Over the past week, I’ve continued to work on my DIY role-playing game project, Perils & Polyhedrals. I proofread the manuscript a few more times and created several sample characters to get a sense of how the math held up as heroes progressed from Level 1 to 10. The latter prompted me to adjust downward both the suggested hit points and damage values for monsters.
But there was something even more important to me than ensuring that the good guys can withstand a handful of kobolds without suffering a Total Party Kill. And that, my friends, was the artwork!
I’d originally intended to drop in some public domain medieval art, but the stuff I found didn’t set the tone I wanted. And so it was that I set about creating my own illustrations.
It is fair to say that I am not much of an artist…
Case in point, this violet-skinned Drow. Who, in hindsight, I realized I’d inadvertently modeled on Pete White from The Venture Bros.
This fireball ain’t so hot either:
I did, however, begin to play with layers. And that paid off when decided to back up this zombie with some ghostly skulls:
But the most fun I had was in creating my own monsters. In my previous post, you can see my take on Dungeons and Dragons‘ iconic Beholder, the many-eared Listener. To that I’ve now added a variant on the Gelatinous Cube.
Sometimes a cube just won’t do to clean your oddly-shaped dungeon corridors. That’s when you turn to…the Gelatinous Tetrahedron!
The .pdf of the Perils & Polyhedrals rulebook is now completely updated and illustrated. (And, thanks to my wife Vicky’s mad Adobe skillz, it no longer has those extraneous blank pages!) Download it here, and let me know if you like it!
I was mildly perturbed last week when game publisher Wizards of the Coast confirmed a rumor that had been percolating in the role-playing community for some months: they are already working on a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons. (Yes, I know…the horror, the horror.)
While I’m not filled with nerd rage, it annoys me for several reasons, not the least of which is that I have really enjoyed playing 4th Edition. It was the first iteration of the game since the early days of the hobby–the late ’70s and early ’80s–that left me feeling confident enough to run my own campaign. (Two of them, in fact.)
Furthermore, I feel that it’s much too soon for a new edition. (See the link in the first paragraph above for a brief history of the game’s publishing history.) 4th Edition was issued less than four years ago, making it the shortest-lived version by far.
Whatever. I can deal with it. I understand the business reasons behind the decision. (Google “edition wars” if you want a taste of the internecine conflict between 4th Edition, 3rd Edition and even 0th Edition players.) And, with the announcement of open playtesting, it seems that Wizards is at least trying to respect the hobbyists and bring them all back together for a monster-slaying chorus of “Kumbaya.”
Entirely coincidentally, I’d been working on my own homebrew RPG project when the 5th Edition announcement hit. More about that in a few moments.
Over the last few years, a number of D&D-ish games have been published under something called the Open Game License. The OGL was an effort by Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro to bring the open-source concept to paper-and-pencil RPGs. Their notion was that in making the core rules of D&D free to everyone to use in their own compatible products, Wizards would become the unquestioned brand leader. It didn’t work out that way.
First, the hobby market was overrun with dump trucks’ worth of mediocre 3rd party supplements. Second–and most germane to this discussion–is that it allowed other companies to publish stand-alone D&D knockoffs. When Wizards dumped 3rd Edition in 2008, the community backlash was substantial enough that rival company Paizo issued an entire line of very successful D&D-except-in-name products called Pathfinder.
Others have used the OGL to reverse-engineer earlier editions of D&D. Games such as Labyrinth Lord and OSRIC are as-much-as-the-law-allows straight-up reprints of the 1st Edition rules.
I looked at those latter games and thought, “If they can do that, what’s stopping me from creating the kind of D&D game that I would most want to play?”
And that’s why I haven’t been blogging recently.
I’m ready to present a first draft of the project that’s been taking up too much of my time these past few weeks, a rules-lite fantasy role-playing game I’m calling Perils & Polyhedrals. (“Polyhedrals” refers to the funky, many-sided dice widely used in the gaming hobby.)
It’s not all my own work. The beating heart of it is MicroLite 20, which boiled the rules of the s0-called Fantasy System Reference Document down to their bones. There’s even a dash of Pathfinder in there. That’s the beauty of the Open Game License; most of the rules published under it are themselves open to others to use and modify.
However, there’s a lot of me in there as well. Perils & Polyhedrals is my attempt to create a game that offers a basic structure for character creation and combat without a lot of rules to remember. It keeps the things that I like and jettisons much that I don’t.
