I remember there actually being some optimism when Carell left that The Office could actually be better than S6-7 since it no longer had to be "The Michael Show" all the time.

I think part of it is that the Veep/Thick of It writing team simply has more experience with British politics – Jesse Armstrong worked for a Labour MP before going into comedy, for example.

I think it was mainly to set up the "you're a pig line" toward the end

I would guess that Ted decides to bring the locket to the wedding, then ends up giving it to Barney.

It might be gimmicky, but I would love a "How I Met Your Father" episode

Calling it right now:  Ted gives the locket as a wedding present – to Barney

Weird, my list would be way different.

Wasn't that Evil Britta?

Hey, I actually read all that! And I liked it, too! You worked in the parallels with the Study Group nicely.

I think it's established that his law degree is legitimate; he just got disbarred for practicing under false pretenses. (Whether that's actually something that could happen in real life, I have no idea.)

I'm far from a S4 apologist, but I'll be the first to admit that the new showrunners got dealt a shitty hand. The shortened season left less time for satisfying arcs. Changing around the episode order made it nearly impossible to span arcs across episodes in any meaningful way (a major reason the finale felt so rushed…

Can I ask when you started watching the show? This may be a grossly inaccurate generalization, but I sometimes theorize that the gap in Community fans often comes from those who started from the beginning (or near it), which was relatively more grounded and not really super "fun," more quirky than anything. It started…

To be fair, this is episode was a different law firm with one of his old co-workers, so I actually found that the least objectionable part of the episode.

There's a "For Our Consideration" from a few months ago (I think) talking about how mediocre is actually worse than disastrous, so a "D" is in many ways more degrading than an "F."

Looking back on it, I almost wish they had just played it straight (i.e. no "it was all a dream"). I prefer outright insanity to hackneyed storytelling (though unfortunately this episode suffered from both).

I agree that season 3 went off the deep end more than a bit, but it was least inventive for the most part, and to me it managed to stay grounded in its characters (with the notable exception of Chang, who was easily the show's biggest flaw after season 1).

I looked back over the list of episode titles on Wikipedia (because I'm bad at remembering at they get references a lot here), and it was striking how little desire I had to rewatch any of the season 4 ones. You're probably better off skipping it entirely and pretending the season 3 finale was the series finale. If…

Yeah, it was just jarringly bad. Each character shooting their counterpart in some of the least-exciting or funny ways possible, all just kind of lethargically hanging out in the cafeteria for some reason. I get that they may not have had an enormous budget, but in that case… do a different story, or write this one…

Yeah, I feel like I'm in bizarro world. I could have sworn I've seen comments around here referring to "the conspiracy episode" derogatorily, yet it's always been one of my favorites.

Something about Jim once again not giving a shit warms my cold, dead heart. I liked that the return of some classic pranks also managed to fit in some emotional resonance toward the end.