TV.com Commenter Shout-Outs: Your Recent Thoughts on Community’s Christmas Episode, the Season’s Best New Comedies, and the Fate of Terra Nova

Yo! TV.com Commenter Shout-Outs! You want ’em, we got ’em. This week, we make burial plans for Terra Nova, we rank the new fall comedies, and we bid a (hopefully not permanent) goodbye to Community.

Well, Fox has a bit of a pterodactyl-sized turkey on its hands with Terra Nova. The show’s first season is about to finish its 13-episode run, and so we asked the grand, existential TV question: Now what?

mrromo thinks the series is salvageable, but needs to be a little more grown-up:

Move it to 9pm and up the drama (not the teen angst kind). It has the potential to be a new Battlestar Galactica. If it stays at 8pm, they’ll have to keep the kids entertained. Keep the wonder and easy scares for the tykes, but get rid of Josh. The actor/character is annoying, Maybe give him that fever and force Taylor/Jim to work WITH the Sixers while the doc tries to synthesize a cure. And if it truly is some sort of “alternate” world, add some other evolutionary experiments…bring on the Sleestaks (Bill Laimbeer is out of work again)!

ekim726 thinks Fox is a little too eager to drop the guillotine on shows that aren’t dazzling them in the ratings department:

Fox really needs to think about what it is doing if it cancels Terra Nova. They will make it even harder for people to ever watch any new show they ever come out with because I think people were just starting to give them a chance again since they let Fringe go on after a slow first season and kept House during the middle season (don’t remember which one but I think Season 3) when they were slow. Now if they cancel Terra Nova after having very good ratings (not American Idol but good enough) and many people are just starting to get attached to it they will lose many possible viewers for the next round of shows because who wants to invest all the time into one season of a three-season story arc show? They need to commit to this, if only to keep people around, because we know everyone hates their news shows being so rich- and Republican-biased. This show has done great and has kept many people interested with a very good story that can possibly go on for five seasons if it is done right and I hope they figure out the right business model to make it last. They have some kinks to work out but so does every show after one season (except HBO shows). So Fox, let’s keep this one going because we all know you are doing good enough to pay for yourself and you will only continue your reputation of killing off shows if you don’t.

Menzca, a nice reader from Germany, thinks the show could find its legs overseas:

While I think they should cancel it, Fox might hold on to it, because of potential abroad. I’m from Germany, and the only shows they broadcast on our networks are the crappy ones like The Event and Falling Skies. The really good shows (Mad Men, Breaking Bad, In Treatment) get picked up by small cable channels because they don’t find a wide audience here (probably because their focus is entirely American culture). So it might refinance overseas (Europe, excluding England, is very much the same there.)

But then Menzca came clean with his or her real motive:

I wish they would translate it. It would even be more awful. And I want a second season just to bash it in these comments.

Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?! That’s a reason all of us can get behind.

Moving along, this week’s TV.com Throwdown has started a battle to the death between six things we all have intimate knowledge of (thanks to Rebecca Black): the days of the week (minus Saturday). Which night has the best night of TV? As usual, we’ll be back soon with a dedicated “results show” soon, but here’s a sample of what’s been said so far.

NicholasRobin1 knew immediately:

Sunday, hands down. As in, I watch shows everyday of the week except Saturday, but Sunday is what gets me excited every single week. HBO has me coming back with Boardwalk Empire (and soon to be Luck, hopefully, in January), Showtime has Dexter and Homeland, AMC just keeps surprising me with amazing shows (I also cannot WAIT to see the final season of Breaking Bad) and for once, ABC has pulled a Sunday drama out of its hat that actually deserves me watching it.

DavidJackson8 had to talk it out:

Ah, this is a tough one between Sunday and Thursday. I can rank the other days easy enough, but these two are basically tied for me.

Sunday (6): Dexter, Homeland, The Walking Dead, Once Upon a Time, Hell on Wheels, Leverage.

Thursday (6): Community, It’s Always Sunny, Person of Interest, The Big Bang Theory, The Office, Burn Notice.

Even with Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones excluded (I believe this question is specific to this fall season), I think I’m going with Sunday. If Homeland was a little worse than it is and if Dexter still wasn’t one of my favorite shows, Thursday may have taken the cake.

Vote, in order: Sunday; Thursday; Wednesday; Friday; Tuesday; Monday; Saturday.

Whedonrules likes Friday best:

Friday has the most shows I look forward to. Waiting patiently for Spartacus to return in a month.