It’s probably not ready for prime-time just yet. I haven’t playtested it at all. I think that the math should work; it’s at least consistent. Take a look, and let me know what you think!
The thing about not blogging for awhile is that the longer it goes on, the more it feels as if the very act (or inaction) of not-blogging is something that must be overcome. In other words, the longer I went without blogging, the harder it was to come up with something that seemed worth blogging about.
This is, of course, stupid. With a likely readership in the low teens, it’s not as if anyone was really missing my masturbatory missives. (This is not to say that I don’t get plenty of hits; I had 652 yesterday, but I’ll bet dollars-to-drachmas that nearly all of them came from people hotlinking my images.) Even my own wife doesn’t read this most of the time.
So, here’s a blog post. I have now blogged. More blogging will follow, unless it doesn’t.
The Thiel household has a number of unusual Christmas traditions, such as the gay snowmen that enjoy a place of honor atop our living room television. But the one with the most staying power is our annual screening of a 1967 episode of Dragnet. The plot, in which L.A. police detectives Joe Friday and Bill Gannon track down a missing Jesus statue, might be the stuff of banal, treacly TV Christmas specials. However, viewed through the deadpan filter of Jack Webb, it becomes an inadvertent comedy delight.
Or maybe it’s just us.
Earlier this year, I transferred my aging VHS copy–recorded some two decades ago from a “Nick at Nite” holiday marathon–onto a shiny DVD, and I’d planned to upload some highlights to YouTube in clear violation of their copyright protection policies (which I believe actually include the phrase “wink, wink”). However, Hulu has saved me both the trouble and the potential legal entanglement!
Our story opens on the day before Christmas, with Friday working the day watch out of Burglary Division. His partner Gannon (M*A*S*H‘s Harry Morgan) enters carrying a desktop Christmas tree that’s basically a twig with a stand. “It sure brightens the place up,” Bill declares.
“I bought it from this round-headed kid named Brown.”
He sees Friday writing out a stack of Christmas cards, and says “You oughta get married, Joe. Only system. Eileen does all this stuff for me. Mails cards, laundry, only system.” One wonders how Eileen feels about the system.
Bill hopes to get off early, as he still needs to complete his holiday shopping. (Laundry detergent?) Joe, however, has already bought his girlfriend a gift: a stationary set.
Gannon: “Joe, you never learn.”
Friday: “What’s the matter?”
Gannon: “No woman wants a stationary set. You get her something personal.”
Friday: “It’s got her initials on it.”
Gannon: “No, no, no. You want something more sentimental. Romantic.”
Friday: “What’d you get Eileen?”
Gannon: “Well, it’s different in her case.”
Friday: “What’d you get your wife?”
Gannon: “A sewing machine.”
Friday: “That’s romantic.”
Gannon: “Well, it is, in a way.”
Friday: “Why didn’t you buy her a catcher’s mitt?”
This banter–which is downright frivolous by Dragnet standards–is interrupted by a call. Father Rojas from the San Fernando Mission Church has reported that their statue of the infant Jesus has been stolen! Even though it’s in Foothill Division territory, Friday decides to meet with the father.
Father: “I’m sorry to bother you men.”
Gannon: “That’s alright, Father.”
Father: “Especially now, the holiday season.”
Friday: “We cash our checks, Father.”
I feel like this is something more of us in the service industry should say.
“Thanks for coming to fix my toilet.”
“We cash our checks.”
“This ice cream cone is tasty!”
“We cash our checks.”
Soon, Father Rojas and Joe Friday are in a full-fledged quip-off:
Friday: “How late is the church open?”
Father: “All night.”
Friday: “You leave it wide open, so any thief can walk in?”
Father: “Particularly thieves, Sergeant.”
Even Friday doesn’t have a smart-ass reply to that one.
Gannon: “Just for a check on the pawn shops, how much is the statue worth?”
Father: “In money?”
Friday : “Well, that’s the point in pawn shops, Father.”
Father: “Only a few dollars. We could get a new one, but it wouldn’t be the same. We’ve had children in the parish; they’ve grown up and married. It’s the only Jesus they know.”
Gannon: “We understand.”
Father: “And we’ve had children who died. It was the only Jesus they knew. So many of the people who come here are simple people, they wouldn’t understand, Sergeant. It would be like changing the Evening Star.”
