested Development should be treated as a new show, though.

After Josh’s reasonableness, how does Erik respond?  Well he starts by comparing the potential new season of Arrested Development to The Phantom Menace (!), (seriously, I can’t make this shit up) another anticipated return to a beloved pop culture phenomena.  His conclusion:

The dead and the canceled should remain that way, the logic goes, so that the rest of us can carry on—and maybe make or discover something great that isn’t predicated on a known quantity.

How does this follow?  Just cause the Phantom Menace sucked should we deny Arrested Development the chance at resurrection?  So what if it winds up being bad?  We can just go back and watch the original episodes, just like the original Star Wars movies.  What the fuck is so wrong about being excited? 

Seasick on the USS Emotion

I’ve been really busy with calf-birthing here on the outskirts of Kalamazoo, so I haven’t gotten around to posting my last few dispatches on the hydrology and soil composition of the upper Midwest.  So I’m dumping them all here, including a few scattered thoughts on Community and one particularly gifted re-capper of it.

Yup, Todd’s back, and what better place to start than the final episode of the series (or, actually, just the final episode of the season, since Community’s coming back, for better or worse).

What does Todd have to say about the conclusion to this utterly disappointing season, which Todd unaccountably if tepidly continues to defend?

“It was all a dream” is one of the cheapest conceits in all of fiction. Basically, it spends time creating an alternate world where a bunch of interesting stuff happens, then yanks out the basic idea of storytelling from beneath you. You can make this work by having the dream world say something satirically interesting (as in Lewis Carroll’s Alice books) or by having it offer psychological insight into the characters (as in many a TV dream episode)  . . . or by being upfront that this is all just a dream. But it’s still a risky trick because it takes one of the central tenets of storytelling—everything in this story matters to the characters and the audience—and throws it out the window. You might be freaked out by a dream or you might be put in a bad mood by one, but it’s unusual to have a dream significantly change your life. Dreams are for insight, not incident.

I once had a dream that a giant, five-horned goat spoke to me from out of a cloud of Cheetos and told me to devote my life to farming.  So I quit my job as a high-powered Wall Street attorney and moved out here to Des Moines.  How’s that for changing your life!

But I digress.  Let’s analyze the logic of the Werff.  First, make overly-sweeping statement.  Second, qualify that statement with enough counter-examples to refute your overly-sweeping statement.  Conclude by insisting on the accuracy of your first statement.  And you’re done!

So: dreams are the cheapest conceit in fiction.  Well, not in Alice in Wonderland, or many TV episodes (or The Wizard of Oz), but sure, what the hell, dreams suck.  The cheapest!  They are the Chevy Aveos of literature and film.

Let’s give this a try: Using voiceovers is the cheapest, laziest way of telling a story in film.  Sure, not when they’re used to create a doomed, fatalistic atmosphere, as in Sunset Boulevard and other noir; sure, not when they’re used in lieu of dialogue, as in Malick films; and not when they’re used to speed along the plot, as in Jules et Jim.  But when used ineffectively, voiceovers are cheap and lazy. 
Just like any other technique!

By the way, let me try to think of another episode of a TV show that tries to “offer psychological insight into” a character by getting into his/her dreams and fantasies.  Hmm—how about the Dreamatorium episode of Community?  Admittedly, not quite the same, as the action of the episode is signaled as fantasy from the beginning, but, come on, the word “Dream” is right there!  Boy, Werff must have hated that one!

Oh, right.  He gave it an A.  Well, it did have one thing in common with this year’s season finale.  It wasn’t funny at all. 

According to Werff, though, this episode was

easily the worst episode the show has ever produced and a really sour way to end a season that’s actually had its moments. Part of me wonders if this episode doesn’t prove that Community should be canceled, and possibly killed with fire,

Whoa there!  Where’s the vitriol coming from?  Next thing you’ll want to dismember the writers. 

Sure, this episode was bad.  But the whole season has been terrible.  This wasn’t even close to the worst episode of the season.  It’s like you’ve been storing up all this bile and venom over the course of a season that you bizarrely defended, and now it’s bursting out inappropriately.  Repression is a dangerous thing, Todd.

