Thursday, February 24, 2011

ALSO, YES, TWILIGHT AND I AM NUMBER FOUR ARE LARGELY THE SAME THING, THOUGH THE LATTER HAS BETTER SPECIAL EFFECTS: The AV Club has an interesting (and surprisingly persuasive) piece today asking a question I hadn't thought to ask--aren't Community and Glee pretty much the same show? Admittedly, we haven't been subjected to Annie Edison singing "Don't Rain on My Parade," nor do I expect we're going to see the Sue Sylvester paintball game in the near future, but both shows certainly share a central premise (mismatched "losers" as surrogate family) and an exceedingly elastic standard of reality.

9 comments:

  1. Meghan2:10 PM

    Okay, but Community doesn't have Lea Michele and is therefore quantifiably better.

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  2. isaac_spaceman2:18 PM

    I read the (Mo Ryan-seconded) TV McGee piece about why he doesn't like Community and see that there are some legitimate parallels between some of the problems the two shows have.  Plus, both have a lot of ambition -- to the credit of both Dan Harmon and Ryan Murphy, neither one wants to be exactly the same show as any other show.  To me, though, the big difference is that Community has great writing and great acting, and Glee has uneven acting and after-school special-quality lazy writing.  Which is why I look forward to Community every week and have dropped Glee in its entirety except to fast-forward through every couple of weeks to see if Heather Morris is dancing. 

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  3. Neato Torpedo2:35 PM

    Also, Community strives for continuity in its universe - a pretense Glee abandoned almost immediately.

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  4. christy in nyc2:57 PM

    I agree with all the ways he's saying they're similar (although obviously "pretty much the same show" is an exaggeration), and the way that he's saying they're different, and I agree with everyone that Community is by far the stronger for MANY reasons.

    But I'll be the odd woman out and say there are a couple things that I love about Glee that Community does not have:

    1. Glee is like Sister Act 2. I don't think I really need to elaborate on this. (But I can, if necessary).

    2. Glee is utterly unafraid to be completely, mind-bogglingly uncool. I don't mean the characters--there are characters on each show that are afraid or unafraid of being uncool. But the show itself just goes balls-to-the-wall, watch through your fingers, I can't even believe it LAME sometimes. And it is like a weird high to watch it happen. I guess this is what some fans would call its camp factor, but that seems so easy to dismiss. Community is screwball, and offbeat, and nerdy, and over the top. But it's not campy, and it's never uncool.

    I mean I guess I could tune in to almost any live action Disney Channel show and get some kind of combination of these two things. But it just wouldn't be the same. Glee is just...it's just weird. In a way that I like. Community is also weird in a way that I like and that is soooo much easier to articulate and discuss.

    Also, I do disagree that Kurt's been made a saint. They've actually given him serious (and surprisingly consistent by its own standards) flaws, which is something I appreciate, even if it is done broadly.

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  5. Kurt hasn't been made a saint, but Blaine pretty much has (though they've tried to give his character some texture in the past couple of episodes). 

    Community also does a better job of serving its entire cast, while Glee's is so big that characters almost entirely disappear for weeks at a time.  (What's Sam's story purpose/arc right now?  Jessalyn Gilsig is still a regular, but has appeared maybe once this season.  HAve Tina and Mercedes had any real substantive plot this season?)

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  6. Joseph J. Finn3:15 PM

    And right there, Matt, is a huge difference.  Community has it's fringe characters (Leonard, Starfish, the Dean) but doesn't feel the need to pull them into the group and dilute the stew, so to speak.

    And man, do I love the occassional bit of Leonard.  (Also, I want to be half as spry looking as Richard Erdman when I'm 85.)

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  7. christy in nyc3:33 PM

    I would say Blaine has some flaws, but they're much more surfacey than Kurt's, which makes sense because Kurt is a much more central character. Blaine is just sort of self-centered and also a little snobbish when it comes to glee club (he's a stickler for seniority, which very conveniently means he sings almost every solo). Meanwhile Kurt's shortcomings are often much more nuanced, where he's actually so right and so wrong at the same time, and about important things.

    Agreed that Glee has a "who are the main characters of this show, anyway?" problem that Community will never have. Main characters drift in and out of the spotlight in a way normally reserved for secondary and tertiary characters. It's not an excuse, but I think maybe the fact that the premise of the show requires at least 12 people to be present at the same time during at least a few scenes per episode contributes to this problem.

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  8. I thought about this comparison last season actually, only it was more that people talk about Glee as some sort of feel-good show, mostly because of the singing, and Community as being much more cynical. My argument is that the two are reversed; Glee is a LOT darker than Community, even taking into consideration the recent Pierce arc. Most of the characters in Glee don't really like each other; on Community, in the end, they're all there to support each other.

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  9. Christy in Philly10:38 AM

    I hope you saw this week's episode then because there was dancing aplenty from HM. And it was AWESOME!

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