Category Archives: 2000s

Gilmore Girls

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Despite being off the air for two years now, Gilmore Girls still has a strong following, with reruns airing on ABC Family, and plenty of discussion in the blogosphere. This highly successful show must have started off on the right foot, right?

The pilot is thin on actual plot. It’s the kind of pilot that focuses on setting up a world in which a show will take place. I’d say the writers’ intention here was simply to train the audience in how to listen to these characters speak. The rapid fire dialogue filled with nonstop, sometimes obscure, pop culture references, is what makes someone either love or hate this show. When Rory, the cute, 16-year-old protagonist meets a guy, Dean (Jared Padalecki, now on Supernatural), she interrupts her own incessant babbling to say, “I never talk this much.” Already, only a few minutes into this pilot, we know that can’t possibly be true.

The opening scene in which Rory (Alexis Bledel) and her also cute mother, Lorelei (Lauren Graham) sit at the diner discussing a scattershot array of topics heavily weighted toward lip gloss, leaves me feeling a little empty. They come off as vapid girly-girls. Soon enough, though, we find out that Rory reads a lot of classic literature—a character trait that seems forced at this stage. The diner is run by a less-than-friendly guy in a ball cap named Luke who, it is hinted, has the hots for Lorelei. Lorelei is immediately portrayed as the “best friend” type of mom, acting as a pal to her daughter and letting her indulge a caffeine addiction. We see her limits, though, when she runs a flirtatious adult male away from Rory.

So, we are introduced to the quaint New England town of Star’s Hollow, Connecticut, which looks like the next studio lot tour could wander through the background at any moment. There’s the diner—we know it’s important since the episode both begins and ends there—and there’s a very busy inn, where Lorelei works, and naturally, a public school. We find out quickly that everybody knows everybody. Having a new kid in school, in this case Dean, is always a handy device for introducing characters and locations.

The most interesting character is Rory’s Korean best friend, Lane, whose parents are already planning her betrothal to a fiscally promising young man, and who changes clothes on her way to school so her mother doesn’t see her in a Woodstock T-shirt. Her ultra-conservative mother and Lorelei’s friend Sookie are both funny characters, but fall into the common pilot trap of making everyone a stereotype.

The same is true of Lorelei’s parents, rich socialites who live half an hour away, and who have been largely estranged from their offspring. Snarkiness appears to be matrilineal. It is all Lorelei can do to swallow her pride and ask them for the money to send Rory to a private school. I have to wonder, why private school? Star’s Hollow doesn’t exactly seem like the kind of place where metal detectors or drug dogs are de riguer in the high school, and Lorelei is portrayed as a strong, down-to-earth type for whom public school should be good enough. If growing up Gilmore didn’t lead to the life she wanted for herself, why does she want it for her daughter? But, we have to accept the lure of private school to care whether Lorelei can come to an agreement with her parents, and whether Rory can tear herself from her new crush. And, I know teenage girls are fickle—I was one—but she’s really so in love with a guy she talked to for 20 minutes that she is ready to change her whole life’s plan and jeopardize her best pals relationship with her mother?

The whole thing ends with a sickeningly cute exchange.

Luke: You do not want to grow up to be like your mom.

Rory: Sorry. Too late.

Based on this pilot, I hate this show. I watched the last couple of seasons, and found it pretty entertaining. The more mature version of Rory was interesting, her success in college enviable. The teenybopper version, however, and her teenybopper-past-her-expiration-date mom were just annoying. Sorry, fans, I know you are plentiful, but this pilot promises just another teen drama about nothing.

Veronica Mars

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This is hard for me to believe, but I had never seen the pilot episode of Veronica Mars in its entirety until today. I started watching in prime time with episode 1.2—with a healthy dose of cynicism—when I was assigned to write about it for a local paper and interview Enrico Colantoni. I had written it off in advance as another Dawson’s Creek-type teen drama. But I fell in love. VM ended up being the first show I can remember that I made sure not to miss, and re-watched episodes, and talked about to friends and co-workers. I worked as an extra on it twice, and an episode was taped where I work. I love this show. And I love pilots. So I have no logical explanation for why I’ve never seen episode 1.1 until now. I write about it with full knowledge of who killed Lily, and all the other secrets that will be revealed, which makes the early hints that much more exciting.

