Summer TV Binge: COMMUNITY

I was a big fan of Community from the start, and I watched every single episode religiously, even as NBC moved it around and constantly threatened cancellation and fired Dan Harmon then brought him back and the show suffered huge bouts of inconsistency. I stuck by it. I loved it anyway. I mean, I didn’t love the G.I. Joe episode. That was terrible. And I was never a huge fan of Chang (Ken Jeong), if only because it was far too easy and too tempting to overuse him. And I’ve missed Troy (Donald Glover) terribly since he left a few seasons ago. But I still stuck with it because the stuff it was great at was SO GREAT. I could not, however, follow it to weekly viewing on Yahoo! Screen, because I didn’t even know Yahoo! Screen was a thing.

It turns out, Yahoo! Screen is a thing, and not just an alternate timeline thing. It really exists, and Community season six really did air on it — weekly, even, instead of all being released at once like Netflix and Amazon do. I chose to watch it in two big chunks, half at mid-season and half a few weeks back, well after the final episode dropped. And I’m glad I did, even if it wasn’t the same.

Season six of Community sees the cocky Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) still leading the rag-tag study group, though now only three other original members still remain — still students, apparently, though Jeff is now faculty. It’s also no longer a study group, but a Save Greendale committee. (Their community college has long been on the brink of disaster, much like the show itself.) To round out the table, Chang has been given a permanent seat (though he’s still somewhat a group outcast, which I appreciate), and two new faces have joined the gang in Elroy (Keith David), an old programming whiz who lost touch with the advances in his field and has enrolled in classes, and Frankie (Paget Brewster), a buy-the-book straight face (with her own quirkiness) administrator there to balance the books — and to offset the absurdity of everyone else. The hilariously bizarre Dean Pelton (Jim Rash) is around more too — both more and less frivolous than he’s been in the past.

As for the other returning regulars, in many ways they too are drastically different from who they were originally, yet somehow without seeming to have advanced much in their lives. Annie (Alison Brie) is no less neurotic and driven, really, even if she acts more as a mother of the group now. And Abed (Danny Pudi) is still completely obsessed with framing everything like a movie or a TV episode, despite being slightly more human in his interactions. Only Britta (Gillian Jacobs) is more of a mess than she was at the start of the show, but that’s an evolution the show has engineered for many seasons, not just this one. But even as in many ways the characters have become caricatures and the show has become a gimmicky shell of its former, whip-smart and clever self, I still really appreciated this final season send-off.

The show was still funny in its sixth season, mind you; it hadn’t lost that. And at the end they declared that Greendale had indeed been saved, again using the school as a metaphor for the show and going out the way they wanted. There was a sense of closure with this season that definitely felt lacking for me in all the previous ones. Nothing they did will ever live up to the original “Modern Warfare” or Annie’s Boobs or “Troy and Abed in the Morning” or the built-specifically-for-me alternate timelines episode “Remedial Chaos Theory,” but season six was still a bunch of goofy fun. And at the end Annie took an FBI internship and she and Jeff kissed goodbye in a way that wasn’t creepy despite them being portrayed as having a drastic age gap at the beginning of the series, and I sighed a happy sigh of satisfaction, which not many series finales accomplish. So I guess I have Yahoo! Screen to thank for that.

Community season six is available to watch on Yahoo! Screen, which I promise is a real thing. All previous seasons are available on Hulu.

MY MOVIE SHELF: The Princess and the Frog

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 24 Days to go: 19

Movie #416:  The Princess and the Frog

Having spent four days in New Orleans for my birthday this year, I am newly in love with everything to do with the city. Even the tiniest visual reference fills my heart with joyful memories of my time there. (Seriously, if you haven’t been, go. “Everybody that’s got a soul in them loves New Orleans.”)

As it turns out, this goes for cartoons as well. The Princess and the Frog takes place in New Orleans, and a lot of it is evocative of the area. There are the galleries on all the buildings, the beignets Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) makes, and the jazz musicians on the streets, though I find it’s the little things, like street signs in the French Quarter, that really bring the city to life for me. That might seem excessive to some, but I’m a woman who has read my favorite book, set in New Orleans, more times than I can count. Any reference to the city brings all those images home to me.

The Princess and the Frog is not a story inherently of New Orleans, so I give a lot of credit to Disney for finding a way to tell that story in this setting and making it all seem so organic. Perhaps it’s the way frogs fit so easily into the world of the bayou, allowing for wonderful characters like Louis (Michael-Leon Wooley) the trumpet-playing alligator, Mama Odie (Jenifer Lewis) the blind bayou witch woman, and Ray (Jim Cummings) the Cajun lightning bug in love with the evening star. Or maybe it’s the way the traditions of voodoo and black magic (Keith David’s Dr. Facilier is a terrifying villain, having mastered dark sorcery) fit into the idea of people turning to frogs. Whatever it is, though, it works, and the two separate entities blend seamlessly together, as if the tale of the frog prince was always one of the swamp lands.

Another way the movie assimilates the culture of New Orleans is through its music, almost all of which has a distinctly jazz or zydeco feel. And to highlight the music even further, the movie seems to take place in the Jazz Age of the 1920s, when music and night spots flourished in the area, aligning with Tiana’s dream of owning one such hopping establishment with music and food and elegance galore.

Of course, the main point of the story is not the setting but the idea of a work-life balance. Tiana is too focused on having her restaurant, and while her work ethic is admirable, it’s an empty dream without love and joy in your life and someone to share it with. Naveen (Bruno Campos) is on the other extreme, shirking all forms of work and responsibility and commitment in favor of free-wheeling laziness, relaxation, and entertainment. It turns out, though, that neither one of those strategies is all that fruitful or fulfilling, and so the two balance each other out. Tiana gives Naveen something to work for, and Naveen brings joy and light into Tiana’s life.

I also really love the small detail that Charlotte (Jennifer Cody) is not a rival of Tiana’s and doesn’t react with jealousy when it turns out Naveen loves Tiana instead of Charlotte. We need more of that positive, supportive type of friendship represented in films as far as I’m concerned, even if they’re animated.