May 9th, 2010
Heroic Paintshed
I just had to interrupt my self-imposed hiatus to call attention to the most recent and rather brilliant episode of Community. For those of you unfamiliar with this NBC comedy, the premise involves a lawyer named Jeff Winger (The Soup’s Joel McHale) who is forced to attend community college when questions arise about the validity of his undergraduate degree. At Greendale Community College, he befriends a ragtag group of students, played by an wonderful ensemble cast that includes Chevy Chase, Gillian Jacobs, Donald Glover, Danny Pudi, Yvette Nicole Brown, and Allison Brie.
At this point, you may be wondering just what the heck any of this has to do with Hong Kong cinema, but I think if you take a good look at the image and the video I’ve embedded below, you’ll know immediately why the episode in question is relevant to a site called LoveHKFilm.com.
Ken Jeong — probably best known from the box office smash, The Hangover — plays the school’s wacky Spanish teacher, Señor Chang. In last week’s episode, “Modern Warfare,” Greendale holds a campus-wide paintball tournament, and Chang shows up as the ringer, doing his best Mark Gor/Jeff/Tequila Yuen impression in the process. The pop culture references are flying fast and furious, as Community parodies everything from John Woo movies to Fox’s smash-hit, musical-comedy Glee… with hilarious results. Speaking of “fast and furious,” the episode was directed by two-time Fast and the Furious director Justin Lin, who also helmed Community’s equally funny Halloween-themed episode.
Okay, enough talk. Do yourself a favor and check this out.
*It’s come to my attention that this episode may not be available outside the U.S. Sorry, folks.
May 9th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
Is this show always this funny? I should watch!
May 9th, 2010 at 6:47 pm
Never heard of this show before, thanks for the heads up and the video.
May 11th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
love that show - Ken Jeong was hilarious wish he would throw in say hello to my little friend!!! - you guys can catch the episode here
http://www.tv-dome.net/community-season-1-episode-23/
May 12th, 2010 at 10:10 pm
Saw it and immediately thought - CHOW YUN FAT OMG! Yeah. I’m over 20 and my thoughts are structured like text-messages.
It’s the best episode of Community yet.
July 5th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
[…] May 6th episode of the NBC comedy Community featured a dead-on parody of some of John Woo’s films (particularly those featuring Chow […]
July 29th, 2010 at 10:24 pm
any chance that you happen to know the name of that chinese song that was played in this episode?
July 29th, 2010 at 10:39 pm
My Chinese language skills are limited, but according to some quick online research, supposedly, it’s a recording done by Sherry Shaoling using the lyrics to an old Chinese poem about the assassin Jing Ke.
“Piercing wind, freezing river of Yi. The hero fords, and he never returns!” (風瀟瀟兮,易水寒,壮士一去不復返!)
Native speakers and other experts can confirm, deny, or clarify this connection.