Right away, the theme gritty song, “We Used to be Friends,” grabs you. (Hated when they remixed it for Season 3.) Veronica gives us a succinct and color introduction to Neptune, the town where she lives. It’s populated with the over-privileged and those who work for them.

She’s tenacious: She alone steps forward to help a boy who’s been taped, naked, to a flagpole in front of the high school. She’s smart: She demonstrates thorough understanding of the assigned reading even though she’s dozing in English class. She’s a smartass: When cops come to search her locker, she’s comfortable telling their dog to back off. She’s bitter: Her family isn’t rich and important like the others in town. The bitterness continues as Veronica explains how she used to be in with the cool crowd. Now it looks like her only friend is the new kid, Wallace—the one she freed from the flagpole. There a couple of blue-tinged flashbacks to reveal what her life used to be like, full of parties and BFFs.

After life at school, we see life at work; Veronica’s dad’s P.I. office. Her dad, Keith used to be the town’s Sheriff. (There are lots of “used-to-bes,” in keeping with the theme song.) Currently, V. is trailing Jake Kane on assignment from his suspicious wife. Veronica used to date their son Duncan, and her best friend was their daughter Lily. Lily was murdered, Keith accused Mr. Kane but couldn’t prove anything, was removed from office by recall, and V.’s mom left them. To add insult to injury, people believe it was Keith who leaked a video of the crime scene all over the internet.

The new sheriff immediately found evidence incriminating a Kane employee, and the matter was put to uneasy rest. Also, Lily’s boyfriend, the rich, spoiled bad boy Logan Echolls really, really hates V. In another subplot, V. reveals that she lost her virginity while roofied at some party the year before. This won’t be unraveled until the end of Season 2, but clues are revealed in several episodes along the way. I love when a show asks for a viewer’s long term commitment for payoff.

But wait, there’s more. V.’s mom appears to be shacking up with Jake Kane. The Veronica-Wallace friendship is a little sappy, but it lets the audience see that V. still has a heart, and gives us a look at her mad P.I. skills and twisted sense of humor. She ends up with the local biker gang in her camp, defending her from Logan. It’s a delightfully tangled web. Every little detail will come back in later episodes. Of course, you don’t know that. But the kicker: Keith is still investigating Lily’s murder. That alone lets us know there are plenty of juicy revelations to look forward to.

V. leaves us with this declaration: “I will find out what really happened.” Rest assured, she will.

Weird note: I once saw the first 10 minutes or so of this episode online (in French) and the scene where V. is camped outside the Camelot Motel in her car was the cold open. Here there is no cold open, and that scene takes place mid-episode. Hm.

Here’s an article I wrote about this show early in its run, including an interview with Enrico Colantoni.

UPDATE 8/14/10: For a more thorough analysis of this blog then you probably ever dreamed of, check out this blog.

Pushing Daisies

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Pushing Daisies KeyartWe know in an instant that Pushing Daisies is going to be an unusual show. The first image we see is of an endless field of bright yellow flowers capped by an impossibly blue sky. A narrator with a deep, storyteller voice tells us that the little boy and his dog running through the flowers are Ned and Digby, along with their ages, down to the minute.

Digby is dramatically run down by a truck, but when Ned touches him, more with curiosity than sadness, the dog jumps up fully alive. Ned, we are told, has the ability to bring dead things back to life. Now pay attention. His mom is struck dead by on the kitchen floor by an aneurysm. Ned brings her back to life. Exactly one minute later, the man across the street drops dead. The dead guy’s daughter is Chuck, the apple of Ned’s eye. When Ned hugs his mom good night, she dies. Again. It’s a complicated gift, and if you missed this first three minutes, I doubt you would make much sense out of the show later on. One touch brings someone back to life, a second kills them. If the person is kept alive for more than one minute, someone nearby dies is his stead.

