Can Aaron Paul just get a break?

Westworld dedicated its fifth episode “Genre” to putting its newest member through the wringer with hallucinogenic party drugs and reality-jarring flashbacks. Even Caleb doesn’t know who Caleb is anymore and it’s that mystery that seems to be fueling all the fandom predictions this week.

Kids, you don’t need drugs to mess with your mind … you just need these Westworld Reddit theories.

1. Caleb Is An Outlier

This season seems to be relying heavily on Aaron Paul’s ability to act confused as hell. In this week’s episode, Caleb got dosed with a mind-warping hallucinogen that caused him to experience the night’s events in changing genres. Besides reality being a total drag, Caleb’s bad trip also revealed some shocking truths about his still-mysterious backstory and guys, it looks like Jesse Pinkman might actually be the bad guy. (Yes, we are in fact positing that Breaking Bad shares a universe with Westworld. Is it really that crazy?)

First comes Caleb’s uneasy interaction with Liam Dempsey (R.I.P. ya basic bitch). Caleb challenges Dempsey to tell him his projected path, which ends with Dempsey questioning, “You think I killed your friend?” He seems incredulous at Caleb’s accusation that Rehoboam sent him off to war, ultimately drugging him and trying to escape.

Later, when the group is on the beach, Dempsey launches into a monologue about the burden people like Caleb and his friends put on the system, claiming they’re the prison the rest of us can’t escape from. When Caleb tries to calm him down he attacks him with this line: “You’re the worst of them.”

And littered throughout the episode we get glimpses of Caleb’s past (or present, or future, who really knows with this show); scenes that show him undergoing some kind of treatment in what looks to be the same rehabilitation facility Serac stuck his brother and the other “outliers” he hoped to reprogram. We also get hints of Caleb’s link to his friend Francis, watching as the two seem to kidnap a businessman and prep him for a torture session in an abandoned warehouse.

The theory: Caleb may have gone to war, come back and become a criminal, which forced Serac to reprogram him or, even more intriguing, Caleb never went to war. He was never in the military. Instead, he was a thug for hire who did some terrible things, had those memories wiped, and had his service and friendship with Francis implanted as a cornerstone memory to help him assimilate into the real world. It would, at the very least, explain why his own mother didn’t recognize him.

Dig into the full mindbender here.

2. Dolores Planned Her Own Destruction

If there’s anyone who can outwit an all-knowing A.I. in this life-size game of chess Westworld seems to be putting on, it’s Dolores. She’s accurately predicted her enemies’ moves, she probably recruited Caleb with that damsel in distress act in the show’s premiere, and she’s meticulously moving pieces on the board to achieve a still unknown endgame. But this idyllic future that Dolores envisions, one where hosts live in harmony with humans — or, worse, rule over humanity — might not have an Abernathy in it.

In fact, some Redditors think Dolores is too pragmatic to believe she could peacefully reign over this world she’s building, which is why she’s so keen on protecting Bernard. Bernard is an original, a blend of human and host who, as Dolores claims, can’t be sacrificed. She may be the Destroyer, the Deathbringer, but Bernard is the builder and she’ll need him to forge this new society she’s hoping to usher in. Add to that how many times Dolores has affirmed that she can, in fact, die and it feels like Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy are foreshadowing something big for their anti-heroine.

Read more here.

3. Reaching The Valley Beyond

Speaking of Bernard, while his constant state of confusion might be testing poor Stubbs’ patience, Dolores has a clear role for him to play, whether he knows it or not. The prevailing theory over on Reddit is that Dolores has hidden the code to unlock the Valley Beyond in Bernard’s pearl. He helped create the place, he seems the likely choice to have access to it. While Serac is hunting Dolores – and her clones – hoping to find a way to glean the data from the Valley Beyond, Bernard is the one who really has the key.

Dive into the rabbit hole here.

4. Who Shot Liam?

We can’t say we’ll miss Liam Dempsey – his fashion sense or his entitled arrogance – but his death at the end of this episode felt particularly brutal. What’s worse, some Redditors still think it’s unclear who actually killed him. Sure, Lena Waithe’s Ash was left holding the gun, but the position of the bullet wound just doesn’t match up to where she was standing in the scene. Add to that Caleb’s increasingly erratic flashbacks and his closeness to Liam and … well, you be the judge.

Do some CSI investigating here.

5. Serac’s Brother

Okay, this theory is admittedly a bit far-fetched, but we’ll play devil’s advocate. Serac spent this episode narrating his family’s misfortunes, particularly his brother’s descent into madness. He was brilliant but uniquely troubled which is why Serac ultimately created the Outlier facility to try to reprogram his brain. We still don’t know how that turned out but we do know that Caleb was probably in that same facility and implanting someone’s memories in a host body is nothing new for this show. Just saying.

Play the “Guess Who” game here.

