COMMUNITY with Joel McHale on NBC

Nice cast and premise. I hope it doesn't try to get too touchy. It can be good.
I love McHale. And John Oliver! Good for them, though the Soup and The Daily show will suffer for their absence.

I think McHale has said he'll keep doing the Soup along with Community. I'm looking forward to this.

Thank god for this. The Soup is a Saturday morning ritual for me and the wife. I don't think they could replace McHale.

Right there with you. The Saturday morning Soup re-run goes great with hangovers, coffee, and cereal.

Yeah, it looks sort of funny. And Chevy looks funny in it, which is a nice change. Certainly seems like the kind of show that would be more suited for a limited run. Something about the tone of it.

McHale seems to be too smart of a character to be there. More of the worlds greatest salesmen. At some point the show doesn't make sense.

The Community pilot is available now for a limited time. They tried to restrict it to Facebook users in the US but I found a direct link. Go to http://tinyurl.com/kqztam and save it to your hard drive. You'll need an flv player to watch the file.

This looks great. I'll check out the pilot after work.

I just wish NBC wouldn't run a promo for it on every commercial break of every show.

He's smart, but he's lazy. Makes perfect sense that he's there.

The pilot is available for free on Amazon.com now (and has no commercials). There were some funny parts (pretty much any scene with both Joel McHale and John Oliver) but also some not great parts.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem like John Oliver will be a regular on the show so those flashes of brilliance may be an isolated incident. I'll certainly give it a few more episodes though.

"Now Jeff, before you say anything, you should think about the wonderful gift you've been given."

"An excuse to punch a hippie?"


I liked it quite a bit, actually. Could be a smart, funny show. I think I'd rather see more of this than Parks and Recreation.


"I like you Jeff. You remind me of myself at your age."

"I deserved that."

My favorite exchange:

"I'm a professor, you can't talk to me that way."

"A 6 year old girl could talk to you that way."

"Yes, because that would be adorable!.

"No, because you're a 5 year old girl and there's a pecking order."

Watched this on Amazon's service. Quite enjoyable. McHale is a loveable douchebag. Feels like a really good fit with Office and 30 Rock.

"We are the only species that observes Shark Week."

"If it was a serious disease, they would've named it 'meningitis.'"

McHale had a few good quips, but I found the situations to feel forced and strange, and in general a lot of it was brutally unfunny.

Gillian Jacobs certainly has my attention, and McHale was amusing enough. Not sold on the other characters yet.

Caught it tonight, thought it was kinda stiff, gave up halfway through. Maybe that's just because it aired on the heels of the superb Office premiere.

Convince me to watch the rest?

No, either watch it or don't. I've never got the 'convince' me plea. Either you're going to take the 25 minutes to watch the whole show or you aren't that bothered by it.

I thought it was funny enough though not the show the critics were once raving about, it definitely has potential though. In the pantheon of TV comedy pilots though it was far better than 'The Office' or '30 Rock'. It did it's job in setting up everything well enough, but I'll need to watch another few weeks to see how it grows.

For a comedy pilot, it was well done. Like James said, The Office and 30 Rock didn't start out this strongly. Joel McHale and Chevy Chase will keep me coming back for few more weeks to see if the show hooks me. And I loved the scene at the end where the guy thought he was going deaf.

This was my favorite part.

It was OK for a pilot. Chevy, McHale and the chick that looks like Elizabeth Shue are enough to get me to keep watching for a few more weeks.

I think it would have been funnier had I not already seen many funny parts in the previews but I don't know why you'd quit watching because people seemed a bit stiff in the pilot. Of course they might, it's the pilot. It takes a bit of time for them to really learn their characters.

There were enough flashes of brilliance and the addition of Ken Jeong as the Spanish teacher give me hope that in the next couple episodes it may really hit its stride.

I thought it was OK. It surprised me because I thought it was going to be about teachers at a community college not students. I think I'd appreciate a mix (students and teachers) more then this band of terrible students, but oh well. I'll give it a couple more episodes.

Well, I was pretty tired last night. After The Office I wanted one more good belly laugh before bed and I just didn't see it coming. And it wasn't just the people who seemed stiff, but the whole setup. Maybe just Pilot-itis, but the scenes between Main Guy and British Psychologist were mostly exposition about how interesting their characters used to be. And aside from the principal's opening address, which preemptively reduced everyone to stereotypes, I didn't get a sense of why any of the characters were there.

I'll finish it for Chevy.

I thought it was okay, a few laughs, but Joel McHale is basically carrying this for me.

The show really needed to spend half an episode or so showing who the people were before they got to community college. Joel in the courtroom or being suspended by the bar, hot gritty chick being hot and gritty as a roadie, etc.

It just ... wasn't funny. The breakfast club quips should have been one throwaway gag (see Psych), not milked, and everything just felt forced.

They could probably interlace flashbacks in future episodes. Show don't tell. Seems doable, and I think there's the potential there. It just remains to be seen if the show gets any better.

I don't see why we need to see Mchale in his career as a lawyer first. He was a laywer, he got disbarred and that's all you really need to know. People have weird expectations when it comes to pilots. Look at 'The Office', we don't need flashbacks to see why those people are working there, but over time we come to understand why they're there.