Fast forward to present day. Ned (the adorable Lee Pace) owns a pie shop. Emerson Cod (Chi McBride), a customer and a private investigator, has recruited Ned to help him investigate murders. It’s a big—and refreshing—leap from the normal cop-with-an-unusual-partner show. Kristen Chenoweth plays the pixie-like waitress Olive, who has a thing for Ned.

Soon, we see Ned and Emerson in action, as Ned sets his watch alarm for one minute and wakes a dead guy to find out how he got that way. Bam, the mystery is solved, and the audience has a sense of how the show will go.

Things become more complicated, however, when the next murder victim turns out to be Chuck (Anna Friel, kind of a British Zooey Deschanel–that’s a good thing), Ned’s childhood crush. He wakes her; she’s spunky, she’s charming, and reveals that the two of them were each other’s first kiss. Awww… Ned can’t bring himself to re-kill her, so after a minute, she is stuck between life and death for good. What really sucks is Ned has found the love of his life and he can’t touch her. Great dramatic tension, if difficult to believe.

The rest of the pilot (titled “Pie-lette”) involves solving Chuck’s murder, and protecting her aunts, Vivian and Lillian, from the killer. The aunt’s back story is that they are former synchronized swimming stars until one lost an eye, and now they are agoraphobics with a penchant for cheese.

To love this show requires buying fully into the premise. You have to treat it like the beautiful storybook that it is and not over-think reality. The characters talk at Gilmore Girls speed, and plays on words fly back and forth like ping-pong balls. Every detail matters. There is a sort of 1950s aesthetic in both the language and the look. Color in this show is a character in itself. Everywhere there are brighter-than-life hues, from the bulbous cherry red lamps in the pie shop to Olive’s floral print wallpaper and matching pajamas.

As with creator Bryan Fuller’s other shows, Dead Like Me and Wonderfalls, not enough people apparently got it. It was, however, nominated for several Emmys, winning for Directing, Editing, Music Composition (2008), Art Direction, Make-up, Costumes, and Best Supporting Actress—Kristen Chenoweth (2009). Honestly, it was one of those impossible to sustain premises, much like in the aforementioned shows, that couldn’t work forever. But the Pie-lette is delicious.

Sex and the City

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I have long held mixed feelings about Sex and the City. I never watched it regularly, but caught it here and there. There is something about it that holds my interest and makes me want to watch reruns that I catch while flipping channels; maybe it’s the gorgeous clothes, the excitement of New York City. At the same time, there is something that I really hate about this show. It’s a gut feeling; something primal. The feminist in me screams that something is very wrong, despite the fact that the show purports to be about independent, sexually liberated women.

To get to the bottom of this I decided to watch the pilot, which I had never seen before. I’m going to talk about the pilot as if I’ve never seen another episode, and this is all new. It’s June 1998. Sarah Jessica Parker is known to me as the chick from Girls Just Want to Have Fun… (cue flashback fx)

A narrator, our protagonist, speaks to the audience in voiceover. The story starts out seeming to be about an English journalist who moves to New York and finds love, then loses it. She turns out to be a sort of everywoman, representing single life in today’s New York… and the stereotypes start flowing. Women all want to get married, men don’t. Women are really, really picky about men. All single women are willing to spend $400 on a pair of designer shoes (news to me, but I don’t live in New York).

The information that will ostensibly form the rules of this TV world is delivered in the form of brief monologues by various New Yorkers. We know which ones are going to become regular characters, because they get their names, job titles, and marital status subtitled on the screen. The only guy who has anything remotely non-assholish to say about women, is naturally a computer geek with glasses and awful hair. It’s implicit that single women are friends only with other single women. Or a token gay man.