6. A Familiar Face

In the history of the internet, there have been a handful of visually perplexing debates. Is the dress gold or blue? Is Kendall Jenner missing a leg?

Well, add this to the optical illusions that keep us up at night. Is this guy the host from Westworld’s opening credits? And if so, what does it all mean?

Full breakdown here.

In a few short weeks, DC Universe will stream the Stargirl TV series that will also air on the CW. As with the Harley Quinn animated series, this trailer suggests that DC Universe has recovered from its Swamp Thing stumble while lighting the superhero flame for a new generation. Not that the younger crowd needs incentive to enjoy comic book stories, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. The special effects in this trailer also look improved over a previous trailer while promising badassery from a budding teenage heroine, Courtney Whitmore (Brec Bassinger). And Joel McHale is there, too, doling out a variant of his famed sarcastic shtick, and that’s never a bad thing (unless you’re a diehard Tiger King devotee who doesn’t realize that McHale has a shtick).

In this trailer, we McHale’s Starman character informing Courtney’s stepdad (Luke Wilson), who was once his superhero sidekick (the Star-Spangled Kid), that his torch must be passed. Despite Starman clearly being in peril — and we don’t know if he survives, disappears, or lives on in flashbacks or as an apparition, maybe even as a cardboard cutout — he expends the effort to reveal that, nope, stepdad cannot take the torch. It must go to Courtney, who will be Stargirl, and as this trailer more-than-reveals, she’s up for the task and seizes the cosmic energy staff. From there, she begins to assemble a new Justice Society, including Hourman (Lou Ferrigno Jr., who grew up with The Incredible Hulk at home, so it really is a new generation here) and Wildcat (Yvette Monreal), to take down the Injustice Society.

Previously, McHale told us that his first superhero role will see him fly and shoot energy with the staff, which is kind-of like Thor’s hammer because only certain folks are worthy to hold the thing. That’s cool, but whichever incarnation of Starman that he’s playing isn’t quite clear, so things are obviously tweaked for 2020:

Starman was invented, well, I guess he premiered, in 1941 for real. The same exact year that Captain America premiered, and it’s a very interesting — because I didn’t know this about comic books — that competing companies would kind of release the same character… My character is resurrected from back then, and he’s had different incarnations over the years. I have a friend who’s a serious comic book aficionado, and he’s a big fan. At some point, he had an overcoat, and he always had a powerful staff. Anyway, Stargirl is the name of the series, and I am indirectly related to this girl. She plays a high schooler, so it’s a whole new universe that they’re introducing with some old characters.

Stargirl will debut on the DC Universe streaming service on Monday, May 18, and then on Tuesday, May 19 on The CW.

May 4 is Anti-Bullying Day, International Respect for Chickens Day, and Petite and Proud Day, but with all due respect to bullies, chickens, and the proudly petite, it’s mainly recognized as Star Wars Day, a.k.a. May the Fourth Be With You. For this year’s made-up holiday, which existed years before Disney turned it into an excuse to bleed nerds dry (“I need that limited edition Watto figurine, and I need it now!” — me), Disney+ is releasing The Clone Wars series finale and Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian, an eight-episode documentary series about Baby Yoda. And some bounty hunters, I guess.

“Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian is an opportunity for fans of the show to take a look inside and get to see a different perspective, and perhaps a greater understanding, of how The Mandalorian came together and some of the incredibly talented contributors throughout season one,” creator Jon Favreau said in a statement. “We had a great experience making the show and we’re looking forward to sharing it with you.” The series will cover “the filmmaking process, the legacy of George Lucas’ Star Wars, how the cast brought the characters to life, the series’ groundbreaking technology, the artistry behind the show’s practical models, effects, and creatures, plus the influences, the iconic score, and connections to Star Wars characters and props from across the galaxy.”

I would watch four episodes about the Jawas going to town on that egg alone.

Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian premieres on May 4, with new episodes every Friday.

In 1980, director Bob Clark earned the greatest acclaim of his career with Tribute, a well-received drama that earned Jack Lemmon the Best Actor prize at the Berlin International Film Festival and Best Actor nominations at the Golden Globes and Academy Awards. Tribute looked like the culmination of Clark’s long ascent to respectability, one earned the hard way by first making low-budget horror films in the States and then working within the Canadian film system. It’s not everyone who can go from making Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things to directing Jack Lemmon in an eight-year span. Success earned Clark some creative freedom. Obviously, another, even more prestigious film seemed like the next logical leap. Clark had other plans. He knew exactly what sort of film he wanted to make next: Porky’s, a coming-of-age comedy inspired by his teen years in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Modestly budgeted and frostily received by critics, Porky’s would nonetheless become one of the most influential films of the 1980s, one whose mark on the movie landscape would prove long and lasting. In 1981, there was nothing else like it. Just one year later, the theaters flooded with teen-targeted sex comedies that would enjoy long afterlives on video store shelves and late-night cable. Clark drew from his past for Porky’s, which he’d had plans to make for 15 years and first attempted to script in the mid-’70s. But he couldn’t have calculated a better combination of elements to succeed in the early ’80s. Porky’s channeled the raunchy spirit of big-budget, star-packed comedies like Animal House and Caddyshack into a relatively low-budget film that counted Susan Clark and Alex Karras as its biggest stars. What it lacked in name recognition it compensated for with the ample nudity the relaxed standards of the era allowed, a fixture of the era’s horror movies just waiting to be plucked and applied to a different sort of teen-appealing genre.

It proved an irresistible combination for audiences, albeit one that almost never happened. On an audio commentary recorded for the film’s DVD release, Clark recalls Fox canceling the production shortly before filming was supposed to begin. The studio began funding the project again only when Clark kept making it with his own money. Though it might sound odd to think of a movie most famous for a scene in which a character has his penis painfully pulled from the other side of a peephole as a passion project, Clark treated it as such. Whatever its commercial prospects, he saw it as an attempt to recreate the early-’50s in a way that showed the less innocent side of the era, one that had become synonymous with squeaky clean suburbia.

Clark, who grew up poor among more privileged Florida teens, also saw it as a chance to layer in a little social commentary. That largely takes the form of a subplot about one character rejecting his anti-Semitism by befriending a Jewish kid he’d previously tormented, another detail pulled from Clark’s memories of the past. “Basically Fort Lauderdale was an anti-Semitic, racist place in the early ’50s,” he recalled. “It had signs on the beach ‘No Jews Allowed’ and [in] the clubs and things. That’s how outrageous it was.”

It wasn’t those elements that caught moviegoers’ attention, however, even if they didn’t go unnoticed. A 1982 TV spot better explains why audiences showed up:

Offering brief glimpses from the film, the ad promised a bounty of not-safe-for-TV images for those who made it to the theater. “This is only so much we can show you of the locker room scene,” the narrator intones over an image of a young coach (Boyd Gaines) embracing his co-worker (Kim Cattrall) while surrounded by dirty jockstraps. It ends with shots from the film’s centerpiece scene, showing some of the young male stars staring through a peephole into the girls’ shower. The poster, meanwhile, offered a glimpse from the other side with an eye leering at naked flesh.

The ads helped stir interest in the film. The film itself delivered on their promise. Nudity alone probably wasn’t enough to make it a hit, but it certainly helped draw in crowds in the first place. And though it’s hard to imagine now, in a moment in which the internet has put a bottomless array of pornography at our fingertips at all times, the mere promise of nudity had a powerful pull, particularly when it was available at the nearest multiplex (or, a little down the road, on VHS or television). That didn’t mean people didn’t also want to watch the movie around the nudity — or that they didn’t enjoy it.

It’s easy to see why. Though it would be difficult to make a case for Porky’s as a great movie, it’s an amiable one that aims low but hits its target as it leisurely galumphs from one scene to the next. It also, by depicting its protagonists as being in a constant state of arousal and sexual frustration, offers one of the more honest depictions of male adolescence put to film, one that owes as much to Portnoy’s Complaint as Happy Days. Clark doesn’t let his nostalgia for the ’50s lead him to idealize the era. But like other humorists of his generation, roughly the same generation that produced National Lampoon, he doesn’t make the imaginative leap to see the world beyond the perspective of his not-particularly-reflective protagonists, whose thoughtlessness largely goes unjudged. The eye leering through the peephole and the film’s point-of-view are pretty much one of the same.

Hence, an opening gag that revolves around hiring a local who looks like “an African Zulu man” to serve as the scary punchline to a practical joke (though two of the more relatively enlightened high schoolers chastise their friend for using a racial slur to describe him). Hence, a film in which Porky, the owner of an anything-goes Everglades roadhouse, is made a villain in large part because he refuses to hire out some Cuban-born dancers as prostitutes. Hence the sense the peeping tom scene is all in good fun and not a horrible violation of privacy (even without a long, cruel gag involving an actress who’s heavier than the others).

It’s never particularly fruitful to apply today’s standards to yesterday’s entertainment. But poke around and you’ll usually find that others took issue at the time. In a Chicago Tribune article that found him trying to figure out its appeal as it played to packed houses for weeks, Gene Siskel asked, “As one who loathed Porky’s for reasons that have nothing to do with comedy — I hated the way it used racist remarks as entertainment, portrayed women as nothing more than sex targets, and humiliated fat people — the obvious question is: Why? Why is Porky’s a hit?” His simple answer: people thought it was funny.

Siskel and others who objected to the film weren’t necessarily wrong, but the film’s amiable spirit helps paper over some of those issues. And, as Clark later argued, “The ladies are the ones who are in control here. They’re not the ones being made fools of by their sexuality. […] Only the boys are ever made fun of.” That claim might stand up to scrutiny in the particulars, but it’s true of Porky’s on the whole. The whiny Pee-Wee (Dan Monahan) may be the focal character, but the hunky Meat (Tony Ganios) is almost as hapless. Sex makes fools of us all.