Because we never grow tired of pitting things against other things, we also dedicated some time this week to ranking the new fall comedies. Which ones are the worst? Which ones are the best? But most importantly, which ones make us laugh?

logossun thinks it depends on your comedy tastes:

It comes down to the type of laughs and comedians you like. I like the pan-humor vs. open humor, so my faves are 2 Broke Girls and Free Agents (I’m starting to check Suburgatory and it shows promise). New Girl is hit-and-miss, I had high expectations for Up All Night, but I’m just not into it (plus I’m one of those rare guys who doesn’t think Will Arnett is particularly funny, which also goes for Kevin Dillon of How to Be a Gentleman). Tim Allen is a love-him-or-hate-him type (like, say, Ray Romano) and I can’t say I love him. Still, we’ve had much worse years.

CharlesRichmond ranks them thusly:

1. Suburgatory.

2. All the rest.

How can all the networks produce so much utter pablum? Most of the shows I watched for five minutes. Some I gave an extra five minutes cause I believed I must be missing something, and then there was Suburgatory… the Parks & Recreation of 2011?

Finally, Thursday’s awesome, musical episode of Community could be its last for a very long time (though we’re hoping for a Christmas miracle. Come onnnnnn, Santa!). Here were your thoughts:

Goonerboy74 summed it up nicely:

I miss this show already! Has there actually been a poor episode? I mean really? Sure, some haven’t been up to the par of others, but seriously, at the very worst an episode has been very good. I suppose when you make a show set around community college you are limiting your shelf life, so I knew the end was coming sooner rather than later. Be very proud of yourselves, cast and crew, You have made comedy gold here. Deserved cult status achieved.

joaoprmachado wondered if Dan Harmon & Co. didn’t work in a jab at NBC’s decision-makers:

I actually felt like there were a few layers below undercutting the current situation of this show. Also, I kept portraying Taran Killam’s character as the “Evil NBC Executive” instead. I’ll have to quote one of Abed’s last dialogues here:

Abed: “I was happy to do it. For a while there I thought we were gonna end the semester in a really dark note. I’m glad we’re singing and dancing together instead. This has been a good time.”

Executive: talks about all that’s going to happen in the meantime

Abed: “Oh. But I kinda though this was just for Christmas”

Executive: “No no no. This is forever. This is what we do now. This is who we are”

pcsjunior002 er, “sung the praises” of a musical number we didn’t mention in our recap:

This show is fantastic. What a genius, and I was also quite pleased with the way each character was reeled in. Troy and Abed, great song. Annie’s song, just hysterical. You’ve missed it, but my personal favourite was Shirley’s. The perfect song to do it. Just a bunch of lonely, sad-looking little children singing about the bad secular public school system was just the perfect lure for her to break out in (yet another) perfect Glee parody (and I watch Glee, too).

Finally, Taccado laid out his frustrations with folks who don’t appreciate Community‘s accomplishments.

Okay. Now watching this episode made me a little angry. Not because the episode would have been bad, because it wasn’t. It was brilliant, as usual. It showcased exactly the kind of excellent material that Community is—and admittedly a few other shows are—capable of. This episode represents perfectly what Community is.

And yet there are people who watch Community and think it’s bad! That’s what makes me pissed off. What person in their right mind would watch a show like this and not appreciate it? I guess I can understand if you personally don’t like it for whatever weird reason. But don’t say that you do not recognize the greatness of the show and the high quality of the humor! What other comedy out there creates scripts like this? What other show has writers who think outside the box to create something like this episode? In a world of long-running sitcoms that just churn out season after season of episodes that have exactly the same format, Community is a comedy beacon shining like no other.

Again, I can understand that someone prefers some other show than Community for some personal reasons. I can’t help you with that, I don’t know if anyone can. But how can you seriously claim that some of the run-of-the-mill comedies are better than Community when it comes to quality of humor? (I guess I can accept someone picking the likes of 30 Rock, The Office, Parks & Rec, or Arrested Development over Community.)

I know I watch many shows which are frankly terrible. There’s just something ridiculous about them that make me tune in every week. But never would I be arrogant enough to think that they are better than the great shows on TV. I for example watch Hart of Dixie. Personal preference, yes. But is it anywhere near Breaking Bad, Fringe, Game of Thrones, or Justified? No. And I don’t even watch Justified. But I still recognize the greatness of the show, knowing that it’s far better than Hart of Dixie. Never would I mistake Hart of Dixie for a better show. The same goes for Community. Okay, fine, watch Whitney. Watch 2 Broke Girls, Mike & Molly, or The Big Bang Theory. But after watching an episode like this, how on earth can you claim that they are better shows than Community?

Hey, what do you know. TV.com is a great place to vent you frustrations. Better than a therapist. Maybe I should pay you people for keeping my mental health in check. And by the way, in case you missed it: Annie is adorable, again. But I’d still go for Britta in the tree tights.

Fine points, everyone! That’s it for this edition of Shout-Outs. See you back here next week—same time, same place.