During 'Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas' you guys were confused why Britta told Abed he might be kicked out of school. The reason he was facing expulsion was because he jumped on cars in the school parking lot (which is why he was tased by the security guards). That scene was happening in the real world as well as in Abed's delusional world. *Also, not sure if you noticed when characters would leave (or get kicked out of) Abed's world, you could see the interior of the Greendale through the doorways.
Shirley's ex husband/bf was THEO HUXTABLE in The Cosby Show When he was standing in the rain and Jeff came over saying "nice sweater" Andre says "thanks, my father gave it to me"
One of the best details is that you can see the study room whenever Duncan enters or leaves Abel’s Christmas. And you can see the actors reflection in the TV at the end.
Yeah, I feel like this Christmas episode falls into the category of "optimistic nihilism" - the idea that things may not have any greater meaning on their own (which can be a sad thought), but on the bright side, that also means we get to *choose* the meaning for ourselves, and then embrace all the joy and kinship that comes with that meaning!
Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas was co-written by Dino Stamatopoulos, who plays "Starburns" and was produced by his animation studio, "Starburns Industries" ✌😎
Two kind of emotionally heavy episodes, slightly lighter on laughs and some of those were pretty dark ("Who taught you therapy, Micheal Jacksons Dad?") but it shows the strength of the show that they can go as heavy as they do. Dr Rich being totally along for the ride and even singing Troy and Abed in the Morning is perfect.
To be fair, I think many of us have done everything we can to forget that Cosby exists. But the rest of the cast was still fine and it's fun to see him.
It's also worth noting that although most Brits over a certain age have seen the Cosby Show it wasn't the cultural lynchpin over here that it was in the US.
The Christmas pterodactyl is a nod to the California Raisins Claymation Christmas special that was produced in the late 80s early 90s that was hosted by two dinosaurs
The christmas episode seemed a bit weird at first, but the episode is actually very hopeful. Because at the end of the episode, when the real reason behind Abed's claymation Christmas is revealed, the gang comes together to help Abed and affirm his faith in Christmas and the claymation aspect actually makes more sense. In a weird way, it symbolises how even as cynical adults we keep searching for some semblance of meaning, even if that meaning is something we conjure up out of thin air.
Love the Christmas episode. Both sad and sweet. I have a few of the figurines NBC sold at the time. :) For 2x12, Rich is a great character. Annie: "He has a landline and uses the word album." 😁
He also said he carved the giant spoon himself after lightning struck an oak tree in his back yard. Although, to be fair, he never said when, so it could have been a previous house. Personally, I never took the end segment of the pottery episode to mean anything negative about Rich. Like, yeah, he gives a kind of creepy face, but ignoring that, if you go purely off of the voiceover, it's more so just a sign that he's haunted by his horrible mother and maybe is a little mentally unstable because of trauma he hasn't dealt with, not that there's anything negative about him.
Ep 11 is a dark take off of the clay-mation Christmas specials of the 70's, which we all grew up on in America. I doubt they made it to the other side of the Pond. I'm not even sure why we watched them, other than Christmas makes you do weird things.
I'm pretty sure those types of stop-motion Christmas Specials would have been broadcast in the UK at some point. Even with our prolific TV industry, we imported plenty of US productions over the years. The British public also have a soft spot for stop-motion: Wallace & Gromit / Aardman Animations, Pingu, Bagpuss, Clangers, Magic Roundabout, Postman Pat, Fireman Sam Wind in the Willows, Creature Comforts etc and plenty of those are for the entire family.
Definitely wasn't expecting that. Especially from a Claymation episode. It was big here as well but mostly died off now, except one of the only survivors being Wallace and Gromit which somehow did well globally.
Why does everyone think Rich is a serial killer? I've never picked up on that :P Is it because of the end of Beginner Pottery? That was his mother's voice, so to me it was meant to contrast with Jeff's mother overly praising him, whereas Rich was trying to prove himself because his mother was always berating him and comparing him to his brother (even saying she wished Rich had died on the roller coaster instead of his brother).
It's not what she said. It's that facial expression he made with his moms voice in the background. Scary. Except now I'm thinking it's just a one off for that episode and he's probably a really genuinely good guy.
@@RamblersInc Hrm, yeah that's fair. Honestly, that thought hadn't ever really crossed my mind until I saw other reactors saying the same things, but I'm really bad at reading faces so that's not surprising.
If you see the last moment of Christmasn, where we see the screen at the end of the "Christmas special" we can see the study group in reality watching in the reflection of the screen.
