Week 3 Part II

30 Rock and Community both are new for me because I am not so familiar with situation sitcoms. After I went through the previews of these two shows, I prefer the 30 Rock than Community. I liked the 30 Rock’s story because the plot about back scene of production team was what I interested in since I choice video production as my major. Also, the season-long story lines were more attractive to me. Community has every new story in each episode so it wasn’t interesting enough for me to follow it. Also, I am a loyal audience of Big Bang Theory so other same kind of TV Series couldn’t attract me at all.

For the second part of week 3 assignments, I picked up 3 critics of 30 Rock and 3 critics of Community. They are listed as follow:

Community:

1.http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113036874

2.http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2010/05/19/126977591/cbs-is-trying-to-kill-community

3.http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/arts/television/07night.html?scp=5&sq=%20NBC%20Community&st=Search

30 Rock:

1.http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/04/the_office_vs_30_rock_comedy_g.html

2.http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/arts/television/14watc.html?scp=19&sq=30%20rock&st=Search

3. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2011/04/30-rock-recap-.html

In the reviews of Community, I found that situation sitcoms could get problem of stereotypes easy if they didn’t be careful. The jokes in those sitcoms such as Community’s jokes were argued that it has offensive jokes about community school and community students. The author of first review used a quote from a business student Ksenia Prokunina, “I think humor is a good thing as long as you don't take it too seriously, it might actually be a good thing for a community college, that they make a show about it.” I thought it depended on who were the audiences. As the normal audiences, we could only look at the jokes as normal jokes. However, standing on the view of a media critic, we couldn’t deal with those jokes in the simple way. Television was not only entertainment today; it was an educational method, which had huge influences for young people. Situation sitcoms had to be careful to use the jokes and took the educational opportunities for the young audiences. The second and third reviews were talking about Community had beaten down by Big Bang Theory form CBS. I thought the reason why Community lost because it lacked educational values. I thought people would prefer meaningful comedy rather than the boring jokes. The smarter dialogues would catch audiences’ eyes and ears easier. I like Big Bang Theory because their dialogues were smart and their jokes were interesting and meaningful. The characters were also unique and impressed. I liked learning something while watching TV shows so I followed every episodes of Big Bang Theory. In the reviews of 30 Rock, I found that the characteristic of situation sitcoms is they usually have basic loyal audiences. It was a kind of fan culture. I think the reason why 30 Rock had already broadcasted over 100 episodes was their fans’ support and its story could attract broader audiences. The life of producers and the life in New York were the two famous topics for audiences.  Also 30 Rock was not only a boring workplace comedy but also a show about a lot of interesting life in New York City and in the production team.

After I read these articles, I thought most reviews of Community meshed with my interpretation of these show. I didn’t like it at all when I finished the first season because they made too much jokes on their characters and the actors some times just like made fool of themselves. Also, the show makes the community students seems too naive. However, lots of my classmates said Community was awesome and they liked the jokes in it so I am thinking I may have some misunderstand of the show. I was completely felt asleep at the fist time I watched Big Bang Theory because I totally couldn't get the jokes. One of my friend told me just ignore the physic knowledge and enjoy the jokes in those geniuses’ life then I felt into the show. I am thinking I might just take the jokes from Community too seriously so I may see more seasons and re-critic it in the future. On the other hand, I still like 30 Rock more even though it also made fun of some social problems such as homosexuality. I can feel the jokes are trying to bring us something positive information about the group people and the jokes are meaningful for the audiences. I still believe the TV shows need have educational meaning to success for long time.