Community thread

[ASR]

Easily - easily - my favorite episode. That was amazing!

[littlegirltree]

This was nothing short of amazing. Community being first in the Thursday night lineup is setting the bar waaay to high too early, at this point.

[aenemaTron]

I loved it when Troy hugged Jeff. I fucking love this show.

[invisiblegrapefruit]

Uh-oh. What usually happens when a bunch of smart, funny people like a show?

[nathansmart]

oh, stop it - I'm blushing

[mcpiranhas]

Has anyone compiled a list of all the action-movie references? I feel like I only grabbed about half.

[Trikywu]

Uh-oh. What usually happens when a bunch of smart, funny people like a show?

Gang bang? (sorry...)

Community never ceases to amaze. Can't stop watching this episode. It's even better the third and fourth time.

[BillBrasky]

Has anyone compiled a list of all the action-movie references? I feel like I only grabbed about half.

I didn't compile this, but over at the AV Club people have been trying to list all of them. i don't know if all these are accurate:

Jeff waking up in car- 28 Days Later
Jeff meets shot up fat kid who mumbles about prize - Half-Life
"Come with me if you don't want paint on your clothes"-Terminator 2
Abed jumping on wall- Matrix
Abed's glasses - Pitch Black or Aliens 3
Troy meets Jeff - Predator
Paint outline in bathroom- Aliens
Mexican standoff in the bathroom - Reservoir Dogs and others
Shirley praying - Boondock Saints
Disco rollerbladers- Warriors
Britta stitching Jeff up- Terminator 1
Chang requests the dean to let him join the battle - Running Man
Chang bursting through door and shooting the place up- Scarface and Hard Boiled
Chang's gold pistols - Face Off
Chang's suicide bomb- Predator
Jeff vs the Dean - Die Hard and Rambo-First Blood Part 2

[TomHicks]

Gang bang? (sorry...)

Community never ceases to amaze. Can't stop watching this episode. It's even better the third and fourth time.

It was on my second go-round that I caught Jeff saying to Britta after she pulls the trigger on him and nothing happens:

Oops! No squibs, Hans? Do you think I'm stupid?

From Die Hard

And as a Sci-Fi Nerd Point of Order, "Come with me if you want to live" is in the first one, Terminator. But I think it's in all of the movies and the pilot for the TV show, Sarah Connor: Why Did I Get Married, Too?

[brianpalmer]

I didn't compile this, but over at the AV Club people have been trying to list all of them. i don't know if all these are accurate:

Jeff waking up in car- 28 Days Later
Jeff meets shot up fat kid who mumbles about prize - Half-Life
"Come with me if you don't want paint on your clothes"-Terminator 2
Abed jumping on wall- Matrix
Abed's glasses - Pitch Black or Aliens 3
Troy meets Jeff - Predator
Paint outline in bathroom- Aliens
Mexican standoff in the bathroom - Reservoir Dogs and others
Shirley praying - Boondock Saints
Disco rollerbladers- Warriors
Britta stitching Jeff up- Terminator 1
Chang requests the dean to let him join the battle - Running Man
Chang bursting through door and shooting the place up- Scarface and Hard Boiled
Chang's gold pistols - Face Off
Chang's suicide bomb- Predator
Jeff vs the Dean - Die Hard and Rambo-First Blood Part 2

I've been looking for a complete list as well. I'm surprised Wikipedia hasn't filled the gap yet.

The bullets hitting bullets while firing sideways - Wanted
The gang going outside, diving behind the tables and facing off against the glee snipers - Saving Private Ryan (right down to the shaky camera work)
And if memory serves, the group inside sitting around the fire was also from Saving Private Ryan.

[ErikNielsen]

If it makes any difference -- which it might or might not -- nobody mentioned "Half-Life" (or indeed anything) to me. And it certainly wasn't anything I would've brought in, consciously or otherwise -- never played it. (First-person shooters give me motion sickness.)

As for what I was going for, aside from a general suggestion of post-apocalyptic shell-shock, the specific cadence was influenced by, of all things, the sample at 1:36 of Deltron 3030's "Mastermind" ('the walls of the cities will crumble away...') -- kind of a hollow, haunted effect, almost as though my voice was pre-reverbed.

I... think my brain translated that to stuttering a lot?

Anyway, the series of takes (and the agitation caused by being repeatedly shot) pushed my energy level up somewhat. And I don't know what the writer(s) or the director had in mind. I can only speak for what I was thinking and what I was told. I think it worked...

Sincerely,
Shot Up Fat Kid

[Crunchbird]

Given the previous degree of Alison Brie perving in this thread, I was sort of surprised that no one had yet linked to her recent true story of wacky sexual hijinks in college that was posted on Nerve.com. Most entertaining, to be sure . . .

[Umlaut]

Dudes, art college Alison Brie will totally have sex with ALL OF US!

EXCELLENT!

[Berliner]

You guys are really ruining the pure, unsoiled image I have of her.

[kevin]

Seeing Jerry Minor makes me smile.

[KeithTalent]

Please tell me they sell Annie's purple top at Anthropologie.

[kevin]

Thursday Night went 2 for 4 on Anthropologie jokes, posted 2 runs and batted in 3, raising its season average to .004.

[KeithTalent]

"It's from a movie."
"Then the movie it's from is terrible."

[RoyalDutchOfDukes]

In that list of action movies I think no one mentioned that Chang was dressed like Chow Yun Fat in The Killer at one point.

[dukerayburn]

The paintball episode was definitely my favorite since Debate Club, maybe my favorite overall. Genuine fucking genius at work, honestly. We are all lucky to have this show.

The below comes from a Community spill in the Parks and Rec thread, and I didn't want to further the off-topicness.

I think what Community is doing is a lot closer to what Spaced did. The episodes still work, and are funny if you don't know the references, but if you do, then it becomes even better.

Yeah, this is why I love this show. The same comparison can be made with Edgar Wright's movies, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. They parody the tropes of the source material, but there are also moments (like the wheelchair-based climax of the Debate episode) where they surpass even the best bits of the source material.