#gijeff

Here's 5 of my favorite scenes I did for #GIJeff. All animated in Adobe Flash CS3.

Here is a small selection of storyboards I worked on for the #GIJeff episode of #Community that aired this week.

Community season 5 has consistently amazed me with it’s exploration of dark themes, such as mortality, failure, loss, and the state of our society, through comedy. In G.I. Jeff, Jeff is experiencing a serious medical crisis after drinking a fifth of scotch and taking youth pills attempting to feel young on his 40th birthday. Some how, this is expertly handled through a G.I. Joe animated spectacular, dousing darkness with pure hilarity (what do boobies look like?).

The G.I. Jeff animated episode positively radiates with passion stemming from the source material. The entire episode is a spectacular throwback with far too many references to even bother listing. Just the fact that Harmon worked with Hasbro for approval and the presence of a number of members of the original G.I. Joe voice cast shows the care that went into this.

The slow reveal of the deep consequences and the deeper meanings behind the episode is totally enthralling. Slowly sifting through the layers of Jeff’s psychotic dream was handled with total brilliance. It is with this deep brilliance that I think this episode may take a couple of viewings to really appreciate. There is so much to absorb, not only the talent of the script, and the cast, but the talent of Rob Schrab, who worked on this episode, according to his Twitter, almost up until airtime!  It’s almost too much. The flawless beauty between the true-to-form, stylized limited animation, vintage TV toy commercials, and Greendale reality is something that even the most die-hard Community fans may have to let sit with them for awhile. Once you realize you don’t have to be 40, didn’t have to grow up in the 80s, don’t have to know who G.I. Joe was, or ever even seen a Hasbro action figure to enjoy the intensity blazing through this episode you’ll be suddenly dumb-founded by it all.

I could continue my endless love for this episode by going deep on Buzzkill, Fourthwall, and Three Kids, the commercial segments, or about how death in the G.I. Joe universe threw off their world. I could start pouring over Harmon’s cameo, the various Easter eggs, about how it was Pierce’s scotch that helped send Jeff into this psychosis, but this review would get far, far too rambly (I’m probably passed that point). It’s just awesome. Everything is awesome. And if you disagree, watch it again. And again and again.

And speaking of watching it, despite all the positive talk lately about the fact that Six Seasons and a Movie might actually happen, Community hit an 0.9 in the 18-49 demographic this week according to Nielsen (which I ranted on earlier today here) tying it with it’s lowest ever for the series. As stupid and meaningless as those numbers are to us, to the show they annoyingly mean everything. So tell all of your friends to fire up the hashtag armada and if any of you out there happen to be one of the few with Nielsen boxes, for the love of Jobra watch Community.

Enjoy G.I. Jeff on Hulu or NBC.com now. Now for the question we are all wondering, is there a Mr. Tight Ship?

So I will be 18 in August, still plenty of time to throw all of you stupid television watching 18-49ers under the bus. Seriously. There is something wrong with all of you. Well, not all of you, the .9 percent of you who knew to be on the couch to watch Thursday's GI Jeff Community are pretty damn awesome. I understand that brilliance takes a long time to catch on, and like other well loved shows, these episodes will eventually go down in TV history as some of the best, but right now, on this totally out-dated model called Nielsen, the idea that 2.58 million viewers with .9 in the coveted 18-49 group set down to watch the magic happen, just blows my underage mind. All I can hope is that networks and advertisers have come to realize that 18-49s don't sit down and watch prime time network TV anymore and that Hulu and NBC.com are probably a more accurate way of gathering those precious numbers. Whether those numbers explode on Nielsen or build momentum over days, months, years of syndication, and internet viewing, there is no doubt that episodes like this one, made with so much passion, sweat, and talent will have an important place in television history.

Nielsen's rating system is the most outdated, irrelevant, piece of nonsense in existence. Maybe, and that's a BIG maybe, when there was just CBS, NBC, and ABC, and no home computers, no iPhones, no tablets, no internet access whatsoever (seriously, what did you guys do?), Nielsen might have been a little relevant. But Nielsen's insanely small household sampling can no longer represent the endless avenues we now have of viewing our entertainment. With 100s of cable channels, new original programming entering all sorts of different markets, endless youtube videos, and so many outlets, how can this even BEGIN to have any relevancy. Seriously. This is no way to gauge accurate information. I promise you, as I 'come of age,' it's going to be my generation that takes Nielsen out of the equation. You're welcome.