Jeff has a thing for Annie but she's too young for him so he represses it, pushes her away and acts "not jealous" despite acting jealous (like when she dated Vaughn). You'll notice that they have a lot of moments together, some looks, a little flirting etc. I'm surprised you didn't catch that after watching the conspiracy theories episode especially because of the look they shared when the blanket fort came down. / The thing with Rich is that Jeff can't stand him in general but in Jeff's mind, Rich being able to reject Annie because she's too young is because of how much of a good person he claims to be.
@4:39 This is not a spoiler, but a weird statistic - this is not the only time they do this camera shot to the study room. How many other sitcoms does the main set fly into pieces and camera pull back wide to reveal the room exteriors ? Weird, huh. BTW - you can thank Starburns for the animated episode. This was the first production of Starburn Industries.
This animation style was similar to the holiday animation movies from Rankin/Bass starting production in the 60’s. EDIT: You saw this style homage/used in Elf.
After your last reaction I posted that a VERY original show was coming soon. You have to admit that was original for a sitcom, yes? I agree it is a little sad and not just the crazy hijinks you normally expect. You mentioned "The PJ's" Eddie Murphy's stop motion show I feel like the real source of inspiration is the 1960's stop motion show "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" When Abed changes everyone into things like "Troy Soldier" it makes me think of the Land of the Misfit Toys in Rudolph. A quick overlooked joke is when Abed says that if he can just find the meaning of Christmas, then things could go back to normal. Jeff quickly says "asterik" Yeah, we defintely need an asterik with this group, cause they ain't normal 😂 Other great jokes were the "who taught you therapy, Michael Jackson's father" 😂 Also the we know Chang is nuts joke. Chang: "Let him finish" 😂 I was a bit surprised you didn't see Pierce's action coming. As soon as he declared he would "shatter her world" I knew and was thinking Oh God!! Here it comes, Pierce is going to be a dick and reveal the big secret. Had Pierce just not said anything I'm pretty sure Shirley would have voted for Rich. I did luv that you chimed in on the "Troy and Abed in the morning" tagline😂😂
@@RamblersInc "I didn't think Pierce would stoop that far" You have no idea! Just wait until "Advanced Dungeons&Dragons" which is coming soon. It's Pierce at his worse. It's VERY funny, but it makes you want to choke Pierce. I may have already said this, but Dan Harmon and Chevy Chase did not get along. Chase is a well known egotist and would complain about how his character was written. So, Harmon would often write him in a way that irritated Chase even more. He'd then bitch and Harmon would respond by writing him even worse. You see the circle developing? 😂
i would love web episodes of troy and abed in the morning, and troy and abed in the morning...nights.... just 2 more episodes to get to the very best episode in the entire series.....s2 ep 14...wont spoil it, just know it's the best one.
Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas might be my favourite Abed-focused episode. It's also a better Christmas special than 99.9% of Christmas specials out there IMO. Also, is S2E12 the first on-screen appearance of Fat Neil? I know he was mentioned in a previous episode... His coming was foretold, but his fate has not yet been decided. That will come in S2E14...
I’m not sure where or how you’re watching the series but episode 14 was removed “advanced dungeon and dragons” at one point, I’m not sure if it’s returned. It’s a great episode so if u can find it I suggest buying it separately if possible to keep continuity.
I suspect it's probably not an issue for them, though it's still good for them to make sure. As far as I'm aware, Netflix was the first streaming service to ever remove the episode, and Hulu followed, but I'm not sure if anyone else removed it. I know Amazon never removed it. But anyway, neither Netflix nor Hulu even have the show anymore, so I suspect that wherever they're watching it probably has the episode.
"Oh sweet a claymation christmas episode" followed by "oh sad, sad.... sad" His mental illness is mostly seen as charming but from time to time it gets dark. But as Pierce said in the first episode - if it was anything serious they wouldn´t call it something funny like Aspergers. And a christmas-pterodactyl beats a lame santa-reindeer every time of the year - especially at christmas. I love that Jeff probably knows where Rich lives because he did so much research in the pottery-episode that he started goldblooming.
Just going to say, autism is not a mental illness, and it can be harmful to frame it that way. Technically it's classed as a disorder, though many autistic people would take issue with that framing as well. Unless you were referring to this episode specifically, if you interpret it as him actually hallucinating in claymation, which might be considered a symptom of some kind of mental illness. But if he does have a mental illness, it would be separate from his autism, not a part of it. And to clarify in case you're confused why I'm talking about autism, Asperger's is autism. Asperger's is an old diagnosis that doesn't exist anymore, because as understanding about autism has increased, they realized that there was nothing to warrant it being separate from autism.
