Community, as a full package, is a better series than Arrested Development. ...which I never thought I would say.
Community isn't immediately brilliant. The first half of Season 1 feels like a mostly vanilla single camera modern sitcom with semi quirky, semi likable characters that slowly let's it's insane creator Dan Harmon start to inject his own bizarre creative twists, visually unique thematic episodes and multilayered meta humor.
While Community had a season (4) that lacked the show's heart, lost members of it's cast and was moved to Yahoo! streaming with it's final, weirdly lit season, it was able to return to quality during it's final two years and stick the landing with a touching finale worthy of the show's characters.
Arrested Development, unlike Community, immediately ingenious. Each character feels as though they already have an entire book of backstory behind them and you can't wait to reach the next page. Before the show's infamously complex, series-lasting inside jokes even begin to breach the surface, the promise of brilliance is already seen. You cannot wait to see where this Wes Anderson-esque cast of should-be psychotherapy patients will drag Jason Bateman's overprotective father character.
Unfortunately the series both divided the family into standalone episodes, losing the frenetic energy of the cast's impossibly perfect chemistry but also took a massive tonal shift into a bleak, more pessimistic world that insisted on bringing the show's only anchors of warmth into an even more self-serving character dynamic that would have better suited Dennis Reynolds.
Here is where some of you will disagree with me-
"See? That's the point! Michael Bluth was always just as selfish as the rest of his family!"
No. It's not. It never was. While the original series made a point to show us that Michael was far from perfect, most of his selfish and admittedly ill-conceived choices were performed in service of protecting his son, ever more precious to him after the loss of his wife. Season 4 and it's defense force insisting that he had always been a secret sociopath removes the small sliver of warmth that once balanced the world of destruction around it. It also eliminates the lion's share of the show's humor by deleting an anchor point.
Moments like this don't happen anymore.
Michael is only my biggest problem. The entire show is more cynical, there is more shock humor, the new characters are mostly awful and there are far less laughs per minute. Yes, the layered story is cool to unpack but did it come at the cost of humor?
Regardless of how their revivals performed, if you have ever watched and enjoyed Modern Family, Parks & Recreation, Brooklyn 99, The Middle or Better Off Ted then you owe it to yourself to watch two of the three shows that inspired their ilk.
This video does a great job of explaining how both shows started in contrast to where they ended and why:
Community isn't immediately brilliant. The first half of Season 1 feels like a mostly vanilla single camera modern sitcom with semi quirky, semi likable characters that slowly let's it's insane creator Dan Harmon start to inject his own bizarre creative twists, visually unique thematic episodes and multilayered meta humor.
While Community had a season (4) that lacked the show's heart, lost members of it's cast and was moved to Yahoo! streaming with it's final, weirdly lit season, it was able to return to quality during it's final two years and stick the landing with a touching finale worthy of the show's characters.
Arrested Development, unlike Community, immediately ingenious. Each character feels as though they already have an entire book of backstory behind them and you can't wait to reach the next page. Before the show's infamously complex, series-lasting inside jokes even begin to breach the surface, the promise of brilliance is already seen. You cannot wait to see where this Wes Anderson-esque cast of should-be psychotherapy patients will drag Jason Bateman's overprotective father character.
Unfortunately the series both divided the family into standalone episodes, losing the frenetic energy of the cast's impossibly perfect chemistry but also took a massive tonal shift into a bleak, more pessimistic world that insisted on bringing the show's only anchors of warmth into an even more self-serving character dynamic that would have better suited Dennis Reynolds.
Here is where some of you will disagree with me-
"See? That's the point! Michael Bluth was always just as selfish as the rest of his family!"
No. It's not. It never was. While the original series made a point to show us that Michael was far from perfect, most of his selfish and admittedly ill-conceived choices were performed in service of protecting his son, ever more precious to him after the loss of his wife. Season 4 and it's defense force insisting that he had always been a secret sociopath removes the small sliver of warmth that once balanced the world of destruction around it. It also eliminates the lion's share of the show's humor by deleting an anchor point.
Moments like this don't happen anymore.
Michael is only my biggest problem. The entire show is more cynical, there is more shock humor, the new characters are mostly awful and there are far less laughs per minute. Yes, the layered story is cool to unpack but did it come at the cost of humor?
Regardless of how their revivals performed, if you have ever watched and enjoyed Modern Family, Parks & Recreation, Brooklyn 99, The Middle or Better Off Ted then you owe it to yourself to watch two of the three shows that inspired their ilk.
This video does a great job of explaining how both shows started in contrast to where they ended and why:
