I caught the Paul Reiser show. The ads and the opening monologue played shamelessly on my nostagia for Mad About You and I fell victim. It was pretty funny. I will try to check it out again. It's got a good lead in with Community.

Cool. glad to hear it.

Anyone else watch Happy Endings on ABC? I was pleasantly surprised.

I did. And ditto.

Did anyone think last night's Community had a pat moral message? I think Troy and Red Dragon being rewarded for their lying really erases any after-school specialness of the whole thing--it was mocking the vapidity of the acting process and of Pierce in general.

I didn't think it had a pat moral message--I just didn't think it was very funny.

I liked it, I didn't love it. And the tag was very disappointing. I want quality Troy+Abed hijinx, thanks, not a song that went on too long and didn't do anything interesting.

I didn't hate it, but it was Pierce heavy, and it was the first one I watched in almost real time after mainlining the entire run, so it had a lot of expectations to live up to.

Vortex,

re: Reiser show:

Either driven away by early critical drubbings or their lingering hostilities over The Thing About My Folks, audiences rejected en masse the debut of NBC’s The Paul Reiser Show. The sitcom—a Curb Your Enthusiasm Lite that actually brought in Larry David for a cameo in hopes of driving that connection home—ended up being the network’s lowest-rated in-season comedy premiere ever, finishing well behind a rerun of Rules Of Engagement and The CW’s The Vampire Diaries with a tiny 1.1 rating in the 18-49 demographic and pulling in only 3.3 million viewers. Even reruns of Family Guy on TBS scored higher 18-49 numbers, which has to be embarrassing for the network. Still, while the show could definitely use some improvement (cutting Reiser’s entourage down to just one wacky sitcom archetype maybe?), it probably didn’t help that its lead-in was also the lowest-rated episode of Community ever, or the fact that NBC did almost nothing to promote it. But, ah, now it probably won’t have to bother.

Someone elsewhere was complaining that everyone learnt a lesson. Abed doesn't learn a lesson. Abed doesn't change. I think that's a show premise, from the commentaries. Pierce doesn't learn a lesson-his bad behaviour is essentially rewarded. Troy is rewarded equally for bad behaviour as for good, and pays precisely no penalty. There's no indication that Britta won't make the same mistake again.

Jeff learns a lesson. But...Jeff learning lessons is pretty much what he's been doing since day one.

Abed's professor learned a lesson--don't mess with Abed.