Sex also served as the focus of a pair of other 1982 films: the great Fast Times At Ridgemont High and the bizarrely downbeat The Last American Virgin (a remake of a 1978 Israeli film). Both were made too close to Porky’s to bear its influence, but the films’ marketing emphasized their most Porky’s-like elements. The Fast Times poster, for instance, suggested it was mostly a film about Sean Penn being surrounded by scantily clad women. Then, 1983 brought a deluge of quickly would-be Porky’s: Spring Break, Private School… For Girls, Screwballs, Joysticks, and numerous under-the-radar efforts like Troma’s The First Turn-On. Even films with loftier aspirations felt Porky’s influence. Martha Coolidge recalls producers giving her a wide berth when making her winning Romeo and Juliet-inspired comedy Valley Girl so long as she included the requisite number of bare breasts.

Most of what followed lacked Porky’s winning qualities. Screwballs strips the Porky’s formula down to its essence, with scene after scene that mixes crude comedy and nudity with little connective tissue. Spring Break has a wet t-shirt contest scene that seems to take up a third of the movie. Critics rejected them when they wrote about them at all. (The Boston Globe on the video game-themed Joysticks: “witless cinematic trash.”) But they made money, sometimes a great deal of money.

So the trend rolled on, and some of its worst tendencies came to the fore the longer it lasted. In Fraternity Vacation, spring breaking frat bros compete to bed the same woman using deceit and rigging a telescope to peer into her bedroom. Revenge of the Nerds is both a triumph-of-the-underdogs fantasy and a movie-long expression of perceived sexual aggrievement that culminates in a scene in which one of the heroes disguises himself as his object of desire’s boyfriend to have sex with her. Writing of the movie in 2019, critic Glenn Kenny noted “it’s almost shocking that streaming services still carry the movie. And yet they do. You can watch it on Hulu right now, as a matter of fact. And, in so doing, can readily discern that the movie condones rape. Recommends it, even.”

Putting aside extreme examples like Revenge of the Nerds, time has made it easy to be a bit nostalgic for that wave of movies, in part because of the darkness that followed. As the ’80s deepened, sex grew scarier. A breezy comedy could easily make jokes about herpes, but less easily about AIDS. Perhaps not coincidentally, movie sex shifted toward erotic thrillers inspired by Fatal Attraction, films that mingled sex and death in ways, say, Hot Dog… The Movie never attempted. Out went the notion of sex as fun. In came the idea that sex could kill you, and the wave of films that worked that idea lasted even longer than those that imitated Porky’s as Fatal Attraction gave way to Sea of Love which gave way to Basic Instinct and on and on through the end of the Clinton administration and beyond.

Clark made one sequel for which he later expressed mixed feelings, 1983’s Porky’s II: The Next Day, and much of the cast returned for a third, Porky’s Revenge, in 1985, by that point looking a bit too old to play high-schoolers. Most would soon fade from view, though Cattrall went on to great fame, most prominently via Sex and the City. (Where American Graffiti and Dazed and Confused made stars of its young cast members, Porky’s seemingly had the opposite effect for most of its stars.) Clark’s other 1983 film, A Christmas Story, would prove enduring in other ways, and his career would take him on a zigzag path that would include everything from the Dolly Parton/Sylvester Stallone flop Rhinestone to the Baby Geniuses. He was still working when he died alongside his son in a car accident in 2004. Among the projects he had in the works: a remake of Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things.

Porky’s cultural footprint is now both deep and almost invisible. The style it popularized went out of fashion almost as swiftly as it appeared and its moment had drawn to a decisive close by mid-decade, as films like Malibu Bikini Shop largely skipped theaters before settling into their natural home on cable. There’s little to champion in the films Porky’s inspired and it takes a lot of squinting to see real greatness in Porky’s itself. But its influence has persisted, surfacing in the late-’90s by way of the Porky’s-esque American Pie, which in turn inspired another wave of teen sex comedies. (Many were lamentable, but the mix also included Superbad.) But other aspects of its legacy are harder to get a handle on, like the way the sexual attitudes and those of the films it inspired shaped a whole generation raised on them, and the ripple effects that’s had on the generations that followed. In the world of Porky’s and its ilk, sex is silly, ever-present, and often treated as an entitlement of men who grow frustrated when they can’t obtain it — when they find themselves stuck on one side of the peephole looking in. After the mayhem settles down and as the credits roll, Porky’s ends with a character looking at the camera and shrugging. In some ways, we’re still figuring out what to make of it all.

The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” enjoyed a nice run at the top of the charts until recently, although it’s still near the No. 1 spot. He hasn’t been afraid to push the song, and other After Hours material, since the album’s release. Shortly after the record came out, The Weeknd shared a remix of the track featuring Lil Uzi Vert, and now he’s back with another new iteration of the song: Today, he has shared a “Heartless” remix by Major Lazer.

