Community is basically Recess but with grown-ups. Can you say streets ahead?
Today’s edition of “Sitcom Love” pays homage to the little engine that could of Must See TV. Oh, Must See TV on NBC was only in the nineties? OPPOSITE. Anyone who says that has no idea what they missed out on in 2012. That’s a whole other tangent/Powerpoint/TedTalk that I will give to an audience mostly against their will.
Community was unlike a lot of the NBC greats that graced our TVs. It didn’t float away on a raft of Emmys, it didn’t get millions upon millions of viewers each week, and it didn’t have an epic, bombastic finale. However, that doesn’t make it any less great as the Frasiers and Friends that came before them. The writing was razor sharp and its fans knew it. In fact, over ten years since the pilot, its fans STILL know, and await the almost-promise movie.
But we’ll get there. First, we need to make a pit stop… in Greendale, Colorado.
Synopsis: Smooth talking lawyer Jeff Winger loses his job after it is discovered that his degree is less than legitimate. He registers at Greendale Community College, where he is immediately charmed by the free spirited Britta Perry. Jeff creates a fake study group for their shared Spanish class in an attempt to get closer to her. However, he ends up with more than he bargained for when she invites five other classmates to join. Thus, this random collective of Greendale students become… a community.
Community: The Good
Community was the definition of a well-oiled machine. The actors developed full fledged characters, bestowed upon them by incredible writers, with creative madman Dan Harmon at the helm.
Harmon’s sense of humor speaks to anyone who watches too much TV and/or too many movies. So, me, and other pop culture nerds. The meta references are a mile a minute on Community, and the brick jokes share the same layers and complexities as Arrested Development; coincidentally, Arrested Development and Community were both produced by Anthony and Joe Russo!
If you’ve ever watched a show based on the school timeframe, you know that the quality dips after four years. Then you have either a large time jump or a new crop of students that just don’t compete with the original classmates. Community defies this trope, with the additional two years dealing with the aftermath of “graduation” and what comes next for mediocre adults with mediocre degrees.
Community: The Bad
Truthfully, there isn’t much BAD that I can say about this show. Some of the jokes are dated, but not offensively so. Much of the “2020 cringe” can be found in Pierce Hawthorne, a senile member of “the Greendale Seven,” whose ‘good old days’ were rife with misogyny and racism. However, the group deals with Pierce’s misgivings in a thoughtful way, firmly standing against his more toxic ideology.
Behind the scenes, it’s true that Harmon’s perfectionism bordered on tyrannical. He would require rewrites and multiple takes to get things just right. He would also frequently butt heads with the actor behind Pierce Hawthorne, Chevy Chase. Chase, of Saturday Night Live legend, wouldn’t always realize that the joke was on his sexist/racist character. He would also often say off-color things to the other cast members. At one point, Harmon left the show, as did Chase, and Pierce died offscreen. Harmon returned the following season, and the previous season was referred to in-show as “the gas leak year.”
It is worth noting that season two saw an episode that paid homage to Dungeons and Dragons. In the episode, Ben Chang dresses as a dark elf to play the game. Because the dark elf makeup resembled blackface, this episode was removed from streaming platforms.
Community: The Best
I couldn’t recommend this show more if you’re a pop culture fanatic. Dan Harmon has commented that his way of understanding the world is through movie references. You see this translated through the multitude of homages done on the show. You get your western homages, your zombie movies, your talk show tropes, your sitcom tropes, and yes, a whole episode that feels like Star Wars. Don’t even get me started on Inspector Spacetime!
Secondly, the show’s music goes underrated in my opinion. Community doesn’t rely on the cliche of ending an episode with a top twenty indie song as most shows do, but when they do employ that tie-up, it lands. It happens in the first two episodes, and while the first one really nails it, just wait until the end of “Spanish 101.” As well, the full version of the theme song was almost my wedding song. It’s really good to dance to, when you love someone more than words can say. Soundtrack aside, I do love a good score. Ludwig Göransson creates both punchy tracks fit for strolling your campus green, and soft, thoughtful pieces for realizing that nothing is stopping you from being interested in any (and every) one of your friends.
