Except Pierce was a main character, and as such it wasn't really an appropriate way to lampoon such tropes.

Have you read the thread? Feedback has been extremely mixed. Some people calling it the best Community ep in ages, some people calling it a total misfire.

It's definitely partially mental. I can all but guarantee if a season 4 episode aired this year it would be met with more positive reception, while if say, "Intro To Teaching" aired last year it would be met with a resounding MEH.

Sure he made many horrible movies…Snake Eyes, 8MM, Gone In Sixty Seconds, Captain Corellis Mandolin, Windtalkers, Ghost Rider, Family Man, Weather Man, Wicker Man, Bangkok Dangerous,..

Yeah, the concepts episode were just a mess last season. It makes you wonder what Todd was smoking when he gave the puppet show an A-.

It is merely speculation, but I think it can be interesting to talk about because it brings up the idea of preconceived notions people have with the show that change based on who's involved, and it can lead to some interesting analytical discussions on the similarities of the two seasons (if they exist, that is).

That interesting moment you speak of was the most ridiculously on-the-nose piece of meta commentary in the history of the show. I was shocked how clumsily handled it was.

Ehh people were pretty divided last year too…just go check out the comment sections. Despite the near unanimous hate for it now, a lot of people had positive things to say about it last year and many individual episodes had supporters.

I think the mystery has to be unsolved because that's pretty much crucial if you want to accurately parody Finchers Zodiac. This Pierce theory might have some weight if it wasn't brought up then dismissed, and then they intentionally dropped the case because of it's overall insignificance, but they went right back…

More like AV Club jerk-off material waiting to happen.

I felt exactly the same about last weeks. If the Nick Cage thing appeared in season 4 I truly believe it would be considered one of the dumbest things the show has ever done, and a spectacularly failed attempt at capturing what Community was about. But nope, since it was part of the the Harmon rebirth it was hailed as…

I love Chris McKenna…his Community and American Dad episodes are works of art. That said, he wrote "Repilot" with Harmon and that had a ton of problems on a story level and wasn't all that funny, so it's not like he's totally infallible.

Indeed. Last week didn't have me shouting from the rooftops "COMMUNITY"S BACK!", but if this one had aired last week it would have.

Yes, "so damn watchable" is a great way to describe it. Perhaps that's why I liked it a lot more than last week…the ratio of jokes that worked was higher and the plot was way more entertaining. That's all I ask from Community these days, and when they deliver it's a good episode.

I'm sorry, but the characters felt just as - if not more - cartoonish to me last week than this week. They certainly didn't strike me as the grounded people we saw in episodes like "Mixology Certification".

Erik Sommers is another writer from American Dad, one of 6 to work on Community. And while all of the writers on that show were supremely talented and each had many classics under there belt, sorry to say he wasn't among my favorites (although he did write "Home Adrone" and "Ricky Spanish", two fantastic eps of TV…and…

The premiere had ridiculously dark lighting.

That's what annoyed the shit out of me about that terrible Nick Cage stuff from last week. Give us a freakin down to earth episode and re-ground the characters as promised, and save the wacky stuff for later in the season, dammit! It was way too soon for something so outlandish.

Ha yeah, that was one of the best lines of the night. But I pretty much hate DMB, or "Dave", so I couldn't quite agree with Jeff there.

Yeah but the Jeff/Britta thing had been building, and it worked perfectly within the parody of the episode. This didn't seem so much as a well thought out major arc development, but rather an afterthought in an episode that had nothing to do with Pierce, and it was made further jarring by the fact that up until this…