Diplo and company flipped the track into a dancehall-inspired banger, replacing the dark vibes with a more upbeat disposition, which shows just how possible it is to totally re-contextualize a song while retaining its core elements.

The Weeknd has greatly expanded After Hours since its initial release. Aside from the aforementioned remixes, he also shared remixes from Oneohtrix Point Never (who provided the music for the Weeknd-starring Uncut Gems), Chromatics, and The Blaze. Additionally, he added a trio of brand new songs to the deluxe version of the album: “Nothing Compares,” “Missed You,” and “Final Lullaby.”

Listen to the Major Lazer remix of “Blinding Lights” above, and read our review of After Hours here.

After Hours is out now via Republic Records. Get it here.

Killing Eve is back and deadlier than ever.

The show’s season three premiere kicked off with a couple of gruesome deaths, and some plot. There was plot, guys. In fact, this show often finds creative ways to combine character subtext with stylish murder sequences, and it’s about time we acknowledge that, which is why we’re going to be breaking down the best kills of every episode this season. Who committed them? How were they done? And what clues can they offer for the story moving forward? We’re about to find out.

Consider us your digital crime scene investigators (who rely entirely too much on GIFable aids).

The Spice Kill

“Slowly Slowly Catchy Monkey” began here …

That’s a young Dasha, training at a facility in Russia. We know she’ll go on to become Villanelle’s trainer and handler, but for now, she’s just a young woman with fanboys lurking off the mat, ruining her concentration and causing her to misstep on her landing. If you’ve seen any spy movie involving beautiful young Russian women, you know they always begin their careers in espionage with exceptional athletics, which seems to be the case here. We learn Dasha was plucked from her impoverished existence because of her skill, and she could easily be thrown back in the gutter if she disappoints.

That last bit is crucial to understanding why Dasha later went full Tarantino on that poor boy making puppy dog eyes at her. Dasha is ruthless and willing to sacrifice anyone to achieve her personal endgame. She’s also a legend, a particularly sadistic assassin who likes to leave ingenious calling cards, like a dusting of chalk for her dead lover to choke on.

This death scene felt raw, like the work of an experienced killer, but it also hints at Villanelle’s own messy return to her life of crime. When Dasha pulls her from civilian life — and a particularly lavish wedding — she baits her into working for the Twelve again by weaponizing her own career. Dasha was an original, her jobs are still being studied by professionals, she’s considered the best. And she knows how that will dig at Villanelle, whose ego and delusions of grandeur often influence her behavior.

Which is how we get to the spice kill. Villanelle is sent to eliminate a spice shop keeper… for reasons. (Really, where’s the logic behind these assassinations? Is Morgan Freeman’s character from Wanted running this charade?)

Dressed in a delivery uniform with a pixie cut, Villanelle makes a delivery to a store on a busy street in Girona. She sells an imaginative sob story about a sick grandfather, gaining the woman’s sympathy. When she climbs a ladder to retrieve a spice said to help with heart problems, a glassy-eyed Villanelle simply nudges her off, causing her to fall presumably to her death.

Except, the shopkeeper isn’t dead, and she attacks Villanelle from behind. It’s a shocking moment for fans who’ve seen the assassin in action dozens of times. She’s impulsive and prone to improvising, but she’s rarely sloppy. She’s forced to beat the shopkeeper with a jar of spice in much the same way that Dasha ferally attacked the boy in the locker room decades earlier. It’s brutal and visceral and unorganized, which might point to a weakness for Villanelle this season. She’s been out of the game, she’s being roped back in by a woman who serves as an unwelcome reminder of her past. She’s becoming emotional when it comes to her jobs, staging a scene by sprinkling paprika over the woman’s dead body before muttering, “Untouchable,” and referencing Dasha’s earlier comment.

If anything, this first directive hinted at Villanelle’s instability, her uncertainty over what she wants in life: does she want to retire to the Italian countryside with a rich wife, become a handler like Dasha, usurp her mentor’s legacy, or get back with Eve?

Villanelle, like young Dasha, feels like she’s on the ropes a bit, being forced to find a way to survive in a world that won’t let her find her own agency. If she were smart, she’d reconcile with her wife (?) and find a private island to stow away on, but Villanelle is ruled by her greed, her hunger for more, and this kill proved that what she really wants is to become more powerful than her makers. And she’s willing to execute anyone she has to in order to do it.

BBC America’s ‘Killing Eve’ airs on Sundays at 9:00 PM EST with simulcasting on AMC.

In February, Variety reported that Sam Raimi was “in talks” to direct Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the sequel to 2016’s Doctor Strange, after original director Scott Derrickson left the project due to ever-vague “creative differences.” Two months later, there still hasn’t been any official word from Marvel, although in a conference call on Tuesday, the Evil Dead trilogy director all but confirmed his involvement.