A frequent paraphrase between me and Mrs. Thielavision: “They’re a simple people; they wouldn’t understand.”
“No, really. They’re fucking stupid. It’s a wonder they know to breathe.”
The detectives promise to continue looking for the AWOL messiah, and, if possible, return it for Christmas Mass. But before they go:
Father: “It’s sad, isn’t it?”
Friday: “How’s that?”
Father: “In so short a time, men learn to steal.”
Friday: “Yes, but consider us, Father.”
Father: “Us?”
Friday: “If some of ‘em didn’t, you and I would be out of work.”
The thought of continued employment comforts Father Rojas.
Hitting the pawn shops, Friday and Gannon make the acquaintance of the absurdly cantankerous Mr. Flavin, owner of Flavin’s Religious Art. (“Fifty percent European items!”) The thing about Dragnet is that I’m never quite sure when it’s trying to be funny, but the things that come out of Flavin’s mouth are so bizarre that even Joe Friday begins rolling his eyes.
Actual dialogue (paraphrased): “How’d you know my name? We never met!”
Friday asks the shopkeeper if he has a large statue of the baby Jesus, to which Flavin responds as if he’s never heard of such a thing:
Flavin: “You don’t want a large one unless it’s fer a church. That’s where you want a larger one.”
Friday: “Could we see it, please?”
Flavin: “I guess. It’s not my due to butt in, but unless you live in a big place, this’ll make your living room all a-kilter.”
Friday: “Yes, sir. Do most of the people who go to the Mission Church trade here?”
Flavin: “Good many of ‘em. Especially the kids.”
Friday: “Why kids?”
Flavin: “More religious! Check on yourself. See if kids aren’t more religious than you.”
Friday: “Might be so.”
Flavin: “That’s what’s wrong with the world!”
I’m pretty sure that no old person in the history of humanity has ever said that a resurgence of faith is the problem with the world. Especially not the owner of a religious paraphernalia store. However, Mr. Flavin is bugfuck nuts, so there’s that.
“You wouldn’t want this here Jesus! It’ll rob you blind!”
The interrogation continues:
Friday: “Do people ever come in and sell back a religious article?”
Flavin: “Like a prayer book or rosaries?”
Friday: “Yes, sir.”
Flavin: “Second hand, you mean?”
Friday: “Yes, sir.”
Flavin: “Not since I ever been around. It’s silly.”
Gannon: “Why?”
Flavin: “People don’t have religious articles so they can get rid of ‘em. They have ‘em so they can have ‘em.”
Gannon: “But if a man had a statue and wanted to sell it, he’d come to a place like this.”
Flavin: “Sure, but he wouldn’t want to sell it.”
Friday: “He would if it was stolen.”
Flavin: “No, sir! If a man was to steal a statue, he’d be crazy or something like that. The only place he’d want to go is where crazy people are.”
Friday: “You may be right, Mr. Flavin.”
Flavin: “I don’t know what you fellas are looking for, but if it’s somebody who stole a statue, he’s crazy and you won’t find him. You won’t find him as long as you live, or in a million years!”
Friday: “That should cover it.”
Point to ponder: If crazy people are impossible to find, why do I encounter so many of them?
You too can enjoy a visit with Mr. Flavin! Click here!
Confronted by this unassailable logic, Friday and Gannon retreat. They continue to check religious stores, but “none of them were as encouraging as Mr. Flavin.”
The flatfoots return to the office to be met by one of the Mission’s altar boys, John Heffernan, played by a pre-Brady Bunch Barry Williams. When Joe tells little Greg Brady that he didn’t have to come in (“A phone call woulda worked”), the boy replies, “My father said to get on over. He said that any kid that uses phones is lazy.” My, times have changed.
“Is this about the time I stole that goat?”
Heffernan hadn’t noticed the statue being Jesus-napped, but mentions a man carrying a bundle. Friday jumps at the chance to lead the witness:
Friday: “How large a bundle?”
Heffernan: “It’s hard to say.”
Friday: “Come on, son! Was it large or small? The size of the statue?”
Heffernan: “About that big! Yes, sir!”
“Then, Marcia was hit by a football…”
The search for the man with the mysterious bundle–a church regular named Claude Stroup–leades them to a hotel for down-and-out old folks called “The Golden Dream.” Stroup is absent, and the desk clerk is worried that he won’t return in time to sing in the Christmas concert with the hotel choir.