@@peterlewis2178 thanks. Should have worded it better. And yeah - its in part the hallucinations and in part careless use of words... wanted to reference the first episode more than being careful. sorry.
this is obviously a play of the TV romance tropes to mock the annie - jeff shipper, however i always thought that jeff did that cause jeff feels that he doesnt deserve annie, and Annie likes rick, so he wanna be rick to be better
I mean, I don't think it was really to mock Annie and Jeff shippers, it was more-so to mock those Rom-com moments (running in the rain to give a declaration of love set to dramatic music), and to comedically subvert our expectations.
😂 Both? I don't think kids use it as slang now but it's essentially : "Random" translated into "not part of a plan", which we've translated into "not normal", which we've then translated into "weird", which we've lastly translated back to "random" And so something or someone being "weird" or "out of place" or "unpredictable" gets replaced with "random". Thank You for listening to my Ted Talk 😂
During 'Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas' you guys were confused why Britta told Abed he might be kicked out of school. The reason he was facing expulsion was because he jumped on cars in the school parking lot (which is why he was tased by the security guards). That scene was happening in the real world as well as in Abed's delusional world. *Also, not sure if you noticed when characters would leave (or get kicked out of) Abed's world, you could see the interior of the Greendale through the doorways.
That makes sense. Why did I think that bit only happened in his head.
Shirley's ex husband/bf was THEO HUXTABLE in The Cosby Show
When he was standing in the rain and Jeff came over saying "nice sweater" Andre says "thanks, my father gave it to me"
And Glover did some Cosby to him in their scene.
THEEEOOOOOOO. That's the one.
One of the best details is that you can see the study room whenever Duncan enters or leaves Abel’s Christmas.
And you can see the actors reflection in the TV at the end.
I just went back to see that ending. We missed it on the first watch. Amazing bit of detail and also....sad.
Yeah, I feel like this Christmas episode falls into the category of "optimistic nihilism" - the idea that things may not have any greater meaning on their own (which can be a sad thought), but on the bright side, that also means we get to *choose* the meaning for ourselves, and then embrace all the joy and kinship that comes with that meaning!
"optimistic nihilism" aka Absurdism.
First time I've heard of optimistic nihilism. Beautiful way of looking at it....sort of.
Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas was co-written by Dino Stamatopoulos, who plays "Starburns" and was produced by his animation studio, "Starburns Industries" ✌😎
It's weird that the UK doesn't have Christmas Pterodactyls.
I knew we were missing something 😭
Andre was Malcolm Jamal Warner, who was a child star on the Cosby Show (8 years). He wears a sweater that is similar to what Bill Cosby would wear.
Two kind of emotionally heavy episodes, slightly lighter on laughs and some of those were pretty dark ("Who taught you therapy, Micheal Jacksons Dad?") but it shows the strength of the show that they can go as heavy as they do. Dr Rich being totally along for the ride and even singing Troy and Abed in the Morning is perfect.
True. We need these kinds of episode from time to time just to mix it up. Also allows for a little more character development.
" He has been in something" a little thing called the cosby show.
To be fair, I think many of us have done everything we can to forget that Cosby exists. But the rest of the cast was still fine and it's fun to see him.
It's also worth noting that although most Brits over a certain age have seen the Cosby Show it wasn't the cultural lynchpin over here that it was in the US.
🤦♂️We should've remembered.
The Christmas pterodactyl is a nod to the California Raisins Claymation Christmas special that was produced in the late 80s early 90s that was hosted by two dinosaurs
I just googled it. Looks trippy 😂
@@RamblersInc it was awesome actually lol, worth a review during the holidays
The christmas episode seemed a bit weird at first, but the episode is actually very hopeful. Because at the end of the episode, when the real reason behind Abed's claymation Christmas is revealed, the gang comes together to help Abed and affirm his faith in Christmas and the claymation aspect actually makes more sense. In a weird way, it symbolises how even as cynical adults we keep searching for some semblance of meaning, even if that meaning is something we conjure up out of thin air.
Love the Christmas episode. Both sad and sweet. I have a few of the figurines NBC sold at the time. :) For 2x12, Rich is a great character. Annie: "He has a landline and uses the word album." 😁
Oh Annie 😂
An interesting thing to think about, Rich said he makes Kettle Corn in his garage, but it looks like he lives in an apartment...
🤯.Ok that's going in my checklist of things that make him more of a serial killer 😂
@@forr35t Apartments have garages.
@@tempsitch5632 not any of the apartments I've lived in, but I know what you mean.
