Thursday, January 16All That Matters

Yvette Nicole Brown on the Pulled D&D Episode of Community

31 Comments

  • She’s right; it’s dumb that it was pulled–it was an overreaction that wasn’t actually based on any real attempt to “cancel” the episode. It was fear of backlash due to the social climate in 2020.

    I don’t remember anyone actually calling for removal of this episode. It was just corporations afraid of bad PR. Same sort of internal pressure that led to radio stations banning certain songs after 9/11.

  • Also what she doesn’t even get into is that the *joke* is that Chang if socially unaware and being stupid. The whole point is that he’s overeager and it ends up creating a social faux pas. As an audienc, we’re not on Chang’s side. It’s not meant to be us cheering on him doing something edgy, we’re with the rest of the cast who are shocked or disappointed, and his obliviousness is what creates the comedy.

    It’s the same thing for the 30 Rock episode, the whole point is that the character doing blackface is being stupid and it’s a testament to how they’re not self aware. It’s criticizing black face, not celebrating it.

    Edit: because people are misconstruing what I’m saying here I just want to clear up I know *he isn’t actually doing black face* and I’m *not saying cosplayers are racist*, christ. You play DnD. We get it. The point is that to the rest of the audience and the other characters in the scene, the act of darkening skin *feels* vaguely racist because of its resemblance to black face and so the humor comes from that disconnect of being accurate to the DnD character vs. how it comes across to people who don’t have the context. A lot of people are saying they disagree and then explaining the exact same point I’m making not realizing we’re agreeing here….I fucking hate this website.

  • ANY nuance is far too much for American audiences to handle.

    All it takes is a handful of wilfully ignorant viewers to spin the media outrage machine into overdrive.

  • I was thinking about that episode the other day because I couldn’t remember why it was shit-canned. My guess was it had something to do with suicide because Fat Neal was depressed or something.

    But that’s right, it was a little completely forgettable throwaway joke that offended nobody.

  • I think she hits the nail on the head in calling it an “overcorrection” and that the show should be put back. It was one of the absolute best episodes of the series.

    I think the intent behind pulling the show was noble enough, but also quite tone deaf. They looked at it as the visual being the issue and disregarded the commentary and context completely.

    As a society, we have instantaneous and extreme reactions to things, so maybe they figured people would be quick to react negatively and were covering their asses, but they really didn’t give us, the audience, much credit here.

  • We were watching this specific episode on Netflix (on androidtv) when the app closed and threw a weird error. Closed it, reopened it, and scrolled down to find the same episode to resume watching it. After a bit of googling, we found it had just been removed because of this horseshit. So dumb. It was an amazing episode. Also, Yvette Nicole Brown looks amazing in this video, holy crap.

  • It was a flagrant, tone-deaf attempt from corporate to seem ‘woke’ and ‘hip with the kids’ while ironically proving they don’t understand social progress movements at all.

    Still dumbfounded they’re trying to bury one of Community’s best episodes.

  • I mean christ… they recently pulled an episode of Bluey because the main character’s dad got on a scale in the bathroom and said “Ooof, I need to lose some weight!” and people claimed it was fat shaming. The episode was about getting exercise FFS!

  • weird how they removed that one for fear of blackface being called out, even though Ken Jeong isn’t doing any sort of minstrelsy, and then a joke in the season 3 finale is Chevy Chase doing brownface AND a pretty racist impression, acknowledged as so within the narrative. somehow the latter made it through

  • The exact same thing can be said about the Always Sunny episodes that have been pulled. The amount of “overcorrection” within society these days is truly out of control with people completely missing the point of things like this episode.

  • Here we go internet, putting my opinion out there for all to see.

    I don’t think wearing make up to darken your skin is black face.

    Black face to me indicates the super racist characterized that includes darkened skin, pointed reference to large lips, and a personality that is defined as stupid, lazy, ignorant, country-bumpkin or otherwise severally negative. Wearing dark make up but not being offensive to the race shouldn’t be dragged though the mud. Example. This cosplayer did a lifeline cosplay because she loved the character, was dragged though hell because she loved the character, not because she was trying to mock, offend or hurt any black people.[https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/bdx4da/streamer_banned_for_blackface_after_cosplaying/](https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/bdx4da/streamer_banned_for_blackface_after_cosplaying/)

  • It is in my mind, the single greatest ep of community ever.

    I got so many people into community because of this episode. You can watch it as a one off or as apart of the broader season arch.

    I was deeply sad to see it was pulled.

  • It’s really odd. Community pulling episodes. Scrubs swapping out the iconic music in their episodes. Etc.

    The only way you can experience the directors’ original vision and intent of their art is if you DVR’d the original airing episodes.

    It’s just so stupid, and wrong.

  • I’m getting really sick of other people making decisions as to what gets pulled instead of letting me decide for myself what I choose to enjoy. This is why I just torrent my own stuff. I’ve canceled most of my streaming subscriptions because of this nonsense.

    This isn’t the only show that this shit has happened to.

    The current social climate has become utterly ridiculous anymore. When I was growing up in the late ’80s and ’90s, religious conservatives were over just about damn near everything, and now we have to deal with this shit on top of it. So now it’s coming from both sides. Edit: and it wasn’t just exclusive to conservatives. Tipper Gore is the reason for the parental advisory label, and a good share of Democrats had their shit to say about Marilyn Manson/Antichrist Superstar, Mortal Kombat, Beavis and Butt-Head, and even The Simpsons.

    I seriously do not give two fucks what offends people anymore. Everyone wants to nitpick everything else just to try and feel like a victim. A lesson to be learned that is decades-old at this point: if you don’t like it, then change the fucking channel.

  • That episode is even about suicide prevention and severe depression and mental illness. Talking about the signs when someone is facing impending doom.

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