The Three Tenors eventually went to seed.
Clerk: “I hope it’s nothing serious for Claude. Fella’s troubles oughta be over.”
Gannon: “Troubles?”
Clerk: “Way back. Wouldn’t count now.”
Friday: “Tell us anyway.”
Clerk: “It was something back where he used to live. He robbed somebody or something.”
Friday: “What else?”
Clerk: “That’s all. It was a long time ago, way far back. But he forgot it all, the robbing and everything.”
Friday: “No, not quite.”
Clerk: “Hmm?”
Friday: “He remembered it this morning.”
Joe Friday has heard of the presumption of innocence, but holds no truck with it.
Later, back at the station, Captain Mack attempts to send Joe and Bill off to pick up a captured fugitive, but Friday is adamant about finishing his work for Father Rojas.
Captain Mack: “What is it, a ten, fifteen-dollar chalk statue?”
Friday: “Since when’s the price determine a case?”
Well, considering that the Champaign police never called me back after my Halloween decorations were stolen, I’d say that price very much determines the case. But this is Dragnet, so instead Joe Friday adroitly guilt trips the Captain into letting him continue in the search for Jesus, leading to one of the queerest looks I’ve seen in a police drama.
Click here to watch Friday play “Good Cop, Guilty Cop!”
At 4:45 pm, there’s a break in the case: Stroup has returned to the Golden Dream. As Joe puts it, “The desk clerk was right, Claude Stroup looked like a man who’d had his troubles at bargain rates.”
“How many badges do you see?”
Impatient about being unable to present his sweetheart with her personalized stationary set, Joe Friday gets cranky:
Stroup: “Honest, I didn’t do nothing against the law.”
Friday: “You haven’t been accused. We want to talk to you downtown.”
Stroup: “No, sir, I’m not goin’. I’m not goin’ anyplace. I’m not goin’ to talk to nobody.”
Friday: “You’re half wrong already.”
And so Friday and Gannon drag his happy ass halfway across town. A couple of hours pass, and Stroup still refuses to talk. Ultimately, the real reason for his reticence is revealed: earlier that day he’d gotten into a minor parking lot accident with a borrowed car. The suspicious bundle was nothing more than his spare pants for the Christmas Eve concert. Joe glumly releases him, and tells Claude to go home. Not that he offers the poor guy a ride. Or cab fare. Go home, Stroup. Get walking. Bargain rates, indeed.
With the pawn shops closed and all leads dried up, the defeated duo return to Father Rojas with the bad news. Just then, a small Mexican boy enters pulling a wagon…inside which is the baby Jesus!
Jesus makes Paquito’s nose itchy.
The father recognizes him as Paquito Mendoza, one of the locals, and translates his Spanish:
Father: “He says that all through the years, he prayed for a red wagon. This year, he prayed to the child Jesus. He promised that if he got the red wagon, the child Jesus would have the first ride in it.”
Paquito: (speaking Spanish)
Father: “He wants to know if the devil will come and take him to Hell.”
Friday: “That’s your department, Father.”
Father: (to Paquito) “El Diablo, no.”
At which point, Vic always shouts, “El Diablo! Si!” And then she hisses. That’s what we Thiels call Christmas spirit.
Paquito returns the statue to the creche, to be watched over by its chipped and worn Nativity-mates.
God in His natural habitat.
Approving Donkey approves.
“No, you see, you are simple, Paquito. You wouldn’t understand.”
All is well. The Whos down in Who-Ville will wake up on Christmas morn and never face the prospect of being hopelessly confused by a Replacement Christ. Paquito gathers his wagon and hightails it back to his life of petty larceny.
Paquito will soon learn that there are no red wagons in Hell.
Gannon: “I don’t understand how he got the wagon today. Don’t kids wait for Santa Claus anymore?”
Father: “It’s not from Santa Claus. The firemen fix the old toys and give them to new children. Paquito’s family, they’re poor.”
Friday: “Are they, Father?”
Off to solve the Case of the Purloined Dreidel.
And with that, we draw a close to the Dragnet Christmas special. I hope that it will become a tradition in your household as well.
Every once in a while, a television show comes along that is so bugfuck nuts that attention must be paid. And while it’s not as trippy as Twin Peaks or labyrinthine as Lost, FX’s American Horror Story is a ghoulishly weird treat.