“I loved Doctor Strange as a kid, but he was always after Spider-Man and Batman for me, he was probably at number five for me of great comic book characters,” Raimi said. “He was so original, but when we had that moment in Spider-Man 2, I had no idea that we would ever be making a Doctor Strange movie, so it was really funny to me that coincidentally that line was in the movie. I gotta say I wish we had the foresight to know that I was going to be involved in the project.” Raimi is referring to this scene, with J. Jonah Jameson’s brainstorming names for Spidey’s new nemesis, but more importantly, it sounds like the 50 States of Fright producer is returning to comic book movies for the first time since Spider-Man 3, which is both better and worse than you remember it.

Again, Raimi for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness isn’t official until Marvel says it is, but that hasn’t stopped fans of the director’s work, from Evil Dead II (the greatest horror movie sequel ever?) to Spider-Man 2 (the greatest comic book movie sequel ever?) to A Simple Plan (extremely underrated!), from celebrating the news.

If it’s a Sam Raimi movie, you know what means? Bruce Campbell, welcome to the MCU.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is scheduled to come out on November 5, 2021.

(Via Coming Soon)

As the streaming wars begin to take shape, one of the biggest selling points for a lot of these services — both new and old — are the beloved comfort sitcoms of our past. However, while most of the headlines have gone to who gets the rights to Seinfeld, The Office, and Friends, a beloved cult sitcom that may be better than all three has quietly resurfaced on Netflix.

I speak, of course, of six seasons (and no movie) of Community. Across two networks (or one network and one now defunct streaming service), Community gave us 110 fantastic episodes , or rather, 97 fantastic episodes, plus the 13 episodes NBC produced in season four without creator and showrunner Dan Harmon (otherwise known as the gas-leak year). No show has ever rivaled Community in terms of pop-culture riffing, inside jokes, and running gags, and no sitcom has taken on so many targets, from Law & Order to spaghetti westerns to the multiverse! Some of those jokes were so good, and so well hidden that it took years for viewers to pick up on them. Most people also mostly remember the core cast of the series, but in its later seasons, Community actually churned through some fairly remarkable series regulars in Jonathan Banks, Keith David, and Paget Brewster, plus Community assembled an amazing roster of recurring characters, including Magnitude, Star-Burns, Leonard, John Goodman’s Vice Dean Laybourne, and John Oliver’s Professor Ian Duncan.

There was also a lot of behind-the-scenes drama involving Dan Harmon, the cast turnover, and the network’s annual decision over whether to bring the series back. It eventually achieved most of what it set out to accomplish, which was six seasons and a movie (the movie is apparently still in the works, potentially). New viewers of the series on Netflix will not have to endure the stress of that, but they can enjoy one of the best binge-watches of all time. We encourage everyone to watch them all (yes, even the gas leak season), but for those sampling, here are the 15 best episodes of the series of all time.

15. Cooperative Polygraphy (Season 5, Episode 4)

The Story: After Pierce’s unexpected passing, a team of investigators headed by the no-nonsense Mr. Stone arrives at Greendale to subject the study group to lie detector tests before they can be considered for distributions under the will.

Why It’s On The List: Otherwise known as the one with Justified’s Walton Goggins, “Cooperative Polygraphy” is one of only two representatives on this list from season five, and it is the closest that Community comes to a return to form after Dan Harmon takes back his rightful place as showrunner. The episode is ostensibly about Pierce’s investigation from beyond the grave into whether any of the study group might have murdered him, but it reveals itself to be more about the secrets that the study group had held from one another, secrets that Pierce betrayed from beyond the grave. Even in death, Pierce manages to sew discord and turn his friends against each other. It’s not just a fast-paced funny episode, but it also acts as a brilliant illustration of how far these characters have come as people since the beginning of the series.

14. Contemporary American Poultry (Season 1, Episode 21)

The Story: Jeff’s plan to get chicken fingers from the school cafeteria for the study group quickly evolves into a mafia movie-style endeavor with Abed calling all the shots.

Why It’s On The List: “Contemporary American Poultry” is a Goodfellas parody, with Abed in Ray Liotta’s role, and while I am sure there’s still plenty to love about the episode without basic knowledge of the Scorsese mafia film, the episode was definitely one that is immeasurably improved by having seen it. There are a number of episodes like this that parodied specific movies instead of genres (“Critical Film Studies” parody of My Dinner with Andre, for instance), and it was both to the series’ credit and detriment. Dan Harmon almost insisted on having a pop-culture savvy audience, and while that was great for building a cult following, it also alienated a lot of less pop-culture savvy viewers.

13. Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television (Season 6, Episode 13)

The Story: As their sixth year at Greendale draws to a close, Abed asks everyone to imagine pitching a TV show about what they would do in season seven.

