At last its October 19, 2012!
Yes I have been waiting for this day for months and finally …
OK in case you think I have completely lost my marbles – I’ll have you know I have only partially lost them thank you; I have a certificate from the doctor who looks after The Big Bang Theory‘s Sheldon to prove it – October 19 was the date that Community #sixseasonsandamovie was supposed to be back on the air on NBC with a brand spankin’ new season.
Alas at the last minute NBC pulled the plug, citing concerns that they concern promote the show as effectively as they’d like – odd since this had never seemed to bother the network up to this point; they seem to regard Community much as a well-to-do family views their redneck cousins coming to town and parking a rusty RV next to their driveway topiary – and pushed the air date for season 4 way out to February 7.
Well my friends February 7 is almost here, NBC hasn’t sought to have it struck off the calendar not feigned an inability to press the play button on their big electronic satellite thingy so we can safely assume that at long last Community will be back on television.
And they even managed to come up with all manner of fun promo videos to boot.
So where did we leave our intrepid band of Greendale students when last we saw them at the end of season 3, when creator/showrunner Dan Harmon signed off for the last time, and new showrunners David Guarascio and Moses Port stepped in?
Why after being expelled from Greendale and being the subject of a cunning plan by Chang and his teenage minions to have them believe their entire time at the community college was one big group hallucination, among many other crazy moments, all of the gang – Jeff Winger (Joel McHale), Britta Perry (Gillian Jacobs), Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi), Troy Barnes (Donald Glover), Annie Edison (Alison Brie), Shirley Bennett (Yvette Nicole Brown) and Pierce (Chevy Chase) – found some measure of peace and closure (albeit with evil Abed on the loose in their reality!).
It was Harmon’s way of saying goodbye to our loveable band of academic misfits, future proofing it if you will against NBC’s likely cancellation of the series and it’s given the new showrunners almost a clean slate to go for broke.
We only have a few short monkey-free days to wait till we find out what they have done with this freedom – absurdity or heart-and-soul or both?
Hopefully the final option prevailed since Community has always shone brightest when the insanely funny sat cheek-by-jowl with the sentimental and the character-driven.
But it’s not just madcap hilarity and zany sentimentality that is back gracing our screens this week.
Everyone’s favourite apocalyptic tale is back as The Walking Dead returns for the second half of season 3 on February 10 (US time), and as per usual, Rick and his plucky band of survivors have run into a whole world of trouble.
Breaking into the now one-eyed Governor’s (David Morrissey) creepy Stepford Wives-esque model town of Woodbury to rescue Glenn (Steven Yeun) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Rick (Andrew Lincoln), Darryl (Norman Reedus), Michonne (Danai Gurira) and Oscar (Vincent Ward), the poor “red shirt” of the party who is killed while the others (mostly) successfully complete their mission, find themselves unable to hightail it back to the prison.
Why you ask with breathless anticipation (and not knowing I will tell you anyway)?
Well somewhere in the shooting, and the running, and the shouting, Darryl was captured, and at about the same time, the Governor discovered the treasonous behaviour of his second-in-charge Merle (Darryl’s brother), and so freshly pissed off after losing an eye and his collection of fish tank-held zombie heads (and undead daughter) to a vengeful Michonne, he decides to make an example of Darryl and Merle.
Will Rick and the gang reach them in time or is this the end for both of them?
In almost any other show, you wouldn’t even begin to contemplate whether major characters will die – its simply not the done thing usually – but The Walking Dead isn’t any other show and has repeatedly demonstrated that it isn’t squeamish about killing off its own and doesn’t place any kind of premium on happy or neat endings.
However it plays out, one thing is for sure.
AMC are not stinting on the promos with all manner of cool videos popping up all over the place including the one immediately below that creates a menacing sense of mood that fits in perfectly with the ever present darkness of the show.
Have fun watching them all and remember you only have to wait 5 days till these itty bitty promos become a fully-fledged dramatic episode that is sure to keep you glued to your couch.
Unless of course the zombie apocalypse happens while it’s screening, in which case run and watch it on TiVo later …
And if you didn’t think I could bring The Muppets into this post, you thought wrong.
Here’s an adorable shot of Fozzie Bear getting his Rick Grimes on! (image via Douglas Wolfe Pinterest site.)