Like The Walking Dead, American Horror Story (henceforth AHS) is an attempt to make an ongoing series out of a typically done-in-one horror trope. In this case, it’s the “troubled family moves into a haunted house” thing. I’m unsure how it can sustain itself over the long haul–a second season has been ordered–but it’s wacky enough that it just might work.
The usual complaint about haunted house stories is “why don’t they just move?” Indeed, the Internet asked that even before the pilot episode had aired. AHS gets away with it in part due to the real-life recession; it’s hard enough getting out of an underwater mortgage without the property in question being featured on a bus tour of infamous Los Angeles murder sites.
But the other reason that the Harmons haven’t skedaddled is that they haven’t yet realized that their home is haunted. One of the clever ideas here is that the ghosts are entirely corporeal. They can touch, be touched, kill and screw just like normal folks. Some are confused enough about their true nature that they pass as people who have wandered in off the street, while others are scheming and duplicitous.
The Murder House itself seems to operate as something of a spirit trap. Everyone who dies on its grounds winds up bound to the premises. Some make frequent appearances, others lurk in attic or crawlspace, and still others just seem to drop in from who-knows-where.
As I mentioned, the ghosts can themselves kill, and that means that the lost souls in the Harmon household are piling up. Offhand, I can think of at least twenty.
It’s becoming a sort of spiritual Upstairs Downstairs, a society of ghosts ranging from the Frankenstein baby that lives in the cellar to the maid who appears to women as a blind-in-one-eye old lady, and to men as a fetishistic sex doll. There’s also an emo spook boy who is strangely sympathetic despite being a mass murderer in each of his two lives.
The main not-dead characters may be dull–with the exception of Jessica Lange as the casually racist, homicidal next-door neighbor–but who cares when there’s an entire ectoplasmic ecosystem?
One way in that AHS is not Lost is that there’s not a long wait for answers. Two of the most burning questions already have been put to rest. We know the identity of the rubber suited figure (colloquially known as the “Rubber Man”) who somehow impregnated Vivian Harmon. And last night’s installment clarified the ghost/not-a-ghost status of one of the main cast. Neither of the answers were all that surprising, but honestly, I’m not going to complain about a mystery show that plays fair and provides its audience enough information to come to a correct solution.
Also, did I mention that the show is bugfuck nuts? Seriously. One episode featured both the Black Dahlia (adding her to the Murder House spook parade) and the Pope. And, in another of the show’s “did they just go there?” moments, told us that not only do the two babies growing inside Vivien have different fathers, but that one just might be the Antichrist. (Ooooo-eeeeeee!)
American Horror Story is gleefully ridiculous and oh-so-watchable. I don’t care so much where it’s going; I’m just enjoying the macabre buggy-ride.
Okay, now that I’ve devoted the last couple of posts to demonstrating how it sometimes irks me when a TV series crawls up its own ass, I’m now going to praise a show for pretty much the same behavior.
Cartoon Network’s Batman: The Brave and the Bold saw its end coming and spent its final year indulging every lunatic whim of its creators. Here’s a sampling of what went down:
Homages to classic DC Comics stories featuring the Rainbow Batman, the Jungle Batman, the Mummy Batman, the Batman of the Future and the Batmen of All Nations.
Adaptations of the ’50s Mad parody “Bat Boy and Rubin” and of the infamous ’60s Japanese manga story featuring the villainous Lord Death Man.
Team-ups with the Haunted Tank, the G.I. Robot, the Creature Commandos, Bat-Ape, ‘Mazing Man, Space Ghost, Scooby-Doo, “Weird Al” Yankovic and Abraham Lincoln.
A sitcom called ”The Currys of Atlantis,” starring a singing Aquaman.
Oh, and Batman was turned into a baby. And a vampire. Not at the same time.
It’s what happened when a team of creative, nostalgic people collectively decided to say “fuck it, we’re not going to get this chance again.”
And I loved it.
The Brave and the Bold wrapped up its run last Friday in its own go-for-broke style. ”Mitefall!” obliterated the fourth wall as Bat-Mite–a 5th Dimensional magical imp/uber Bat-fan–got bored with the series and did his best to have it cancelled in favor of a darker, grittier Bat-show. His tricks–including giving Batman both a cutesy daughter and a Neon Talking Super Street Bat-Luge, then recasting Aquaman with reputed show-killing actor Ted McGinley–succeeded in making the series suck. However, as he realized too late, its cancellation meant his own end.