But let’s play a game.  Let’s try to turn Todd’s recap into something appropriate to a sitcom.  It’s like Mad Libs!  Let’s just sub in the phrase “being really funny” at key moments in the rest of this recap.  It’ll be so much better.

We’ll start with this choice sentence:

It’s an episode that all but exemplifies the season’s strained approach to fan service, filled with lots and lots and lots of moments that are just there because people liked them in the past, at all turns weirdly terrified of engaging with its central emotional territory: the graduation of Jeff Winger.

For “its central emotional territory: the graduation of Jeff Winger,” substitute “being really funny.”  Isn’t that better?

Let’s try it now:

See, this is apparently how Jeff has chosen to deal with his concern about graduation, with his wishes to not leave Greendale. Which would be fine if it told us anything about how the place had changed him were really funny.  Evil Jeff is a construct who’s nowhere near the snarky asshole that Jeff started the show as. He’s an artificial way to up the conflict, both here and in the third season finale.  The problem is that he’s a one-off joke character the series is trying to imbue with depth because the fans liked that once not really funny.  Indeed, the entire central portion of this episode—the bulk of its running time—is taken up with a constant barrage of things that worked once or twice but now feel like the show is just trying too hard. Paintball? A movie reference for the sake of a movie reference? Chang taking over the school? Fake Dean? It’s all way, way too much, and it does nothing to elucidate Jeff’s emotional conflict be really funny.

That’s so much better.  It’s not like everything Werff says is worthless.  Just most of it.

To be honest, the first five minutes and the last two or so are pretty okay. They’re not terrific, and they’re obviously strained by trying to cram an entire emotional journey into 13 episodes,

Oh, right.  Journeys.  Shiver me timbers, we’re sailing away!  On the good ship Emotions.

but there’s some good stuff in there, particularly when Annie reveals her graduation party surprise and as Troy keeps trying to downplay how he forgot to bring soda.

And the latter was the only funny part in the episode.  Thank God for Donald Glover’s line readings. 

Jeff tosses a die, and it gets stuck on its side. Evil Jeff crosses over, Terminator-style, in the Dean’s office. Abed gets sent to the darkest timeline by a warping paintball gun. I honestly can’t believe I’m typing some of this shit.

The episode was bad, no doubt.  But it this any more outlandish than earlier outlandish episodes?  The problem was that it wasn’t funny.

But seeing all of the Greendale irregulars hanging out at his ceremony and hearing him talk about how the group had made him a better person just made me realize how much of the episode’s initial conflict had been shunted off to the side in favor of the giant morass of dumbassery that took up the middle section.

So, in other words—fuck anything but journeys and growth and emotional conflicts and Jeff spouting banalities about how much he loves his classmates. 

Jeff has been changed by Greendale. He isn’t the dick lawyer he was before he met the study group, and there’s an interesting story to be told about that growth, a story the episode actually starts to tell before abandoning it in favor of the crazed dream sequence.

There are also, you know, jokes.  Those might be good to have too.  But I forgot, “growth” is what Community is about. It’s one great fungus!

Because let’s be honest: Jeff’s graduation is something that the show has been building toward all along. Did you feel satisfied with how it played out? Did you feel like bringing back all of the stuff that was in the episode for the umpteenth time serviced that story in any way, shape, or form?

I did not.  Why?  Because I didn’t laugh at all.

Jaime Weinman, a critic who teaches me new ways of looking at the medium every day, tweeted shortly after the episode that the real relationship of Community is to its own subtext and how that subtext gradually became the text of the show, thereby creating a more and more insular product.

Hold it right there.  As is typical of Twitter, it’s kind of unclear what your guru Jaime Weinman means by that.  But, by my reckoning, the subtext on a show like Community is all the stuff about growth and journeys and togetherness—when that stuff stays subtext, the show is better.  It can focus on what it’s especially good at: being funny.  But this season has pushed that hugging and learning into the foreground, and as a result the show sucks.

But man, does Todd not understand that.  Subtext becoming text makes the show “insular”?  Why would that be the case?  Is the show more insular now?  It just seems really bad. 