But, we’re told, a new age is dawning. In 1998, women “get” to treat men as sex objects. Objectification is a gift you give yourself. The four main female characters form a continuum of thought on this subject from bang-anything-that-moves to romance-is-still-possible. They talk about it and talk about it.

At the midpoint, our main character has sex “like a man,” getting hers with someone she hardly knows and then leaving with a thin excuse before he is satisfied. She is chagrined to find out, a few days later, that he’s okay with it. None of the other women fare too well on this particular evening, either. So we’re told that this is what the show is going to be about: women who try to be like men, only to find out that they’re still, you know, women. Through it all, Carrie keeps bumping into a business mogul whose name I don’t ever remember hearing, so we figure this will be a source of sexual tension to last the season, if not the series.

And what’s with all the smoking? Maybe it’s a New York thing. There was that fad in the 90s of women smoking cigars, but is Kim Cattrall with a giant stogie hanging out of her mouth attractive to anyone? At least to anyone who would watch a girl power show?

So here it is, the problem. The show is not really about single life in New York. It’s about the single life of upwardly mobile, hot women with hundreds of dollars to blow on shoes, who feel they’re being empowered by having sex. Now, whether or not promiscuous sex is empowering is, I suppose, a matter of personal opinion. And, Carrie very responsibly has a purseful of ribbed condoms, so we can supposedly write off concerns about safety. But are there only extremes? Hook the guy and start reeling, or simply hook up? We hope the show will be about finding the balance.

My Five Favorite Pilots of All Time (So Far)

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This is no attempt to list the “best five pilots of all time,” as there are many thousands of pilots I have not seen (yet!) but I felt like a list was called for. Perhaps it will change in time… who knows.

In no particular order, these are my five favorite pilots.

1. The Simpsons

The pilot was also a Christmas special. What’s not to love? Having never seen the Tracy Ullman Show, I at this point only knew the yellow-skinned quintet as “the Butterfinger family.” Their commercials were funny, so why not check out their holiday antics? Over 20 years later, the pilot, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire,” still holds up. There was something a little looser, a little wackier about the Simpsons in those days, in the animation, the voices, and the story lines. You can make a drinking game out of the continuity problems. But what better setting in which to teach us all we need to know about a TV family than their Christmas holidays, split between a school recital, a shopping mall, and a dog track? Priceless.

Memorable line: “If TV has taught me anything, it’s that miracles always happen to poor kids at Christmas. It happened to Tiny Tim, it happened to Charlie Brown, it happened to the Smurfs, and it’s gonna happen to us!” (Quoted that from memory, thank you very much.)

2. Heroes

This was show that you HAD to keep watching. Not so much these days, but that pilot was so, just, wow. Peter was immediately endearing, and you’re thinking he might just not be crazy in wondering if he can fly. And Claire throws herself off that railroad trellis. And Hiro is so darned determined to be a super hero. Oh, and I guess the Jessica/Niki eye candy didn’t hurt either if you happened to be male. You were like “where is this thing going?” We had seen super hero shows before, but not like this. On a side note, the actual pilot, which was screened at ComicCon and is availble on DVD, is not as good. Ted was a terrorist. Much too low-hanging fruit for such a creative show.

3. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

See my previous entry on why this rocks.

4. King of the Hill

Okay, I know you’re like, “really?” The show, despite running for 10 years, went steadily downhill, either on its own or by comparison to other emerging animated entertainment that has raised the bar considerably. But it was fresh and unique. I can remember sitting around at school the day after the pilot aired and talking about it, so it obviously made an impression on people. It wasn’t the Simpsons, and it certainly wasn’t Beavis and Butthead, Mike Judge’s previous show. It walked a line between edgy and family friendly. That moment when Joseph appears on screen and you see he looks nothing like his white father and a lot like his mother’s Native American “friend” is ROTFL-funny.

