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The most silly throwaway joke in the tag is that in the writers room, there's a story circle, but it's divided into sixths rather than eighths.

The Phantom Zone talk in the pilot pre-release thread reminded me of another issue I had with Krypton's destruction in general: the usual Superman story has it that Jor-El only built a prototype rocket big enough for his son and ran out of time to build a bigger one that could take the whole family. Even accepting that, once later writers introduced the Phantom Zone, what Jor-El shoulda done is put everyone on the planet in the PZ and put a robot with a PZ projector/gateway in the tiny rocket. There, now everyone is saved. (The 1986 reboot addressed why no one else left Krypton in a different way: long ago Kryptonians genetically altered themselves (or maybe someone else did it?) to be "genetically bound" to the planet, which meant none of them could survive away from Krypton. Jor-El fixed this for his son right before launching him off-planet.) (I wasn't sure where to put this; it didn't feel quite right for the Supergirl comics discussion cause it's more about Superman)

I dunno about that. Both times it looked like kind of a wormhole in space that Kara went into and out of.

Here's the preview for the season finale: https://screen.yahoo.com/community/watch-sneak-peek-community-episode-072616392.html

Well, it's not just a region of space, it's a place where time doesn't pass in the normal way, which is why Kara was 13 years older than Kal-El when they left Krypton and 13-20 years younger than him when she finally arrived on Earth. (Side note: obviously it would mean there's no show, but why not put the two of them in one slightly bigger rocket?)

That moment annoyed the shit out of me, mostly because of a part you left out: "How in one generation have guys gone from Jack Nicholson and Harrison Ford to..." (emphasis added) But Nicholson and Ford and DeNiro are 78, 72, and 71. Comparing them to the twenty-something tech bros she employs, that's a gap of two generations. Also, when DeNiro was 21, that would have been 1965. It was in fact his generation that ditched the suits of the 50s and previously for jeans, and bell bottoms, and leisure suits, and polyester...

Abed drives the Dean somewhere, in a Honda. A pretty brilliant product-placed webisode. There are more random clips here, including a bit from the 100th episode celebration.

I only know the term "meemaw" from media, not from real life, but googling says it can mean both great-grandmother and grandmother.

I feel like there's a dumb Hollywood rule that everything weird in a show has to have a single source. Heroes tried this with the eclipse for a while, Smallville had its meteor mutants, Flash does it now with the particle accelerator accident... Just cut it out. That shit works in movies, maybe, but in open-ended comics and I think in ongoing TV shows, the audience can accept that someone got superpowers from being an alien while someone else got it from drinking a specific soft drink, magic ring, etc. At least they don't pull this stunt in the MCU. Agreed that people in the building and in neighboring buildings might have noticed a falling person, maybe. But people on the street mostly wouldn't. Catco's in a pretty tall skyscraper, and I nor most people I know look up to the tops of buildings regularly. That said, it was also written dumb for another reason: all she had to do was start flying. Just lift off. Throwing herself off the building and then flying back up might have been a cheaper stunt (not sure) but it's dramatic overkill and comes off as dumb. Even so, it felt awkward with all those evasive ways of not saying it. "Him". "The big guy." It almost comes off as a dystopian world where Superman has decreed you can't say his name. I liked the action sequences. There might have been almost as much superhero action in this pilot as there was in Superman Returns. Benoist is good in the role, and I mostly like it. I'd be happy to watch a feminist show, I just wish this one wasn't super ham fisted about it.

Everyone's Garrett impressions are pretty good! And Elroy's bit about how to make white people comfortable was fantastic. The group became good wedding guests for bad reasons (stung pride, mostly), but OTOH they were being terrible before Garrett's mom told them off. As far as direction goes, this felt the least like the other documentary episodes. Esp since in a couple of scenes there were clearly at least two cameras rolling, but the story never acknowledged the second camera operator, unlike in the other doc episodes. Stacey, Garrett's wife, is Dan Harmon's wife IRL, and according to his Twitter, that was her real wedding dress on the show. Great tag. I feel like they've hinted at Jeff being a high functioning alcoholic before, but they hammered it pretty hard this time.

Sure, but to be fair, back in season one and three (?), Abed's Batman was based on Bale's, wasn't it?