I've just seen that logic used to criticize Rich pretty commonly
He also said he carved the giant spoon himself after lightning struck an oak tree in his back yard. Although, to be fair, he never said when, so it could have been a previous house.
Personally, I never took the end segment of the pottery episode to mean anything negative about Rich. Like, yeah, he gives a kind of creepy face, but ignoring that, if you go purely off of the voiceover, it's more so just a sign that he's haunted by his horrible mother and maybe is a little mentally unstable because of trauma he hasn't dealt with, not that there's anything negative about him.
Uncontrollable Christmas is a fundamental episode
Ep 11 is a dark take off of the clay-mation Christmas specials of the 70's, which we all grew up on in America. I doubt they made it to the other side of the Pond. I'm not even sure why we watched them, other than Christmas makes you do weird things.
I'm pretty sure those types of stop-motion Christmas Specials would have been broadcast in the UK at some point. Even with our prolific TV industry, we imported plenty of US productions over the years. The British public also have a soft spot for stop-motion: Wallace & Gromit / Aardman Animations, Pingu, Bagpuss, Clangers, Magic Roundabout, Postman Pat, Fireman Sam Wind in the Willows, Creature Comforts etc and plenty of those are for the entire family.
Definitely wasn't expecting that. Especially from a Claymation episode.
It was big here as well but mostly died off now, except one of the only survivors being Wallace and Gromit which somehow did well globally.
Why does everyone think Rich is a serial killer? I've never picked up on that :P
Is it because of the end of Beginner Pottery? That was his mother's voice, so to me it was meant to contrast with Jeff's mother overly praising him, whereas Rich was trying to prove himself because his mother was always berating him and comparing him to his brother (even saying she wished Rich had died on the roller coaster instead of his brother).
It's not what she said. It's that facial expression he made with his moms voice in the background. Scary. Except now I'm thinking it's just a one off for that episode and he's probably a really genuinely good guy.
@@RamblersInc Hrm, yeah that's fair. Honestly, that thought hadn't ever really crossed my mind until I saw other reactors saying the same things, but I'm really bad at reading faces so that's not surprising.
"We can siiing, we can sing anything..."
MEZZANINE?!?!?!
Ripped off 🤣🤣🤣
I absolutely adore the Lost season 1 dvd metaphor joke, it's perfect.
"Thanks Lost"
Lost season one. Was my favs.
I might be in the minority because the whole thing was my fav. Bawled like a baby in that finale. Shyam may not have seen it though.
Ha ha i meant for its reveal in the episode. Bit yeah i was the same. Pity you couldn't do a reaction for that smoke monster of a show.
If you see the last moment of Christmasn, where we see the screen at the end of the "Christmas special" we can see the study group in reality watching in the reflection of the screen.
I went back to check that bit 🤯 The level of detail in this show.
Jeff has a thing for Annie but she's too young for him so he represses it, pushes her away and acts "not jealous" despite acting jealous (like when she dated Vaughn). You'll notice that they have a lot of moments together, some looks, a little flirting etc. I'm surprised you didn't catch that after watching the conspiracy theories episode especially because of the look they shared when the blanket fort came down. / The thing with Rich is that Jeff can't stand him in general but in Jeff's mind, Rich being able to reject Annie because she's too young is because of how much of a good person he claims to be.
@4:39 This is not a spoiler, but a weird statistic - this is not the only time they do this camera shot to the study room. How many other sitcoms does the main set fly into pieces and camera pull back wide to reveal the room exteriors ? Weird, huh.
BTW - you can thank Starburns for the animated episode. This was the first production of Starburn Industries.
Wished we’d seen you acknowledge the reveal of the real life characters in the reflection of the TV.
This animation style was similar to the holiday animation movies from Rankin/Bass starting production in the 60’s. EDIT: You saw this style homage/used in Elf.
BTW- the episode did air Dec 9th.
I had no idea Starburn Idustries did some of the Rick and Morty episodes either.
abed's mother is one of the worst people in the community universe.
his dad was grumpy, but he cared about abed and always was there when needed.
Facts.
After your last reaction I posted that a VERY original show was coming soon. You have to admit that was original for a sitcom, yes? I agree it is a little sad and not just the crazy hijinks you normally expect.
You mentioned "The PJ's" Eddie Murphy's stop motion show I feel like the real source of inspiration is the 1960's stop motion show "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" When Abed changes everyone into things like "Troy Soldier" it makes me think of the Land of the Misfit Toys in Rudolph.