5. Glee

I laughed. I cried. It was better than Cats—way better; Cats is lame. This is musical theatre for the 21st century. While I can just picture the starry-eyed teenagers at home shrieking over Finn, or wanting to sing just like Rachel, for us grown-ups, there’s the Emma-Will-Terri love triangle. (And isn’t it weird how there are three former Heroes cast members in this completely different show?) The pilot did a great job of capturing the whole mood of this show and now, having seen the five additional episodes to have aired, it was right on track. It had the snark of Veronica Mars, the pathos of My So-Called Life, and the embarrassing-to-watch moments of The Office. It’s a feel-good show, but it’s not sappy. Okay, it’s sappy. But not in a Cats way. More in a Wicked way.

Cougar Town

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It’s easy to think you have this show all figured out based on the title and a few teasers. I wanted to give it a chance to defy my expectations. I prepared to be offended by sexist/ageist jokes.

I must say it’s refreshing to hear women be obnoxiously sexist, and not under the guise of feminism like those materialistic know-it-alls on Sex in the City. This was genuinely funny. And the name “Cougar Town” actually refers to the high school football field, although the double meaning comes through loud and clear.

Courteney Cox, as Jules, is a riot. She is very close to the Courtney Cox we remember from Friends, with a little older-and-wiser edge. Even though she is still gorgeous, I think it’s great that the show opens with her checking out all her imperfections in the mirror. (I saw an interview where she confirmed that is it’s really her body we see.) This from the actress who was reportedly a size 0 when we knew her as Monica Gellar. Also, I was delighted to see Christa Miller of Scrubs, who must have majored in snarkiness in drama school.

I love that, despite her purported intentions to go all cougar on the boys of her community, Jules is actually really uncomfortable when a man comes a-calling. She retains some dignity this way; she’s not Stiffler’s mom. Plus, we’re set up from the first few minutes to expect that she’s going to fall for her divorced, similarly-aged neighbor.

The poor son. His mother’s cleavage is all over town on real estate posters and his dad is cutting the lawn at his high school. We don’t worry about him too much, though—what teenager isn’t embarrassed by their parents? Jules shows that she does care by standing up for him towards the end.

By the time Jules ends the episode by hitting the sheets with a 20-something, we’ve gotten to know her. I for one felt like she was just trying to enjoy life, not that she has turned into some sort of sexual predator, as the term “cougar” might imply. If this show lasts as long as Friends, however, we should hope that she won’t spend the entire decade on the prowl. It could get old.

Memorable lines: “Give me twenty bucks. I’ll buy you a drink.”

[Son taking banana away from mom] “You’re not allowed to eat these any more.”

Dead Like Me vs. Wonderfalls

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Dead Like Me castThe pilots of Dead Like Me and Wonderfalls warrant an old-fashioned, English class compare-and-contrast. Both were created by Bryan Fuller, who has a clearly defined style and a cult following. Despite being a consulting producer on the awesome first season of Heroes, Fuller seems to have earned a reputation as the creator of brilliant but cancelled shows.

Each of these two shows could be called a “genre” show. Or as an acquaintance of mine put it, “the kind of show that people who go to ComicCon like.” Their premises required a strong suspension of disbelief, which probably would have been strained over the course of three, four, five seasons. (Just look at Heroes. How many times is the world going to need saving, for Christ’s sake?)

Dead Like Me and Wonderfalls both feature young, smart, misanthropic, take-no-shit, female protagonists with male-sounding names. By the ends of their respective pilots, both George of D.L.M. and Jaye of Wonderfalls have acquired super powers. Okay, powers. Neither of them understands why she was chosen to wield these dubious abilities.

Jaye is given assignments by inanimate animals come-to-life. George is tasked with helping souls leave the bodies people who die in grisly accidents. Both start off “refusing the call,” a step in the hero’s journey, but find that acceptance is not optional. Each has the Gen-Y apathetic thing down pat. The pilots find Jaye using her degree from Brown to work an hourly retail job, and George, a college drop-out, grudgingly accepting a job at a temp agency.

