Community and Such

Between my graduation from university and my recent move to Boston, I spent a a few weeks at my folks' house reading, seeing friends, and generally accomplishing not a damn thing.

my accomplishments

After watching the first few episodes of Dan Harmon's Community and burdened with an exhaustive personality, I decided to watch every episode over a three day period. If you've ever watched the show, you must know the fascinating breakout character Abed who makes constant pop-culture references and comparisons between his reality and the reality of various films and shows while lamp-shading common themes, motifs, and tropes. Overall, he's a fascinating study in postmodern programming.

 So many naked lamps

While every form of televisual media references or borrows from others, Community stands out by announcing aloud when it does so. When young people are forced into an academic building for extended time, he literally says "This is kinda like the Breakfast Club, right?"

So why is this bad? It's not bad per se, but Abed constant stream of tv/movie reference encourage you to watch more. Moreover, his jokes almost act as a reward system for anyone who opted to watch The Chronicles of Riddick instead of being social.

Lost reference. Haha! My years of difficult TV watching has finally paid off!

After watching the episode where they parody mob films, I opted to watch Scareface. I didn't even realize that Dan Harmon had encouraged this until my friend commented.

So, while I certainly don't believe that shows like Family Guy or Community are going to make us less social, I do believe it will just sink our sense of comedy deeper into a post-modern paradigm.