Why It’s On the List: After Community was canceled by NBC and picked up by Yahoo’s streaming service, it was never quite the same, and that is inevitable when a show loses a big part of its original cast (especially when one of those cast members is Donald Glover). There aren’t many iconic episodes in the final two seasons, but credit to Harmon for absolutely nailing the series finale. In the series finale, each character imagines what a season seven might look like for Greendale, and it is as meta and self-reflexive as any episode of Community, as much a commentary on if there’d be a season seven than what it might look like. It’s touching and a little bittersweet, but after six seasons, the series finale is the perfect distillation, for better or worse, of what Community can be.

12. Paradigms of Human Memory (Season 2, Episode 21)

The Story: As the study group gathers to assemble their 20th and final Anthropology diorama of the year, they begin reminiscing about their favorite times together, including a trip they made to a western ghost town, a last-minute glee club performance and the array of costumes that Dean Pelton has managed to wear over the year. Meanwhile, Troy’s pet monkey returns only to disappear back into the school’s ventilation system.

Why It’s On the List: In 2011, a network television show featured a monkey named Annie’s Boobs, which gets lost in the community college’s venting system. A search for Annie’s Boobs ultimately leads to a clip show — or rather, a brilliant, hilarious parody of a clip show, complete with several digs at the then-popular Fox series, Glee. Oh, and also a classic Jeff Winger speech that references the Traveling Wilbury’s, which ultimately keeps the study group together. It’s classic Community, only in clip form.

11. Physical Education (Season 1, Episode 18)

The Story: Jeff refuses to participate in a pool class because the teacher forces him to play in gym shorts, and the study group discovers a white version of Abed at the college.

Why It’s On the List: One of the funniest episodes of the series saw Jeff trying to impart a lesson about beating your own path instead of trying to be someone else, which segues into a brilliant impression of Winger by Abed that is part Dick Van Dyke, part Sam Malone, and “40 percent Zach Braff from Scrubs.” I still don’t know if that is an insult or compliment, but I do know that it’s hilarious, as is the episode’s stinger with Tory and Abed playing Bert and Ernie. Oh, and the episode also ends in a completely naked Jeff sprawled across a pool table, because episode 18 is where Dan Harmon discovered the fan service that would fuel the series for five more seasons.

10. Epidemiology (Season 2, Episode 6)

The Story: The study group is left to fend for themselves by Dean Pelton during an outbreak due to tainted food at Greendale’s Halloween party. Basically, the Dean bought a bunch of old Army rations

Why It’s On the List: “Epidemiology” parodied both the pandemic movie and the zombie movie, set to … Abba songs. Yes, Abba songs. Dean Pelton bought some old Army rations for a Halloween party, which unleashes a virus that infects nearly everyone at the party except for Chang — who is outside — and Troy and Abed in the basement, until Abed sacrifices him for Troy so that Troy could “be the first black man to make it to the end.” It’s one of those wonderful Community episodes where it feels almost impossible that this many jokes could be packed into 22 minutes

9. Geothermal Escapism (Season 5, Episode 5)

The Story: As a going-away present to Troy before his around-the-world trip, Abed sets up a high-stakes game of “Hot Lava” at the college, but Britta suspects that the game is just masking his real feelings about Troy’s departure.

Why It’s On the List: “Geothermal Escapism” is the best episode of the last three seasons. It’s also Donald Glover’s last episode, and as Dan Harmon himself has conceded, the show would never quite be the same or as good without him. The episode sees Abed create a campus-wide game of Hot Lava before Troy sets sails across the world, per the instructions of Pierce’s will, and better still: He’s eventually joined by LeVar Burton. The episode, directed by Joe Russo, is a solid, funny episode until the third act, when it gives Troy the big emotional send-off that we all craved, although here the loss of Troy is as much about what it means to the remainder of the characters as it is to Troy himself.

8. Critical Film Studies (Season 2, Episode 19)

The Story:: Jeff’s Pulp Fiction-themed surprise party for Abed is spoiled when Abed tells him over dinner that he’s done with pop culture. But is this confession actually just part of another movie homage?

Why It’s On the List: It’s hard to stress what a brilliant bait-and-switch “Critical Film Studies” is. The episode was billed as a Pulp Fiction parody, but in reality, after the Pulp Fiction wrapping paper was ripped away, the real parody is a My Dinner with Andre spoof that takes place at a high-end restaurant between Jeff and Abed, and it’s all the more satisfying for it. It isn’t one of the funniest episodes of Community, but it is maybe the most layered and emotionally complex episode.

7. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (Season 2, Episode 14)

The Story: The study group plays Dungeons and Dragons with another classmate to improve his spirits, but Pierce’s jealousies cause their good intentions to backfire.