Both shows introduce casts of relative unknowns, with the exception being Mandy Patinkin in D.L.M. The supporting characters are all pretty flawed, but you might say the ones on Wonderfalls have more redeeming qualities. Those on D.L.M., being dead, have no incentive to overcome their narcissism, substance abuse issues, or general assholery. (Not that they’re not likeable.) Even George’s parents, still alive, are jerks. This is a good place to mention that each protagonist is completely misunderstood by her upper middle-class parents.

Each show opens with a legend; the Maid of the Mist and the frog that unleashed death. Both skirt religion despite having supernatural themes. (George mentions god in the legend, but specifies that it’s with a lower case “g.”) Both shows achieve, somehow, a moral middle ground. We end each pilot wondering whether the transferring of souls or the obedience to talking chotzkies is good or bad. There are no villains, and our heroes aren’t particularly heroic. Things just are as they are. Destiny. Maybe that is why these shows didn’t generate sufficient viewer interest. People like black and white.

Both shows have a “look” that I don’t know enough about television technology to explain properly. Something about the lighting and camera work reminds you that you’re not dealing with Desperate Housewives.

Now for a few differences. D.L.M. uses a New Kid on the Block approach, where the world of the show (death) already exists, and the character is introduced to it along with the audience. Since the character is clueless, everything can be explained without making the script feel too heavy with exposition. Wonderfalls jumps right in. Something changes in the life of the protagonist on this particular day, and we don’t know why it happens when it does. We don’t understand what is happening any more than she does. You have to stick with Wonderfalls for a while to figure it out, a quality I personally enjoy in a show.

D.L.M. had the advantage of being on cable. You just know both of these protagonists have potty mouths, but only George gets the satisfaction of throwing the “f” word around. And it’s so damn dark. The pilot finds George having to reap a kindergardener. A kindergardener. Yet, amidst all the death—the body count is at least 5 in this one episode—the pilot ends on a hopeful note. In death, George may find a way to make peace with her family and her identity.

Memorable quote: “I excel at not giving a shit.” – George

Wonderfalls

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WonderfallsWonderfalls aired for just four weeks in spring 2004. So clever, so misunderstood; much like the show’s heroine. It was created by Bryan Fuller, the man behind Dead Like Me.

We open with the legend of the “Maid of the Mist,” a Native American Princess who sacrificed herself to Niagara Falls to satisfy an angry god. This tale of destiny will become a theme of sorts. The story is recounted by protagonist Jaye (Caroline Dhavernas), an apathetic, 24-year-old sales clerk at a gift shop at the falls.

Next, we have the convenient plot device of an old high school classmate dropping by. This gives the audience the chance to learn that Jaye was uncool in high school, majored in Philosophy in college, and has wound up “over-educated and unemployable.”

We get to the show’s premise when a tiny wax lion figurine come to life and talks to Jaye. She faints, and soon her WASPy family swoops in to shunt her off to a shrink. At the shrink’s office, a monkey-shaped bookend follows suit with the lion figure.

And, we’re off. Inanimate objects talk to this chick. We’re never told exactly why—in the pilot or ever. Is she crazy? Gifted? A modern version of the Maid of the Mist? Dr. Dolittle meets Joan of Arc? Do these talking things want her to commit good or evil? We keep watching to figure it out. It’s all so weird, and coupled with the snarky dialogue, this makes for engaging viewing. 

The love interest character, Eric (Tyron Leito, lately of Being Erica), has an intriguing back story, too. He has run away from his cheating new wife to hide behind a bar in Niagara Falls. Will he go home? Will his wife track him down? Will he fall for Jaye? More importantly, will she fall for him, or will she be too distracted by her newfound powers/psychosis?

The look of this show is great. Shot on location, it feels very real and unglamorized. You can practically feel the damp, cold weather. The grey backdrop makes the animated figures and shlocky, colorful souvenir shop pop.

