THEY'RE ALL COMING BACK
'The Jeff Probst Show' Has Been Canceled
Community: Pilot (series premiere)
by Jason Hughes, posted Sep 18th 2009 12:39AM
(S01E01) In a rather touching tribute to John Hughes, tonight's premiere of Community honored the director in the best way possible. By creating a great ensemble of individuals coming together to form a ... yes, that's the meaning of the title ... community.
I expected to like this show. Hell, the promos and early reviews made it a foregone conclusion. What I wasn't sure of was whether I'd like it because it had funny lines and jokes, or whether I'd like it because I cared about the people in it. It looks like the answer to that is going to be both.
The study group that Jeff accidentally pulls together to try and get into Britta's pants -- because why else would you form one -- is made up of just the kind of eclectic personalities you need to make a comedy like this work. Like Cheers, these are people from all different walks of life coming together.
The formula is so simple it's beautiful. The reason The Breakfast Club worked is because as different as those kids were on the surface, they were all people underneath it all. The same goes for Jeff's study group. Yes, the set-up for the series was a bit trite: he got caught in his lie, was ostracized, learned an important lesson toward becoming a better person, and everyone got together and hugged it out. Sort of.
With the set-up out of the way, we can start getting to know the players a bit better. And I'm really looking forward to getting to episodes beyond the scenes we've all seen ad nauseam while the NBC promotional machine jammed this down our eye throats. I want to get to know these characters better.
So far, Abed is standing out as the funniest of the group. I don't know if he has Asperger's Syndrome, but he's different. The funniest moment of the night came when everyone was mouthing to one another behind Jeff's back and in a moment of panic, Abed shouted out, concerned that he'd suddenly gone deaf.
We've barely scratched the surface of what this show is going to be about. We've yet to see anyone in class; they haven't even introduced Ken Jeong's character yet. All we've seen is the first study group session that surprisingly brought them all together as a team to face this challenge together. Now, I'm looking forward to their journey.
(Find clips, behind-the-scenes interviews and more over on SlashControl's Community page!)
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