Bleh.

I love Seinfeld and have seen all the show's episodes but it still took me a minute to realize the mountain man was Jason Alexander. Weird seeing him with hair (read: wig) and without glasses.

This could have been so much better. I did like the fact that the Abed puppet looked like the offspring of Bert and Ernie. Also, we need a gif of Brie during the outtakes. Her chest moving up and down is glorious.

It was really weird to see them "pull back the curtain" during the credits. I've seen other shows do that (Psych), but it doesn't feel right for Community.

It looked like Chevy wasn't there in the final shot when they were all having their picture taken holding their puppets.

A for the concept, C for the execution of it. Not a very funny episode.

Yeah, I'm pretty much consistently ambivalent about this season. I have to give credit for the show not being the trainwreck it could have been in the wake of the Harmon debacle. On the other hand, it just always seems like it's trying too darn hard to be quirky and clever in the way that it used to be (usually) effortlessly. Not that it has really been bad in any way, and I've really come to the point where I feel a genuine sympathy for the efforts of the people running the show to genuinely maintan the quality of it. It just keeps on near-missing.

These guys could have totally taken over Scrubs. That's what this felt like. It felt like somebody who really had a great handle on how to make Scrubs but not much of a fucking clue about how to really do this show right. They got "quirky" down in terms of the concept, but the execution was fucking appalling. I seriously think the only character they actually got completely right was Shirley.

If they had focused more this season on getting the characterizations right and telling less quirky stories, I have a feeling I'd like the season a lot better. As it is, it's not terrible but it's off.

Blah episode for me too. It tried too hard to be Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas with none of the charm.

The worst characterization this season has been Pierce. The end of Season 3 established him as learning that "gay" shouldn't be used as a derogatory term, yet he uses it in this episode. He flip flops from racist to a decent guy, and I wish it was more of the latter. It feels natural after all that they've been through together that Pierce would warm up to the group, as he did with Jeff in the barber shop and Britta with her concert. But the spotty use of old Pierce traits ruins any progress made.

Anyone else kinda shocked at Troy's admission of burning down 15 acres? I couldn't understand how he did it. Those damn puppets mumbled! What did he do? That's a pretty major secret!~

Changed(and more relevant given your user name) because Scrubs was actually a step up from the previous season.

I was never a fan of the claymation Xmas episode for some reason. I actually thought THAT episode tried too hard to be quirky.

With that said, I LOVED this episode. I thought it hit a lot of high notes and was one of the best this season (although I'll admit that's not too hard to accomplish).

I thought this episode was ok, but it didn't live up to it's own ambition. I laughed a few times, but when they first became puppets and were sitting in the study room I couldn't help but think the episode would have been better if it was just a regular episode and there were no puppets. That said, once the episode got going, it was really weird for me when they would suddenly cut back to the "real world."

I also thought the "conflict" of this episode was really weak. I just wasn't buying the whole "deep dark secret" aspect of the story. The writers seem to understand the need for emotional weight, but in this episode it felt tacked on after the fact. They obviously decided to do a muppet episode, but then retroactively had to figure out a reason why to do one. That may be how a lot of their concept episodes are conceived, but earlier in the series they were more successful at making them feel organic. For example "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" (an episode I don't particularly love by the way) may have begun as Dan Harmon just wanting to do claymation, but that episode is, to me, more about Abed and his problems than it is about claymation. I'll never remember this one as anything more than the puppet episode. The bottom line is, the new writers are trying really hard and there are flashes of the old Community, but overall they just aren't able to pull it off.

It started off very good w/ the sing-a-long.

I believe, and I rewound (rewinded?) it a couple times, that he burned a ant hill, and it spread from there?

I too couldn't understand the first part of his confession, but toward the end he mentions burning an ant hill.

I see what you're driving at, but it's not in the ballpark of what I was driving at. This didn't feel like Newsradio. It felt like seriously they could have mimicked Scrubs well and were basically like well it's a quirky show let's go with that. Newsradio was actually a far more conventional show (albeit one I desperately miss) than Scrubs or Community are.

The actual secrets weren't as interesting or funny as I thought they were going to be.

He just looked like Abed to me.
The Pierce puppet looked exactly like Chevy Chase.

Liked the Lost reference.

Apparently I was the only one who geeked out that Sara Bareilles was in this episode. Love her music, and she's definitely super cute! The rest of the episode, meh.

This was a pretty terrible episode that tried to survive on a gimmick alone.

What does that mean exactly?

I would assume he means a Muppet-ish musical without the plot, songs or jokes to back it up.

That's pretty much it. It was a weak episode that tried to get by on the novelty of the muppets and songs. It was a pretty thin episode.