This episode is just the ultimate example of that. Here is a bunch of shit you loved before, and maybe you’ll love it again, because you’re a fan of this show, right? The existence of the show is more important than anything else!

Again, does that follow?  I think not.  Text/subtext—weren’t you talking about that?  How does that remotely relate? 

Well, I’ll say this: I was never somebody who watched this show for the crazy bullshit.

I hope by crazy bullshit you mean the emotional Winger-brings-it-all together moments.  But no.  You mean the funny stuff.

I was somebody who watched it for the emotional undercurrents, and this season, outside of a few isolated episodes, has all but killed those undercurrents dead.

Mixed metaphor alert!  Dead metaphor alert!

Emotional undercurrents.  What I watch a comedy for.

Maybe if you—like some of my critical colleagues—watched this for its endless parade of inventive ideas and for that only, you liked this a fair bit more than I did.

I know, I know.  Those unsophisticated critical colleagues of yours, so crass in their appreciation of an “endless parade of inventive ideas.” Cause that’s so common to see anywhere on television.  For you the finer caviar of “emotional undercurrents.”  Your palette is so refined, Todd.

this is no longer a show that’s capable of much beyond repeating elements it thinks the audience will like over and over again. It’s become a jukebox musical version of itself, endlessly spinning its greatest hits to a crowd that grows smaller and smaller until it finally disappears.

Dude, the venom!  Look—it’s true, the show is re-hashing itself.  But it’s not, as Todd has said in the past few weeks, because it’s giving the audience what it wants.  It decidedly is not giving the audience what it wants—which is a smart, funny show.

Let’s close on a good note, okay, Todd.

Even yesterday, I would have been sad at a cancellation, thanks to all of the good times I’ve had with this show over the years and even in this season. But not anymore. It might be time to be done. The earth, it has been salted.

The critic, he has been embarrassed.  By himself. 

But wait, Todd’s not done.  It actually gets worse. He still has to encapsulate his entire critical perspective in the comments to his recap.  He’s asked what his favorite episodes of Community are. 

The response:

Favorite episode: Either Advanced Dungeons & Dragons or Mixology.
Why?: They were about real fucking human beings.

I’m sorry, I just picked my bruised forehead off my desk. Let me wait for the stars to clear so I can see those real fucking human beings living inside my flatscreen.

Look, those episodes are funny.  Not the best, but funny.  But holy shit: when I started writing this wildly popular blog, it was precisely to oppose and mock statements like this.  Do I need to remind you again?

These are not real fucking human beings.  Maybe they behave like human beings.  Maybe they seem like human beings.  They are not real.  They are characters played by professional actors. 
Another season of Community is over.  Todd van Der Werff has learned nothing.  So much for his emotional journey. 

Sweet & Low

Wow, these last episodes of Community have been godawful.  I don’t look forward to watching any more.  It’s depressing.  But not as depressing as reading Todd Van Der Werff praising them.

When Bob Greenblatt was asked what he thought of season four of the show at TCA and said he thought it was the same show with a little more heart, I suspect he was talking about episodes like this one, that dangerously toe the line of being overly saccharine, but never step over it.

You love “heart,” Todd!  You love larger warmer wholes!  You love sugary sweetness!  In fact, my sources say that you’re highly placed within the Sweet & Low family.  No wonder you’re so into the “saccharine.”  No wonder you loved that terrible terrible episode.  Cause man, oh man, did it ever plunge into the saccharine. 

Also, the songs are great.

Wow.  I’m assuming this isn’t sarcastic.  But . . . man.  I’m speechless.  They were terrible.  Banal rhymes, clichéd sentiments—it’s one thing if they were also funny, but they didn’t even seem to be trying to be funny.  If you ever want to see just how far the show has declined, just compare this to the Christmas musical episode from last year.  Those were songs: funny, clever songs. 

What made “Felt Surrogacy” surprising to me was its sincerity.

Thank God!  That’s what I’m looking for in a comedy.  Earnestness and sincerity.  Hallelujah!  Maybe we can meet up later when I’m done shearing these sheep and study the Bible together.  I have a question about Ephesians.

