CULTUrE | DIGEST
TV COMMUNITY C
ommunity never had ratings. But it’s always had guts. Any given week, it could become a stopmotion cartoon, a paint-ball splattered action movie, a zombie thriller, a mob flick, a musical, a 16-bit videogame, legal procedural, or just a darn good sitcom. But parody was never its secret sauce. That would be ambition and perfectionism. If you listened closely, you could hear the sound of a showrunner cracking a whip, calling for yet another rewrite, demanding stronger character beats. That showrunner, Dan Harmon, was fired from his own show last spring. There were reasons he should have been: The show burned through its budget and staff. Harmon clashed visibly with the stars, executives and anyone who found his Twitter feed. Harmon deeply understood the nature of story. While the premise of an episode based on a Dungeons and Dragons game was a fun idea, its excellence comes because it’s one of the most tightly scripted half-hours I’ve ever seen. Every moment counts — drives the plot forward, establishes emotional character beats, establishes stakes or delivers a comedic set piece. It had clearly gone through countless drafts from multiple writers in that pursuit of perfection. He was the sort whose self-criticism outstripped even his considerable talent, who managed to brute-force brilliance through obsession and ambition. It might be too early to tell if the new showrunners can conjure the same sort of magic, but the early indications are dire.
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Even Abed might not be able to save Community. Last week’s season première was a complete and utter mess. It felt like the writers brainstormed hundreds of ideas for the premiere, then decided to just dump them all in. It crammed maybe five different stories and three or four genre parodies into a very small space. Several characters feel adrift from their established personalities. Several jokes land with they-really-should-have-knownbetter thuds. In other words, the writer’s room needed some jerk at the center, pulling stories together, cutting the excess, ripping up drafts, insisting they give the audience the Community they are capable of. It needed Dan Harmon. — DANIEL WALTERS Community • NBC • Thursdays • 8 pm
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For Your Consideration By Mike Bookey
BEVERAGE | You probably shouldn’t consume energy drinks. And you certainly shouldn’t be drinking discount energy drinks, but allow me to provide one exception. DIET WIRED B12 RUSH, delivered to your nervous system by way of a 16-ounce can, features 94 milligrams of caffeine — about as much as a cup of coffee. But what really gets you going is the dose of vitamin B12 that is 3,000 percent of what your body needs in a day. The taste is nothing special, but the I’m-goingto-lift-that-pickup-truck-off-thefreaking-ground sensation makes it totally worth your while.
TV | Really, the only thing you need to know about THE FOLLOWING is that Kevin Bacon plays the lead role. The story is essentially a casserole of murder mystery clichés baked in a thick sauce of corniness and middle-school level Edgar Allen Poe trivia, but for crying out loud, Kevin Bacon is in the damn thing. Yeah, it’s basically a network television take on Silence of the Lambs, but guess what Silence of the Lambs, didn’t have? Kevin Bacon, duh.
GAME | If you’ve been reckless enough to actually imbibe that $2 pint of chemical power and then watch a Fox network drama, you might need to balance it out with some worthwhile brain stimulation. BANANAGRAMS is essentially a board-less version of Scrabble in which one assembles connecting words (reading up-to-down, left-toright only). To win, you use all your little letter tiles before your opponents. It provides plenty of thinking and — short of getting Kevin Bacon on your guest list — is a way to revive a boring dinner party.
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FEBRUARY 14, 2013 INLANDER 31