It was “meta” to the Nth degree and, honestly, a bit much. Scriptwriter Paul Dini knocked down a whole row of straw men in the forms of grousing fanboys and indifferent network executives. I can’t speak to how Cartoon Network insiders felt about the show, but it was my understanding that the initial fan backlash to The Brave and the Bold‘s lighthearted approach largely evaporated once people realized how much Silver Age fun was to be had.
In any case, it didn’t seem as if the series was cancelled so much as it had reached its natural end. Sixty-five episodes is a standard number for an animated series, as that’s enough to “strip” repeats five days a week for 13 weeks. (The previous Batman cartoon also wrapped up after 65 installments.) And, as “Mitefall!” itself pointed out, shows like this are toy-driven. Judging by the diminishing assortment of new Brave and the Bold product on store shelves over the past year, it was clear that Mattel wanted to move on to another Bat-iteration.
False premises aside, “Mitefall!” was an enjoyable end to a fabulous series. And if any of you didn’t tear up during Batman’s final speech to the children, I don’t want to know you.
“And until we meet again, boys and girls, know that wherever evil lurks, in all its myriad forms, I’ll be there with the hammers of justice to fight for decency and defend the innocent. Good night.”
I mean, really. Here’s Community inserting a ”watch this show obsessively or you’ll miss it” Easter egg reference to the movie Beetlejuice. The gag is that, as in the movie, Beetlejuice appears (watch the background) after his name is said three times. The “oh, I’m so surprised that this show is on hiatus” bit is that the three times are spread out across three seasons.
November 14, 2011: The Day the Internet Lost Its Collective Shit; aka The Day It Learned that Community Wasn’t on NBC’s Midseason Schedule.
Community, currently in its third season, stars Joel McHale as a smug lawyer whose lack of a legitimate degree sends him to community college, where he becomes the de facto leader of a misfit study group. It’s a good show. Sometimes it’s even a great show. But it’s also a prime example of television that’s too clever for it’s own sake.
Its first breakout character was Abed, a pop culture-immersed twentysomething with what appears to be 21st Century TV’s favored disorder, Undeclared Asperger’s Syndrome. Reportedly, Community creator Dan Harmon has a fair amount in common with his fictional mouthpiece, and that may be why the show has had such difficulty connecting with a mass audience.
Because Community is a show that dares you to enjoy it. It says, “You tune in at 8:00 pm Eastern/7:00 pm Central looking for easy laughs? Fie! We will give you multi-layered meta commentary punctuated by uncomfortable moments and populated by emotionally-damaged and occasionally unlikable characters!”
I’ll give you a couple of examples, both from the show’s sophomore year. In “Mixology Certification,” the group convened at a bar to celebrate the 21st birthday of their friend Troy, only to fall into alcohol-laced melancholy. While it worked as an encapsulation of what it was like for me in my early twenties–feeling alone in a room full of friends–it was difficult to watch. Later that season came another birthday episode, “Critical Film Studies,” a demonstration of the series’ self-indulgence. What began as a Pulp Fiction tribute morphed into an extended riff on My Dinner with Andre, a 1981 indie film that even Community‘shipster audience probably never has seen.
That Community has lasted this long is testament to the floundering of NBC, whose inability to spawn hits has had the not-unwelcome side-effect of encouraging them to stick with low-rated critical darlings such as 30 Rock and (my current favorite) Parks and Recreation.
To be clear, I never miss an episode of Community. I love the ensemble cast. (Even Chevy Chase.) Alison Brie is my girlfriend. (Yeah, right.) And I can appreciate a zombie-themed episode as much as the next AV Club reader.
But my main beef with it is that it’s too in love with its high-concept installments. Lots of TV series have produced format-breaking episodes–think M*A*S*H‘s war documentary or Buffy‘s musical theater–but what made those notable was their deviance from a well-established baseline. Community doesn’t have that. When you tune in, you don’t know what you’re going to get. They’re stop-motion animated! They’re simultaneously existing in seven parallel realities! They’re aboard a Kentucky Fried Chicken-sponsored space shuttle! (All actual episodes.)
Really, it should be no surprise to anyone that Community is taking a little lie down. But don’t despair, it will most likely go on for at least another season. The same economics that kept it around this long should sustain it until it reaches the magic number of episodes required for syndication. (Sony has already been taking out sales ads in broadcasting trade publications.)