A quick overlooked joke is when Abed says that if he can just find the meaning of Christmas, then things could go back to normal. Jeff quickly says "asterik" Yeah, we defintely need an asterik with this group, cause they ain't normal 😂
Other great jokes were the "who taught you therapy, Michael Jackson's father" 😂 Also the we know Chang is nuts joke. Chang: "Let him finish" 😂
I was a bit surprised you didn't see Pierce's action coming. As soon as he declared he would "shatter her world" I knew and was thinking Oh God!! Here it comes, Pierce is going to be a dick and reveal the big secret. Had Pierce just not said anything I'm pretty sure Shirley would have voted for Rich.
I did luv that you chimed in on the "Troy and Abed in the morning" tagline😂😂
Definitely original.
I didn't think Pierce would stoop that far. He's got no filter but has he always been THAT petty?
@@RamblersInc "I didn't think Pierce would stoop that far"
You have no idea! Just wait until "Advanced Dungeons&Dragons" which is coming soon. It's Pierce at his worse. It's VERY funny, but it makes you want to choke Pierce. I may have already said this, but Dan Harmon and Chevy Chase did not get along. Chase is a well known egotist and would complain about how his character was written. So, Harmon would often write him in a way that irritated Chase even more. He'd then bitch and Harmon would respond by writing him even worse. You see the circle developing? 😂
It definitely feels like they didn't get along 😂
i would love web episodes of troy and abed in the morning, and troy and abed in the morning...nights....
just 2 more episodes to get to the very best episode in the entire series.....s2 ep 14...wont spoil it, just know it's the best one.
Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas might be my favourite Abed-focused episode. It's also a better Christmas special than 99.9% of Christmas specials out there IMO. Also, is S2E12 the first on-screen appearance of Fat Neil? I know he was mentioned in a previous episode... His coming was foretold, but his fate has not yet been decided. That will come in S2E14...
I’m not sure where or how you’re watching the series but episode 14 was removed “advanced dungeon and dragons” at one point, I’m not sure if it’s returned. It’s a great episode so if u can find it I suggest buying it separately if possible to keep continuity.
I suspect it's probably not an issue for them, though it's still good for them to make sure. As far as I'm aware, Netflix was the first streaming service to ever remove the episode, and Hulu followed, but I'm not sure if anyone else removed it. I know Amazon never removed it. But anyway, neither Netflix nor Hulu even have the show anymore, so I suspect that wherever they're watching it probably has the episode.
"Oh sweet a claymation christmas episode" followed by "oh sad, sad.... sad"
His mental illness is mostly seen as charming but from time to time it gets dark.
But as Pierce said in the first episode - if it was anything serious they wouldn´t call it something funny like Aspergers.
And a christmas-pterodactyl beats a lame santa-reindeer every time of the year - especially at christmas.
I love that Jeff probably knows where Rich lives because he did so much research in the pottery-episode that he started goldblooming.
Unless we're in danger of Christmas-Pterodactyls eating Santa 😂
Just going to say, autism is not a mental illness, and it can be harmful to frame it that way. Technically it's classed as a disorder, though many autistic people would take issue with that framing as well.
Unless you were referring to this episode specifically, if you interpret it as him actually hallucinating in claymation, which might be considered a symptom of some kind of mental illness. But if he does have a mental illness, it would be separate from his autism, not a part of it. And to clarify in case you're confused why I'm talking about autism, Asperger's is autism. Asperger's is an old diagnosis that doesn't exist anymore, because as understanding about autism has increased, they realized that there was nothing to warrant it being separate from autism.
@@peterlewis2178 thanks. Should have worded it better. And yeah - its in part the hallucinations and in part careless use of words... wanted to reference the first episode more than being careful. sorry.
this is obviously a play of the TV romance tropes to mock the annie - jeff shipper, however i always thought that jeff did that cause jeff feels that he doesnt deserve annie, and Annie likes rick, so he wanna be rick to be better
Ahh I got you. Good enough for her basically.
I mean, I don't think it was really to mock Annie and Jeff shippers, it was more-so to mock those Rom-com moments (running in the rain to give a declaration of love set to dramatic music), and to comedically subvert our expectations.
Is the word random used as a slag in the uk or you guys just use it wrong lol?
😂 Both? I don't think kids use it as slang now but it's essentially :
"Random" translated into "not part of a plan", which we've translated into "not normal", which we've then translated into "weird", which we've lastly translated back to "random"
And so something or someone being "weird" or "out of place" or "unpredictable" gets replaced with "random".
Thank You for listening to my Ted Talk 😂
You're a Christmas warlock!
😂