Gaming

Community is back—and here’s where Yahoo lets you watch it

Once you get the app running, can you expect a sitcom that is still streets ahead?

Sam Machkovech – Mar 17, 2015 1:35 pm | 76

"We mock what we don't understand," Dean Pelton (played by Jim Rash) says in the new season of Community. Is he referring to virtual reality, or to a new era of streaming TV? (We think both.) Credit: Yahoo Screen

On Tuesday, former NBC sitcom Community stuttered and shuffled its way back to its legions of fans by way of Yahoo Screen, the exclusive host of the series’ sixth season. The burgeoning video-streaming service, which used to consist mostly of old Saturday Night Live episodes, should expect an entirely new wave of use and scrutiny now that it has dibs on one of the most-streamed TV series of all time.

Unlike its streaming rivals Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Video, however, Yahoo Screen hasn’t fully spread its wings across the set-top box universe just yet. And that’s no small hurdle to clear when trying to convince network TV fans to take the online plunge. Where, then, can Greendale diehards enroll in their favorite fake community college’s sixth season?

To answer that question, Yahoo Screen posted a brief interview explaining precisely where people can go to watch the show’s sixth season (Hulu still has streaming rights to seasons 1-5). However, that clip is only visible within the Yahoo Screen universe—so you’ll have already answered your question to some extent in order to watch it.

What that video doesn’t mention, in case you missed it, is that Yahoo Screen does not sell subscriptions. All of its content is free and ad-driven. Any Flash-enabled Web browser will load Yahoo Screen content. From what we’ve gathered, Yahoo hosts its ads at the same IP address as its TV series, meaning ad-blocking software will neither prevent ads from playing nor put up any Hulu-like barriers to watching episodes on an ad-blocking machine.

Yahoo Screen’s video app is free on the two biggest mobile marketplaces, so any device running Android 4.0.3 and up or iOS 7.0 and up will work. Apple TV has its own Yahoo Screen app, meaning Mac devotees won’t have to muck with Airplay, and Chromecast is supported by way of casting. The giant Roku-verse supports Yahoo Screen by way of its own app, as does the Xbox 360. That’s it—for now, no other game systems, no other streaming devices.

Our biggest issue with Yahoo Screen’s app thus far has been its unwillingness to degrade our signal when we’ve been in lower-bandwidth situations. Instead of keeping the show going with some blurriness or offering any beefy buffering options, our Community time was frequently interrupted by loading pauses. Leaving the show paused for about five minutes, then resuming, only gave us about 20 seconds of viewing before it paused to buffer once again. Viewing became steadier once we switched to a gigabit connection, but we still suffered a few stutters. Yahoo is probably trying to keep their server rooms from catching on fire. (The Web interface, we should note, had no problem getting blurry to compensate for bad bandwidth.)

Where is Annie’s Boobs? (It’s the group’s pet, sheesh)

Today, once you find a steady connection, you’ll be treated to the first two full-length episodes of Community‘s sixth season—and nearly immediate recognition of how much the show has changed in the past six years. Neurotic lead character Abed, as expected, breaks the fourth wall pretty early on to call out the series’ rapidly changing cast (Community is now down five lead characters). He even mocks the series’ new, possibly underwhelming replacements.

If you’re wondering, the switch from network television to Yahoo hasn’t brought on a dramatic rollback of network standards. The characters have yet to say George Carlin’s seven favorite words, and the monkey named Annie’s Boobs has yet to be replaced by Annie’s actual boobs. The show has been given some budge room to go beyond the network-standard 22-minute episode at least, and the series appears to have been filmed in the identical sets from seasons past.

Community has never shied away from nerdy gags that amuse its legions of Internet-savvy fans, but the first episode’s random, brief mentions of Slenderman and 4chan felt surprisingly dated. On the other hand, we laughed out loud at the second episode’s lengthy segment about virtual reality, complete with Dean Pelton strapping into something that looks like a Virtuix treadmill while wearing an oversized Oculus Rift facsimile. (Though Gaming Editor Kyle Orland recently criticized Oculus’ slow-motion rollout plans, TV episodes like this highlight the fears we’re sure the Oculus staff still loses sleep over.)

Otherwise, our Community expectations, dampened by the series’ continued cast changes, were surprisingly surpassed. Series mastermind/megalomaniac Dan Harmon has always found ways to adapt and roll with the punches, and his turn on Yahoo hasn’t suffered any loss of speed or wit—or ability to mine comedy out of the times when dissimilar characters are forced to interact. (Keith David, in particular, proves a casting coup as a disgraced software designer who now lives in a Winnebago.)

Whether that means Yahoo will strike gold once more with its plans for more original programming remains to be seen, but we’re gonna keep watching the h-e-double-hockey-sticks out of this Community season.

Listing image: Yahoo Screen

Sam Machkovech

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