Community: 1.5
1600 Penn: 1.2
The Office: 2.2
Parks: 1.7

Garrett is more obscure! Until last week, the actor who played Garrett didn't have a Wikipedia page. (It probably still needs work.)

If it makes him feel any better, he could read it as "after the horse has gone." Maybe someone rode a horse to the party, and it wandered off, and they have to sleep on the couch and go look for the horse tomorrow.

I guess I'm saying that I don't think 2-3 episodes answer much of anything, no matter which 2-3 episodes they are. And I know you mean well, but I think making broad statements like this with limited evidence has the effect of creating conventional wisdom in advance, which is never good. I mean, if you believed this…

I like Parks okay — it's a funny show, but it's been treading water for a couple seasons, because it has so many one-dimensional characters who were created for joke purposes, rather than as well-rounded and believable figures (Ron Swanson, Tom, etc.) Which is great if that's the kind of show you're writing — witness…

You and me both.

Actually, the Magnitude thing is a fairly minor running gag in one episode.

No. I don't think I made this clear enough.

I don't know… Chang is pretty noticeable.

Really? You're going to defend the notion of a "showrunner" by using sports coaching — a job almost universally regarded as overhyped and overemphasized — as a comparison?

The show wasn't "on hiatus", it was a mid-seasopn show. And they didn't know when they made the order that it was going to be a mid-season show.

That's a little dismissive, no? Why do you assume that the new showrunners are "only being paid to care" about this? This is their life's work, you know. If they had been hired to write episodes under Harmon, would they then be certified as People Who Actually Care?

I quit caffeine 2 days ago — it is an effort to be less curmudgeonly in the long run, but in the short run, the effect is very much the opposite.

Given the ratings of everything else on NBC, they probably won't be. Nobody involved with the show is treating this like the last season — we're prepared for the eventuality, but there's no reason to believe there won't be a Season 5.

"Ah but see, that is FAKING the vibe, and the Bullshit Detectors on fans are pretty sensitive"

Yeah, but that wasn't my issue with it. When you boil it down, it was basically a three-and-a-half minute episode repeated over and over again with the characters slightly off-model in different ways. So it wasn't narratively appealing to me, due to the basic lack of a narrative, and given that the characters we were…

(Personally, though, I hate Alexander Payne as a general rule. My wife keeps telling me to watch "About Schmidt", but I am really reluctant after how much I despised "Election.")

Yeah, but didn't the Descendants also do "Milo Goes to Community College"? So it's not like they don't have experience.

Still disappointed it couldn't have happened to "Cougarton Abbey" instead, myself.

A Glimpse Inside The Mind Of Charles Swan III is actually pretty decent. I mean, Charlie Sheen is as bad as you've heard, and it's a little redundant compared to how
great the first two are, but I'd still recommend it—especially if it's
been a while since I & II.