I thought it was funny and had some great lines and a good deal of potential. As for seeing them before, it's not a necessity. I'm sure it'd be shit we'd seen before elsewhere. It's not like I'm anxious awaiting the Secret Origin of Jeff!. I like how it just jumped in and told the audience just as much as they needed to know the characters. It's like when you meet people in real life, often the larger back story can come later.

Yeah, potential. We'll see.

If comedy writers can't get comedy out of the community college setting, they should quit their jobs and go sell insurance or something.

I quite liked it. Room to grow.

i enjoyed it a lot. great setup and i agree with the sentiments above that it will be better to learn more about the characters as we go as opposed to an exposition heavy pilot (which for the most part it avoided being).

it was mostly chuckles, but had a great rhythm. i loved the sexual harassment bit. this will be a winner.

I thought this was a really great pilot. Probably my favorite new show so far. They needed the breakfast club scene to introduce all the main characters. We pretty much got a 30 second breakdown of the entire cast via McHale's speech to get the girl (what's her name, Brittle, Bristol, Britta?). Aside from McHale, Abed had the best bits. Pretty much everything he did killed me, but especially the "deaf" scene. If anything, the downfall of the show will be when McHale inevitably changes his evil ways and comes to realize he's really a good person deep down inside. I hope he stays sarcastic and snarky. That's the charm of this show.

There were some funny parts in the pilot. But the premise of the show in regards to McHale's character is completely ridiculous. I think the pitch for the pilot of "Jerry" on Seinfeld probably had a better premise (where a guy gets into an accident with Jerry has to become his butler because he doesn't have insurance).

I know comedies aren't supposed to be realistic, but first - I'm pretty sure the Bar Association would verify that McHale's character would have gone to a legitimate college college/law school in the first place.

Second, the fact that he would be forced to go to a "community" college after he got disbarred is idiotic. Being sanctioned and facing criminal charges would be a more likely scenario. But even if legal ramifications were not pursued, why would he go to a community college? Could he earn a Bachelor's Degree at a community college? Did he not have earn enough money as a lawyer to afford going a state university or an accelerated university program?

And third, Chevy Chase. His character does not make sense. I get the feeling they wrote him into the show after the rest of the script was completed.

This has to be one of the worst premises ever for a primetime television show. Still, I did chuckle a couple of times. I guess if you can ignore how lazy the writing is, it's still watchable. It's the new My Name is Earl of the fall season.

Someone wasn't paying attention. McHale wasn't forced to go to community college. He chose it because he had previously got the principal off a DUI and figured he could leverage that to get all the answers to his tests.

But yes, IRL he would likely have been disbarred rather than be allowed to go back to school to earn his degree.

I paid attention. (And the english guy wasn't a principal, he was a psychology professor).

But you're right, McHale wasn't forced to go to the community college. However, it is still a ridiculous set up. There is absolutely no reason to have him attend a community college outside of creating a setup for more lovable losers on to be on the show. Has anyone ever gone from a community college to law school? Or is it generally a normal thing to take some general ed classes in a community school, take the LSAT, and get into law school?

Saved by the Bell had better writing than the pilot of this show.

I think you are taking the premise of this show WAY too serious. I mean if you have that much trouble with it...just don't watch.

Wow really? Well i enjoyed it......

thought it was a pretty good first episode. I also like the Chevy Chase-Mchale relationship that will probably grow out of this.

I'll continue to watch.

I had fun with it. Wasn't LOLzing all the way through, but there were several big laughs for me. Abed is definitely a highlight, and she really DOES kinda look like Elizabeth Shue, so she's got that going for her...

Comic Book Trivia: Writer/Creator Dan Harmon used to work on SCUD: THE DISPOSABLE ASSASSIN, and the spinoff, LA COSA NOSTROID. He and Rob Schrab also made the totally awesome HEAT VISION & JACK pilot. You should follow them both on the Twitters.

No, I'm just disappointed that NBC, who has had some pretty smart comedies introduced over the last few years (exluding My Name is Earl), greenlighted a show based on a stupid premise.

I will still probably watch the next couple of episodes, as there were some funny moments in the pilot and McHale is pretty charismatic.

Well, that went downhill quick. I'll probably watch one more, but I say bring back John Oliver STAT.

Downhill?

That presentation left me in tears it was so good.

I thought this was pretty great tonight. Chase and McHale work pretty well together, and the others in the supporting cast had their moments too.

I loved that epic presentation, too. Robots and afro wigs!

act's wearin' thin, ken jeong. act's wearin' thin...

Those fuckin' tin foil robot guns were great.

"Douche-ray vision" was it? Fantastic.

I dug it. I think I prefer Modern Family as the new comedy of the season, but this is solid. And better than Parks and Rec.

I thought it was great. Yes Ken Jeong is wearing his act a bit thin but "My Knowledge will bite her face off!" cracked me up.

The presentation at the end was greatness.

I really liked this episode. It seems like the Chase's characters story arc was him admitting he was a giant douche his entire career, this episode was him being in on the joke.

Laughed hard at McHale's Fonzi entrance. Some shows just fit into your wheelbase. I love everything about this show. And yes, the Spanish presentation was glorious.