Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 55 - Community Redux Redux

We're not the most prolific of podcasters, though we are hoping to change that in the near future in the hopes of completing our Alternate 100 project, and a large part of that is because we often record episodes in advance, then take a while getting round to editing them. This approach caught up to us in a big way with this episode, which initially was a simple discussion of Community's fifth and - at the time - presumably final season. Mere days after we recorded it, assuming that this would be the last we'd hear of Dan Harmon's frequently brilliant show, news broke that Yahoo (Yahoo!) had picked up the show for an incredibly unlikely sixth season. Rather than scrap the whole episode, we recorded a new intro and outro discussing the last minute renewal, which serve as bookends to a discussion about a strange, difficult season of television.

As always, you can stream the podcast using the link below, or preferably (from our point of view) you can subscribe using iTunes. If you choose the later, please rate it and leave a review because it helps us to get more listeners, and also gives us something to obsess over. Speaking of which, you can also Like us on Facebook, assuming that you do.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 31 - Community Season 4 Redux

In the first of two podcasts this week, we offer up a mea culpa for saying, as part of our wrap up of Community Season Four, that it was utterly laughable and absurd to say that Dan Harmon would return to the show after being fired, something which happened mere weeks after we proclaimed it to be impossible. Clearly, we forgot that life is utterly laughable and absurd, and that anything is possible where Greendale Community College is concerned.

After a bit of self-flagellation, we get to the serious business of asking what this all means for the show; can Harmon right a badly listing ship; does this improve or worsen the show's chance of making it to its fabled sixth season and possible move; and will Chevy Chase be coming back as well? (Definitely not. Unless he totally is.)



As always, you can stream the podcast using the link above, or preferably (from our point of view) you can subscribe using iTunes. If you choose the latter, please rate it and leave a review because it helps us to get more listeners, and also gives us something else to obsess over. Speaking of which, you can also Like us on Facebook, assuming that you do.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 29 - Community Season 4

Continuing our run of doing semi-topical episodes, this week Joe and I talk about the recently finished fourth season of NBC's Community. It was a turbulent year for the show, a favourite of mine and most of the Internet, it seems, which started with the firing of creator Dan Harmon, then saw the show being delayed from its October start date to the Spring, then the departure of Chevy Chase, yet it still managed to earn a fifth season renewal. We talk about all of these issues, how we felt they impacted the final product, and what hopes we have, if any, for the next season.



As always, you can stream the podcast using the link above, or preferably (from our point of view) you can subscribe using iTunes. If you choose the latter, please rate it and leave a review because it helps us to get more listeners, and also gives us something else to obsess over. Speaking of which, you can also Like us on Facebook, assuming that you do.

Changing Horses: Thoughts on Community "History 101"

There's been a lot of hand-wringing and pontificating about the present and future of NBC's Community over the last year (some of which occurred on this very site) as the series struggled to stay afloat amidst a perfect storm of middling ratings, a reduced order of episodes followed by it being pulled from the schedules entirely, and the firing of creator/showrunner Dan Harmon. Even during the uncertain period when the show was in production but no one had a clue when it would see the light of day, there was the additional trauma of cast member and crotchety old man Chevy Chase leaving the show even though there were still episodes left to film. Admittedly that last one was less of a surprise given Chase's repeated assertion that he didn't want to be on the show, but it still couldn't have been easy for all those involved.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 21 - 2013 TV Preview

Following on from the last episode, in which Joe Gastineau and I looked at the year ahead in cinema, this episode finds us looking at what 2013 has to offer on the small screen. Along the way, we look at old favourites like Mad Men and Breaking Bad, contemplate the end of 30 Rock and what House of Cards might mean for the future of television, and air mild anticipation for the likes of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Under The Dome.

CORRECTIONS: In the episode I say that Lilyhammer was produced by Hulu when it was actually produced by Netflix, and the Richard Linklater travel series is called Up to Speed, not Catching Up. My bad.

As always, you can stream the podcast using the link below, or preferably (from our point of view) you can subscribe using iTunes. If you choose the later, please rate it and leave a review.

What Kind of Year Has It Been?

With 2012 rapidly receding and 2013 inexorably encroaching in defiance of the Mayans' will, it's time for reflection and the arbitrary ranking of art. Since I primarily write about films, I'll be putting up my Top 20 of the year up on January 1st as per tradition, but before then, I wanted to talk about the non-cinematic stuff that delighted and enchanted me this year.

Most of it's TV related because TV is still the most exciting medium going - compared to the admittedly fairly good year in cinema, TV had another banner year in a steady succession of them - and because I read precisely one book released this year (Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise, highly recommended) but there's music, comedy and such mixed in as well so that the New Year can begin completely free of guilt over unacknowledged greatness.

The Weirdest Timeline: The Complicated Nature of Community's Fourth Season Renewal

Back in November, I wrote about NBC's decision to hold the second half of Community's third season back until a later date, one which, at the time, was undetermined.The aim of that article was to establish why the news was not necessarily a sign that the cultishly adored sitcom was in imminent danger of being cancelled, and that everyone should calm the fuck down already.

You've Got To Accentuate The Positive: What's Good About The 2012 Oscar Nominations?

The Oscar nominations were announced today - not that anyone would notice since it's not like everybody is talking about it all the damn time - and they confirmed once again that the Oscars are worthless. And I don't mean that in the sense that all human endeavour is worthless because one day we'll all die and no one will care about anything we did in life, and besides which the sun will one day implode and destroy the Earth, eradicating all trace of all humanity, making our irritation at Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close getting an Oscar nomination seem pretty trivial.

No, I mean that the Oscars are worthless because they fail to do the thing that they are meant to, which is recognise the exceptional films released in any given year. Sure, they sometimes get it right - the nomination for The Tree of Life, in particular, strikes me as unusually spot on for once - but for the most part they celebrate the merely okay, rather than the excellent.

Considering that last year saw some truly great films released, ones that were bold, daring and strange, it would be easy to write about the many, many great films that were snubbed in favour of mediocrity. However, since everyone is going to be doing that, I've decided to set cynicism aside and focus on the positive, looking at the little delights sprinkled amongst the dullness.

Hope Lies on Television #11 - To End, or to Finish

After a brief-ish hiatus, which was brought on partly by being too busy in real life to research the columns and partly due to a lack of strong ideas for them, I semi-triumphantly returned to Hope Lies on Television with a column about the possibility that Community might be cancelled, and how the reactions of the fans to that possibility suggest that the way in which people perceive television shows has changed over the years, to the extent that a show that people are worried that Community, a show which does not have a strong central narrative, might end before it gets to properly tell its story.

This was a fun, if difficult, column to write since I got sidetracked on a massive tangent about serialisation in television. Thankfully, I realised before the column got completely swallowed by the tangent that the subject was too big to be just an afterthought, so it'll form the basis of the next one.

Why 'Community' Isn't Doomed...Yet

How could you let a cast this sexy be taken off television? Just look at that smouldering look Chevy's giving all of us!

Or, Why Community Doesn't Have To Be Cancelled, and How You Can Help!

Even though I tend to write about film on this site, it's not my sole interest. In fact, it may not even be my main interest anymore, since over the last couple of years I have found myself coming to the conclusion that television is the most fertile and interesting medium going (an idea I've explored in my articles for Hope Lies) and there are few shows that have delighted and surprised me as much as NBC's Community, a funny, heartfelt and insanely ambitious sitcom which has routinely and hilariously shifted the boundaries of what a comedy can do, with its mix of genre-bending episodes and a phenomenally talented and varied cast.