I've spoken to a lot of actors on a lot of sets, but my recent visit to Community -- just a few days before the show returns this Thursday night -- was the first time I conducted an interview with costars where one sat on the other's lap – and at one point had a third person then sit on the other two cast members laps as well. But such is life at Greendale.

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The actors in question were Gillian Jacobs Alison Brie and Danny Pudi . As I was interviewing Jacobs, Brie came over to join us and sat on Jacobs lap. And a couple of minutes later, Pudi joined us too, deciding to (briefly) put himself down on Brie's lap – or as he put it "crack on cap" – which he explained meant butt crack to kneecap.In the midst of this, I joked that clearly, this was a cast that don't get along, causing Brie to exclaim, "It's terrible! Season 3 , it's worse than ever." She then added, "Gillian was saying recently that we're starting to feel worse and worse for our guest stars that come on the set, because we're all so close and our language now is so…" "...Nonsensical to outsiders," Jacobs finished.Explained Brie, "It's like we speak in code, because we have so many inside jokes based on episodes and things that we've worked on that now have been so twisted into just nonsensical kind of mishmash that we find hilarious. So we'll say one word and we all think it's hilarious. And somebody else is like, 'I have no idea what you're talking about."But that only sounded appropriate to me, since among half hour comedies, Community is one that rarely follows any sort of set formula, and has established an admirable, anything goes tone. As Joel McHale told me, "There's nothing ever typical about it, which I love. The only most familiar thing about it is being around the study table. That's where a lot of stuff happens. And especially this season, it's all over the place as far as settings and what we're doing. It's different than last year. I don't really have anything to compare it to. At The Soup, we know it's going to be green screen jokes about reality shows. And we also know that this is going to be about the study group that has a lot of dysfunction and will find themselves in some incredible situations. But the first six episodes that we have shot are pretty out there. It's great."As Jacobs put it, "I don't ever feel like, 'Oh, I can just phone this one in, because it's gonna be just like last week.' It's so different week to week, that you do feel like you're constantly challenged, which is really nice, because I think otherwise, you wouldn't want to go to work as much." Yvette Nicole Brown told me that so far, Season 3 of Community has been, "A lot of ensemble episodes which have been great. I'm partial to the episodes where all of us get to play together. There have been some great episodes where two or three people go off on their own, but for me, I think the bread and butter of the show is when everybody is in one room just kind of bouncing off each other. So this season's been more of that. Almost every episode so far has been everybody dealing with one issue."Paintball. A space bus. Goodfellas meets chicken fingers. Community has become known for some very inspired episodes that play up the pop culture parody aspects of the show. However, the cast noted that, for now at least, that aspect was being toned down considerably in Season 3. But as Brie explained, "It's interesting, because I feel like this year, everyone's kind of said we're moving away from our more extravagant episodes and I think the result is that the actual episodes are maybe smaller in size, but they're just crazier than ever. They're just crazy! The stuff that's happening within them, it might all be happening in one place or on a smaller scale, but it's just weirder than before, if you can imagine that! As opposed to a full scale parody of something, we're just delving deeper into these people… and it turns out they're weird and they're kind of screwed up. Not that we didn't know that before, but the more stuff you learn, you're just like, 'Oh god…'"McHale agreed, noting, "There are weird situations. And those parodies were always a jumping-off point. As you'll see in the first two episodes -- I always feel like that some people think, 'Oh, we're a parody show that just makes reference humor.' And it's just like, 'No, you're not watching the show if that's the case.' But because of the presence of John Goodman and Michael K. Williams , because of the development of those characters, it doesn't lend itself to doing a parody in there yet. Those characters are really significant to what's happening. The antagonist to the group last year was Pierce . That has definitely changed, and now it is going to be John Goodman and outside antagonists not within the group. That doesn't mean the group is in any way harmonious by any stretch. They're working on their own stuff. But it's not the 'will the study group go on?' [dynamic]."