Something about this is fun but also sad. Transpositions. Matt Groening also has a bit of narrative resonance between Simpsons and Futurama but not as much.
Conversation
It’s really fun watching Community having watched Rick and Morty first. The quiet little subversions are much easier to spot. One of the most effectively done is how they managed to take Brita from stereotypical blonde lead to genuinely annoying and least likeable character.
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She’s sort of the Jerry of the the ensemble.
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Chang is an odd character. In the context of characters he’s played since, it’s really Ken Jeong’s stock character. It either fits or doesn’t. Has he ever played anything else? This is the same character as the Hangover movies.
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Abed reminds me of Bird Person.
Jeff, Troy, Annie are more standard sitcom characters afaict. Not developed subversively.
Shirley would be awkward today. Cuts a bit close to the emerging black+antisemite thing.
Pierce seems written for Chevy Chase to be himself.
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The pre-Weirding vibe is very disturbing though. It’s like we know, but the show doesn’t, that there’s a nuclear bomb under the set and everything they do either accelerates or slows the countdown.
This is a good test for any show from 2000-15.
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Ah they figured out the clips-from-non-existing-episodes episode idea on Community first.
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Chang living in the air vents with a monkey is very much a cartoon kinda premise. Interesting how the gimmicky episodes (paintball, stop motion), while annoying, work better than they do in regular shows, since this is basically a live-action cartoon.
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Chang is basically a loud in-your-face version of Gollum in LOTR.
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Both here and in The Hangover he’s created a very interesting stock character: the personification of a system’s insanity. He’s the truest slave of the community college or Vegas crime world etc.
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Hmm. I haven’t seen this archetype tagged. Kramer is another example. Personification of systemic crazy. Like an animist spirit or something. Like a demiurge but as ultimate gollumized consumer of a system rather than its creator. An anti-demiurge.
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I don’t think this character exists in Rick and Morty. They were setting up the math teacher Mr. Goldenfold sort of like this, but I think gave up. R&M doesn’t have a Chang. Interesting. I guess Rick himself carries that aspect.
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Another way to understand it: Chang is pure shadow, no self. He pops as an individual only via projection of others. Otherwise he’s inseparable from the systemic unconscious.
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Ah... also like Milo Minderbender in Catch-22. Ok damn, Dan Harmon is climbing in my rankings rapidly. He might pull ahead of Matt Groening and Matt Stone/Trey Parker.
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I normally wouldn’t read this much Jungian significance into stuff, but Harmon clearly is a nerd of this stuff from his own writings.
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i like this framing. On the demiurge front I think it splits between "sensible" creation and "nonsensible" creation, making Chang an opposite of Abed. Both profoundly shape/are shaped by their worlds but in familiar and alien ways respectively.
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