I definitely agree that the concept episodes are dragging this season down because of their misplaced genesis. Even the ones which are individually good aren't adding up to a coherent season. Just pointing out what made "GI Jeff" particularly bad among them by comparing to the concept episode I liked best.

Well-said. If I may add a bit: Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was also pretty obviously a "conceit-first, character-second" episode, in my opinion. However, it gets a totally different reaction from me (I love AAD&D) for two reasons:
- The show's only done the D&D thing once before. We've done the "mental…

I was so psyched for this episode that I made a point to get access to a TV to watch it live rather than waiting for the next day. I was really eager to see what Harmon would do with this. I was not remotely waiting to tear it apart.

Let's not talk about Beast Wars until we're sure Michael Bay's gotten a different schtick for a while. I'd hate to see what he would do with the only fork of TF that was legitimately good.

I had more than a few Joe toys and I watched the show a bit. I wasn't a Joe fan the way I was TMNT, but I liked it. And I didn't like this episode at all. The attention to detail was clever, but as an episode of Community, it really did and offered nothing. It's only any good as nostalgia bait.

It really didn't. I loved that show, but it was all too obvious to me and would constantly bring me out of the show's moments when I knew Jack couldn't land a solid strike because he was fighting something with flesh.

It's not that I disagree with your conclusion, it's that I feel that story still would have rung far more true if Amon had had some genuineness to him that had gone way out of control. Rather than really denying that the resentment was valid, it sort of kicks the can down the road for someone who IS somewhat sincere…

…This show's always rolled with the PIE elements, not the Chinese ones. Using the Japanese version of the Chinese celestial beasts would make even less sense.

Yes, but it never really let us answer that question. It turned him into a cartoon character so the audience didn't have to really confront that moral - it just came to them automatically.