At the Communicon panel this past fall, Dan Harmon answered a question about opening title sequences, saying in part that when they have the time to keep a single full-length sequence every time, then there's consistency -- and then it's really special when they change things up, as in a David Fincher episode... or in this case, a spy movie episode. Anyways, I was super on board as soon as the title sequence started. Or even before that, when Todd displayed some ninja skills (that flip!) and Starburns (Starburns is back!) faked him out with the ol' hat trick. And then all the repeat guest stars! Vicki! Garrett! The Koog!* * Seriously, Mitch Hurwitz is a genius, but he is a legitimately super-funny guy in front of the camera too and in an alternate universe I bet he could have done very well for himself as a comic actor. The action sequences were great as action sequences, and the final museum sequence was hilarious as well. Fantastic tag again. Like last episodes, it danced back and forth between funny and sad.

Here's a link to the pilot script. It's from quite early in the process. The show was still called "Tooken" back then, and there's a sheet at the end pitching ideas for future episodes of the show afterwards, some of which made it into the show and some of which didn't.

I still can't stop thinking about this exchange:

I loved the tag a lot. Other than that, it was an enjoyable episode, reasonably strong, but the AV Club review was definitely on the money about how the sensibilities of the sixth season are largely only Jeff's and Abed's.

As Texts from Superheroes points out, the Man In The Black Mask costume kind of hints at this though because it's a blindfold/mask. Yes, theoretically a sighted person could see through a porous mask design like that, but DD operates late at night in dimly lit places and that kind of mask limits visibility for anyone who relies on sight.

Slightly underwhelmed. I wanted a bigger and more convoluted grift run on Prof DeSalvo, and worse, the one we actually got could be compared to the heist in the end of S3... which admittedly failed, but that one was still bigger and funnier.

Harmon's gonna do a Q&A on Tumblr: CommunityTV.Tumblr.com/ask The tweet I read said to get questions in by May 6th.

Oh man, I'd forgotten about that s1 (?) tag where Troy and Abed made their own fan-movie for Kickpuncher.

I unno, Community's done a lot of episodes about what a messed up situation making Community is. See "Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples" (Dan is a crazy person), "Celebrity Pharmacology" (Chevy is an egomaniac who derails the show), "Documentary Filmmaking: Redux" (Dan is a crazy person 2)... I can't think of one from S5, though.

The fundamental problem with secret identities in comics and shows is that you need main characters to be kept in the dark or the audience won't care about it remaining a secret, but the reasons for doing so -- usually, it's to protect them -- look completely unjustified since, being main characters, they're constantly imperiled anyways because the stakes are lower when it's just random people in danger. Plus, I love comic books, but even the really talented artists often aren't that good at drawing different faces, so there's already a baked-in suspension of disbelief that, say, Lois Lane doesn't recognize Superman because he took off his glasses. Every man that age has Clark Kent's face! Which is something you just can't have in live action. I agree that Matt can't go as public as MCU Tony Stark did, because Matt is a lawyer and his crime-fighting is more down to earth and he's had to beat up (corrupt, mostly) police. But I lean towards the side that says he should at least tell Karen.

The Kingpin is canonically regular human with pronounced hobbies in weightlifting and martial arts. Then again, Daredevil only has regular human strength too. I've liked the fight scenes all season, but whenever anyone does one of those classic Daredevil bank shots -- even Stick with the bottle cap in "Stick" -- something about the cinematography of those shots makes it kinda hard to follow for me. I'm never quite sure of what just happened. As well, I guess the transforming billy clubs that snap together and twist apart are also classic Daredevil, but they didn't quite work for me either in the final fight. There seemed to be no reason Matt kept switching them into two clubs or one longer club.

You didn't think Chang's PowerPoint presentation was a thing of genius? Cause I thought it was really, really solid work.

Though if NBC had renewed the show, it still wouldn't be 22 minutes. Just in the five years Community had been on NBC, the network had slowly been ratcheting down the amount of airtime the show got. I think by the fifth season it was more like 21:30?I do think they could stand to tighten up the editing a bit, but on the other hand, it's nice that bits like Chang's PowerPoint presentation and Frankie's terrific run of insulting the Dean have room to breathe.

By the way, what a bit of white privilege*: Foggy can walk around Hell's Kitchen - which the show repeatedly tells us is a grimy slum (kinda like the real-life 70s and 80s neighborhood and not so much the current Hell's Kitchen) - just openly carrying a baseball bat, and no one stops him or thinks he's a bad guy. Yes, it also helps that he's wearing a suit and has no (visible) tattoos, I guess. * and also main character privilege, etc.