By the end of the pilot, Jaye loses a promotion to a mouth-breathing dork, gets yelled at by a customer, makes a UPS guy cry and later, almost kills him, gets arrested for disorderly conduct, is busted stealing from the shrink, and has her mother advise her to “do something” with her hair. It’s a pretty shitty week. Some good comes out of it; Jaye has a bonding moment with her polar opposite sister, and begins to accept was is apparently her destiny.

People love an underdog. Especially one with smarts and a matching smart mouth. It all makes Jaye a great character and her journey a fun one. Unfortunately, it didn’t last. The premise was probably too far-fetched to be sustainable beyond one season, anyway.

Here’s the UNAIRED pilot.

Lamenting Cancelled Shows

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Image from Cheezburger.com

There are lots of lists floating around out there of TV shows that were cancelled before their time, but it does seem that Fox is responsible for a disproportionate number of them. Family Guy has alluded to this trend at least twice (I expect they’re already writing jokes about the cancellation of The Cleveland Show, but more on that later.) Topless Robot recently posted their list of the 20 Greatest Show Cancelled by Fox Before Their Time.

I have not seen all of the shows on the list—I don’t even remember a couple of them—but that’s part of the fun in lamenting cancelled shows. You feel a certain sense of ownership when you can say you just loved a show, and most people have never heard of it. Case in point, Wonderfalls, which ranks #7. This was a brilliant, clever, funny show by the guy behind Dead Like Me and Pushing Daises–other brilliant, cancelled shows. (Oh, Bryan Fuller, you’re so misunderstood.) Given that it only aired for four weeks before being pulled, it’s understandable that it is little remembered. There were 13 episodes filmed, though, and they are available on DVD. A post on the Wonderfalls pilot is high on my to-do list.

I have to wholeheartedly agree with Topless Robot’s # 1 and 2 picks, Firefly and Futurama, respectively. Both had fantastic pilots that pulled the viewer into a whole new world. Both lived beyond cancellation, Firefly as the film Serenity, and Futurama in a series of straight-to-DVD movies and a forthcoming reincarnation on the Cartoon Network. And any Comic-Con attendee can tell you both of these properties inspire mad loyalty from fans. So check back here in the future for posts on all three of these kickass shows.

Community

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So, how about a brand, spanking new show? Community, which premiered September 17, is set at Greendale Community College, and apparently designed to exploit every stereotype you ever had about community college.

The school’s Dean, incompetent from the very first moment of the show, serves as a fitting introductory device, asking, “What is community college?” As he names off the different “types” found in a community college, the camera shows us each principal character, matching those descriptions.

The expositional responsibility soon shifts to Jeff (Joel McHale), a lawyer who is going back to school to right some old wrongs:

“I thought you had a Bachelor’s from Columbia.”

“Well now I have to get one from America.”

Ba-dump, bump.

Jeff forms a fake study group to hit on a hot girl, and it quickly turns into a real study group, where we get to have all misfits from the various social groups thrown together. We get a diversity officer’s wet dream of colors, ages, and genders. (Thankfully, there’s no wheelchair-bound guy to give an excuse for easy disabled jokes.) There’s no reason to believe this group of people would willfully stay together. It’s one of those premises you just have to accept to get on with the show.

The thing is, Jeff thinks he’s got community college in the bag with an old client/friend, Professor Duncan (The Daily Show’s hilarious John Oliver), running the department, who’s going to get him the answers to every test. But Duncan wants to teach Jeff a lesson in integrity. So Jeff has no answers, and he ends up having to stay with the group.

If nothing else, the episode deserves credit for its Breakfast Club references and for being dedicated to the recently departed John Hughes.

It’s a pretty typical pilot. It’s got the “New Kid on the Block” thing going for it, where it’s everybody’s first day in a new universe, so the audience gets introduced to everyone/thing along with the characters. Nobody has any gigantic hurdles set up for them, though. Ostensibly, we’ll get to each one’s inner turmoil in later episodes. I can’t say I’m dying to find out about those. We’ll see if it lasts.