Tor.com ran a blog post a while ago called Community is the Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Show You're Not Watching. That, along with a deep longing for a Dungeons and Dragons campaign in our new home, led us to watch the D&D episode, which led us to watch every other episode in quick succession. I'm sick today, so I'm watching a LOT of Community.I really like community. It has some pretty great moments. It's like 30 Rock, and while its highs are not as high as in 30 Rock, the lows are also not as low and it's a little more consistent. And while I'd like to write a full review of the show, I'm not able to as I need to write a mini fashion review of the show. Here's what I'm now obsessed with:
Abed's clothes. Abed is the real SciFi/Fantasy fan, and so I love him just for that, but I also feel a deep and abiding love for his clothes. Abed's fashion concept revolves entirely around two things: tee shirts and cardigans. It's not unusual to own a huge tee shirt collection, but most people (myself included) own only one or two cardigans. Abed appears to own hundreds. Good for him.
I haven't seen such a committed costuming decision since Willow and her sweaters (which makes me want to go back to our age old statement that we'd make all of them for a Christmas tree).
Anyway, here are some tee shirt cardigan combinations I really like:Stripes. Nice. Lots of these cardigans are stripes, which is pretty great. Wide stripes like the ones on the left are hard to pull off, but since the colors are so close together, and since the gray stripes match the dark gray in his tee shirt, I think it's ok. The varied width of the stripes on the right is my favorite.
Here on the left and center the stripes are on the tee shirt, which is also great, especially because they're different colors. I love the rainbow stripes of the image I uploaded at the top of the page. On the left I love the eggplant and grays. The soft grays and purples would be winners under any circumstances, but the yellow there at the top of the shirt makes it. In the middle the blue totally changes the shirt. Color is also what I like about the combination on the right. Eggplant again, this time on the tee shirt, paired with really bold colors: blues, yellows, reds. I would never wear this. I suspect if I saw someone in this I'd question their decision. Here, I love it. Also, why does he always sit with his hands folded like that? I might start doing that.The above combinations are mostly blocks of color, except for the RVCA tee shirt on the top right. I love big swatches of color. The below tee shirt is pretty great because it says "Nashville," and I like Nashville. It's a pretty nice city.
So, to summarize: I have a cold, I took some screen shots and then did some research about "T-shirt" versus "tee shirt" in the OED and then searched the internet for pictures of Abed from community in some of his best tee shirt and cardigan combinations, because I think the tv-nerd dungeon master from a show about social rejects is the epitome of fashion.I am the saddest person you know.
7 comments:
I can't say enough good things about Community. The genre parody episodes (zombie movie, The Right Stuff, Rankin Bass animation) are especially just great.
They'd all swear high and low that it's a true ensemble show, and it is, but it has smartly drifted away from leading man Jeff to audience surrogate Abed. And this season they've really given the less-defined characters (Shirley, Chang, Pierce) some focus as well.
You want great non-sweater costuming, check out Abed's Xenomorph in the Halloween zombie episode.
Community! I might just make NTC my new place to blog exclusively about community. That's ok, right? I'm starting season 2 this weekend (so far I've seen season 1 and the D&D episode of 2).
So the question is: will it stay good? Is it safe to love? I say too late to cautious with regard to Abed. I'm in love.
The highlight of season 1, for me, was definitely Modern Warfare--the paintball episode. Like you said, genre parody. It was incredible. I wept to see Abed out so early. "Come with me if you don't want paint on your clothes" has got to be a tee shirt I can smartly pair with a cardigan some day.
I think Modern Warfare was the episode that won a lot of people over--and rightly so, it's so great! I love Community (as you probably know, from my constant pestering you to watch it...? The tshirts? The airplane with the "Watch Community" banner? The tattoo on my forehead?) and I think its biggest flaw is that Joel McHale can't carry a whole show--I think he's too sit-commy to be the lead on a sit-com. Michael is correct when he points out that the show has wisely moved away from Jeff as The Main Character.
Interestingly, I think your comparison to 30 Rock is almost exactly the opposite of how I think of the shows. To me, 30 Rock is more even, but never nearly as good as Community at its best. I think one of the things 30 Rock is pretty good at is self-reference/self-awareness, which it occasionally indulges in. Community on the other hand is constantly self-aware.
Oh somebody did a comparison of Britta and Liz Lemon. Let's see if I can find that. Here it is:
http://thebusysignal.com/2010/12/05/must-see-ladies/ This article misses the point a lot, but I like the paragraph that start with "It is Britta's insecurities..." Just skip to that part.
I'm so glad you linked to that blog post. It seems insane to me to tentatively suggest that Liz Lemon is a feminist character. Is she? Maybe I just don't see it as she is the butt of almost *every* joke on the show, largely for her looks (?!), her disinterest in sex, and her foolish beliefs about women, men, and equality. The author calls Lemon "confident and happy" which seems just crazy. Can a character be feminist if her primary purpose on the show is to allow viewers to laugh at feminism?
I liked: "Male characters are usually the ones who have the luxury of wrestling with identity crises." Woot! Bildungsroman for women! Except for the ending of season 1...
Love it! Especially the cardigan section. We're obsessed with Abed's cardigans. In fact, we made a Facebook group: facebook.com/AbedsCardigans
Check it out if you have time :)
Oh. My. God. I. Will.
I have not looked at this review since I wrote it. I would like to retract this passage:
"It's like 30 Rock, and while its highs are not as high as in 30 Rock, the lows are also not as low and it's a little more consistent."
It is not like 30 Rock. Its highs are much higher. The shows are not comparable. I apologize to anyone who might have been hurt by the comparison.
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