Why It’s On the List: I have never played Dungeons and Dragons in my life, and despite how often the game is referenced as short-hand for a certain kind of nerd/geek in pop culture, I didn’t really even understand how it was played. This episode was my entry point, and while I still don’t fully understand the intricacies (despite the aid of Stranger Things), I understand why the game is so appealing. It’s because the game — like this episode — offers creative opportunities for group storytelling, and there’s a certain kind of bond in that. Here, “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons” not only provided an overview of the game and lot of great laughs, but illustrated what a powerfully good ensemble show that Community is.

6. Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design (Season 2, Episode 9)

The Story: Dean Pelton tries to bust Jeff for a phony night school credit, which only unveils a series of conspiracies, plots, and double-crosses between Jeff, Annie, and the Dean.

Why It’s On the List: In this episode, Jeff’s fake investigation into a fake conspiracy theory transforms into a real investigation into Professor Professorson, and eventually the episodes falls into a sort of conspiracy inception, but not before taking a grand detour through a massive blanket fort constructed by Troy and Abed. It’s Troy and Abed who mix wide-eyed wonder with the darker elements of this conspiracy-theory parody that makes for one powerfully funny episode of Community.

5. Basic Lupine Urology (Season 3, Episode 17)

The Story: In a homage to Law & Order, the study group investigates a crime when someone sabotages their science experiment. When they discover the perp, Annie plans on prosecuting them to the fullest extent of Greendale’s Code of Conduct.

Why It’s On the List: Pop! Pop! Late in its third season run, Community had a minor creative drought, but it was this Law & Order spoof that brought it fully back to the forefront. “Lupine Urology” dropped some of the meta-commentary, Harmon took a break from using his show as therapy, and the episode completely devoted itself to being a hilarious, gag-heavy, laugh-a-second L&O parody that also managed to take advantage of its huge roster of minor characters. This is one of those terrific Community episodes that’s terrific even as a stand-alone episode to people with no knowledge of the series. For the newbie, this is the perfect entry point.

4. Pillows and Blankets (Season 3, Episode 14)

The Story: Presented in the style of Ken Burns’ documentary, The Civil War, what starts as a casual disagreement over pillows and blankets soon blossoms into all-out war on the Greendale campus. While insults are hurled and the study group chooses loyalties, Jeff tries desperately to negotiate a truce, but with neither Abed nor Troy budging on their principles or real estate, the future looks grim for the duo’s friendship.

Why It’s On the List: There’s a sixth-season episode of Black-ish about how Rainbow and Dre push the exact right buttons to set each other off that I think owes a little to this episode of Community, where Troy and Abed push each others’ buttons in ways that only two best friends are capable of doing. But of course, this is Community, so a very real fight between two best friends takes on the form of a Ken Burns parody set in blanket forts, because that is the genius of Community.

3. Fistful of Paintballs/A Few More Paintballs (Season 2, Episode 23 and Episode 24)

The Story: When the study group learns that there’s a sinister plot behind the paintball tournament, they unite the remaining players to defeat the enemy. In a “spaghetti western” parody, Pierce then tries to get revenge on the rest of the study group.

Why It’s On the List With the huge success of the season one finale, a sequel seemed all but inevitable, and this two-parter basically combined spaghetti westerns with Star Wars with 80s comedies where the good guys had to win to save their school/fraternity/business. The action-comedy aspects of the episodes are great, but it’s that big, rousing finale that seals it, as the episode reveals itself to be less about a paintball match and more about saving Greendale and the family that it represents for the students (including transfers played by Dan Byrd and Busy Phillips, the Cougar Town stars who make cameos).

2. Remedial Chaos Theory (Season 3, Episode 4)

The Story: At Abed and Troy’s housewarming party, Jeff decides to let the decision on who gets the pizza rest on the roll of the dice, leaving Abed to contemplate six alternate realities.

Why It’s On The List: “Remedial Chaos Theory” is easily the most quoted episode of Community of all time, and every time you hear someone refer to the fact that we are living in the darkest timeline, it’s this episode to which they are referring. The premise is simple but brilliantly clever: In each of the six timelines when the study group gets together, a different person has to leave to get pizza, and how we get to see how the group dynamic shifts in the absence of each study group member. The episode’s brilliance is in illustrating the importance of each character to the series in their absence. Plus, Pierce had sex with Eartha Kitt six times.

1. Modern Warfare (Season 1, Episode 23)

The Story: Greendale Community College is transformed into an apocalyptic war zone when the dean promises the winner of a paintball competition priority registration, and it could fan the flames of sexual tension between Jeff and Britta.

Why It’s On The List: “Modern Warfare” brings in every cliche and trope imaginable, referencing — among others — The Book of Eli, Scarface, Boondock Saints, Rambo, The Matrix, “Friends,” “Cheers,” “Lost,” and even “Glee,”ending in a beautiful paint-ball Mexican stand-off and monster green-paint explosion. Oh, and Jeff and Britta have sex. The episodes kills. It’s funny, unexpected, and smart, and not just the best all-time episode of Community, but one of the greatest sitcom episodes ever.

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