It was really dedicated to the idea that these people had experienced something out in the woods that they could only express via puppet. And at the same time, it was dedicated to the tropes of its new chosen format, to making an episode that was a weird homage to The Muppet Show and assorted other afternoon kids’ shows of the past.

Ok—it’s kind of like a kids’ show.  But man, don’t insult The Muppet Show by comparing this to it.  The Muppet Show is extremely funny and goofy and also relentlessly ironic.  It’s not saccharine crap.   Have you ever even seen The Muppet Show?

This means the episode isn’t especially funny.

Oh, that’s why you like it so much!  Of course!   My mistake.

What makes that okay is that it’s not really intended to be.

Again, my bad.  Of course it’s fine for a sitcom to not try to be funny.  It’s not like the word “comedy” is in the name of the genre. 

At its core is a shared, fairly dark experience the group had, and more broadly speaking, the jokes are those that would be more appropriate for the aforementioned kids’ programs. The humor on The Muppet Show is funny to me, but it’s definitely broad, broad humor.

Please, please, have some of that broad, broad humor here.  Pigs in Space!  Please, anything.  Not the strained, cloying, unfunny mess Community has become.

Almost the first thing that happens in puppet world is that everybody sings the song about going on a balloon adventure. This is either going to strike you as twee as fuck, or it’s going to make you happy.

Man, do I hate twee.  Not to confuse it with tweed, though—I’ve got this whole Irish sheepherder thing going on, so I’m all into tweed. 

But the problem is not the twee.  It’s that the song is not funny.  You talk about Avenue Q later, but yeah, Avenue Q has puppets and songs.  But you know what else it has?  Humor.  The ability to make the audience laugh.  But these songs don’t even seem to be trying for that. 

I guess if I had to pin down what that voice was—and what made it distinct from the show of old—I would say it’s something roughly similar to, “These people really do care about each other (aw!).”

Exactly what I’m looking for in a comedy!  Shucks, them Greendale folks sure do stick together.  Ain’t they nice to each other. 

 Now, granted, that was present in Harmon’s Community as well, almost to a fault,

True—that’s always been the danger with Community.  That it would push the hugging and learning too hard and sacrifice the comedy.  You know, exactly what you were asking it to do. 

 but it seems to have been given greater emphasis and more focus here. It is less subtly handled, and while that's not my personal preference for how the show should be, I can see a version of the show that works that way, and I think it's on display here.

Let me explain to you a thing or two about the English language.  If you say that the show was sweet and saccharine “almost to a fault,” that means that if it’s more sweet and saccharine, then it is at fault.  Yet somehow you like it now?  Oh right, you’re the heir to the Sweet and Low fortune.  I forgot. 

There were episodes of old Community where whatever heart the episode had was buried so deeply that you really had to go excavating to find it.

Mixed metaphor alert!  Better get my pick and shovel before I do open heart surgery!  And don’t forget your scalpel when you go looking for Egyptian antiquities!

Heart—what I’m looking for in a sitcom.   Next week, Todd sings from “Damn Yankees”!

And, yes, that was fun for a lot of us, but it also wasn’t exactly conducive to a mass-audience TV show.

I know, you lack heart, you lack an audience.  It’s that simple.  Because all successful TV sitcoms have a whole lotta heart.  Let’s think if there’s a test-case.  Hmm.  How about Go On?  A terrible show, more “heart”y, and kind of like Community.  Wow—that must do really well!

Wait, what?  I’m looking at the ratings here, and it says that Go On did a 1.1.   Is that good?  (I’m just a simple goatherder).  What about Community.  Oh, that’s right.  1.2.

I don’t know if “Felt Surrogacy” suggests that this version of the show will become a huge hit, either

It doesn’t.  It won’t.

 It was a bright, happy half-hour of TV,

Shiny happy people holding hands!  Shiny happy people holding hands!

and while that might start to give me sugar shock week after week,

Sweet and Low shock, Todd!  Jesus, way to run down the brand. 

for a one-time treat, it was a lot of fun.

But man, it’ll ruin your teeth and might give you cancer.  So watch it with the Sweet & Low, kids.