You hate your life if you're not watching Community.

Hey, are you watching Community yet? Sources, specifically Blast Magazine and its television ratings report, tell me that Outsourced has more viewers yet AGAIN. Therefore, the Community posts shall continue!

Last night's episode was a spoof of Apollo 13, I think. I'm not sure because I never saw that movie - womp womp womp. However, it was still hilarious to me. The gang gets trapped in a space simulator, fight with one another and Pierce is actually funny as he has to deal with space madness, Ren and Stimpy style.

But with teamwork and finger-lickin' goodness, the team managed to complete the heavily KFC-branded simulation. It was an especially strong episode for the dean and his gay tendencies, Senor Chang had a great five second cameo, and my love affair with Troy continues. I thought he was hilarious in his role as the captain of the simulator, and I definitely liked the slight tease they had when Brita landed on his lap.


Also, that thing to the right? That's the community college's flag. What aren't you watching this show??? Why do you hate your life and deny yourself this enjoyment? So as a final enticement, here are some quotes that would only be super hilarious if you had seen this great, great episode:

Jeff: Pierce! You're talking to an Atari cartridge. Sit down.

Jeff: Our school may be a toilet, but it's our toilet, and nobody craps in it but us.

Brita: How many schools would let you get a degree in theoretical PE?

Dean: *shows them on the map where the city impound lots are*
Abed: It looks like you circled public rest rooms and truck stops.
Dean: Ohhh, okay... That is a different side of the map, and that is... for... a different project.
Abed: Why do they have star ratings?

Troy: There is a time and a place for subtly, and that time was before Scary Movie.

Pierce: I WILL KILL YOU, SANDERS!

Hey, Chevy Chase used to be funny!

Insert obvious joke about Chevy's career.

Since he's now been relegated to a minor supporting character on Community, it's easy to forget that Chevy Chase was once funny. Heck, all of his best work - Caddyshack, Fletch, Saturday Night Live - came out either well before or near my birth date in 1984. (I'll wait for some of you to come back from hanging yourselves.)

His demotion isn't exactly undeserved. Even on Community, his character has seemingly been scaled back because he simply isn't as funny as the younger comedians. Because he kind of looks the same, it's easy to forget that he's 66, and that a lot of his former SNL co-stars either work reduced schedules (Bill Murray) or are similarly damaged by drugs (Garrett Morris) or are dead (Belushi). Chase simply surviving to this point, given his immense cocaine problems in the past, is surprising.

However, I recently stumbled across the old Chevy Chase NBC specials on the Internets, and it is amazing how much of a fastball he had then. From 1975 and 1977, there is a dry sort of humor that is well ahead of its time. There is stilted, awkward dialogue, the sort of which Adult Swim and Space Ghost and Archer would use 30 years later, along with traditional sketches. The drug humor is also far toned down from the first season of SNL. (People tend to deify that first season, but for every great Samurai Delicatessen sketch, there is one where everyone is loaded and slurring through their lines.)

I'm guessing the specials are so good because there are only three of them. Heck, even Charlie Murphy was great for two episodes of Chappelle's Show. Without Dave and Neil Brennan editing? Eh, not so much. The specials give a glimpse at Chevy's incredible talents, and it is just a shame so much of it vanished up his nostrils.

On an unrelated note, the specials also have a really, really young and hipster Martin Mull in them. It's hard to imagine him as an actual comedian now, given all of his supporting roles - he has been in 111 freakin' things! I'll always remember him as Col. Mustard from the Clue movie though, which only I seemed to love.

Community snatches Thursday night crown back, because it is a winner

A little more than a month ago, it seemed like Parks and Recreation was destined to go on a sort of epic Thursday night run, since it had been building on a long string of quality episodes. Consider me disappointed with this week's episode then, which was funny, but not quite as poignant or deep as the last new Parks and Recreation episode was.

Meanwhile, Community has just kept plugging along. While this week's episode wasn't as ridiculously funny as last week's, which had Annie's Boobs and Goodfellas, it was still great. The infantile competition between Jeff, Brita and the high school kids was a nice, silly complement to the more serious storyline of everyone hating on Pierce.

As usual, the best portions of the episode were with Abed and Troy. Abed is trying to check off everything on a quintessential college experience list, such as breaking a guitar like in Animal House, pantsing and getting pantsed, pledging the most popular fraternity on campus, stealing a rival's mascot, and making a robot in order to impress chicks.

The actual dramatic arc of the episode - Pierce getting kicked out of the group for being an ass to Shirley - isn't really that great. But all of the other stuff going on in the episode more than makes up for it. In fact, I couldn't decide on just a couple photos, so please enjoy the others at the end of this entry.

Grade: A