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.