Similar to my thoughts on The Office, Community has served as an incredible jumping off point. As I mentioned earlier, Dan Harmon went on to create Rick and Morty. The Russo brothers went on to direct four Marvel movies. Ludwig Göransson, wrote the score for “Black Panther” and “The Mandalorian,” among others. I would like to personally shoutout his work on “Tenet,” because he filled in for Hans Zimmer (who stepped away to compose “Dune”). If you know nothing of film composers, imagine playing in the Super Bowl, because you’re second best to Tom Brady, and he just broke his leg.
As well, Ludwig Göransson has frequently collaborated with Donald Glover, who portrayed athlete with a heart of gold Troy Barnes on Community. Outside of the show, Glover got his start in comedy doing standup and writing for shows like 30 Rock. He also leads a double life as rapper Childish Gambino. After leaving Community, Glover would go on to win a Grammy, several Emmys, and portray Lando Calrissian. I don’t think you could ask for a better resume.
Lastly, and I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but this show provides a very real look on what it’s like to attend community college. Hear me out here. I’m not saying community college is filled with paintball fights and dances, but it also isn’t filled with deadbeats with DUIs. It’s filled with people who want, and need, a second chance to get it right. Jeff Winger may need his law degree to return to his life as a lawyer, but study group member Shirley Bennett has just been left by her husband, and must find a way to support her two sons. Pierce Hawthorne is a millionaire and owner of a Wet Wipes company, but has been taking classes to keep his wits sharp in his aging years.
An episode features several gifted high school students taking college level classes at Greendale. They bully the other students attending Greendale, as though they failed at obtaining a more prestigious education. It’s packed with laughs, but it’s also filled with heart. What a great microcosm of the show as a whole.
Where to Start
Fans can make “gas leak year” jokes all they want; I personally believe the show never went “bad”. It is a challenge to pick the five best episodes of this show! Please know, from the bottom of my heart, I am just scratching the surface.
Season 1, Episode 1: The Pilot. Remember how I said “The Office” should be started at season two? This show has one of the strongest opening episodes I’ve ever seen. You’ll get such a good idea of what you’re getting into, and you’ll be truly ready for the next six seasons of hilarious hijinks. I use the phrase “hilarious hijinks” both ironically and unironically.
Season 1, Episode 23: Modern Warfare. This was my first episode, and it won my heart instantly. As Jeff and Britta’s romantic tension builds, quirky Dean Craig Pelton announces a game of paintball on the quad. Jeff excuses himself to take a nap in his car. He awakens an hour later to find the campus at war. The paintball game has exploded into ultimate combat, with every student participating in hopes of winning the sacred “prize.” The episode was so popular with both the audience and writers that despite the absolute destruction to the campus, the writers came back with two more paintball episodes throughout the rest of the series.
Season 2, Episode 8: Cooperative Calligraphy. After completing a class project, the study group begins to collect their things to go home. However, bookworm Annie Edison’s purple pen has gone missing! Angered that her pens always vanish and convinced that one of the other study group members stole her pen, she refuses to let anyone leave until her pen is returned. This episode is a “bottle episode” in its truest form (and is called out for it by Abed Nadir, the Dan Harmon stand in of the show). The study group tears apart their study room, figuratively and literally, as the gang reveals secrets, spit accusations, and miss the cutest puppy parade you ever wish existed.
Season 2, Episode 21: Paradigms of Human Memory. Ever heard of a clip show? It’s when a show compiles a combination of best hits from previous episodes into a montage rather than providing a story moving plot. This episode plays homage to that. However, all the “clips” shown do not exist as real episodes from the show that we’ve seen before now. As well, unlike a clip show’s tendency to not move the plot of the overarching storyline, this episode reveals two major plotlines. If you want a non-spoiler alert spoiler alert, just know that Dan Harmon found a fanmade video of two of the characters, set to “Gravity” by Sara Bareilles, and just… ran with it. This episode also made references to the short lived action series The Cape, including this incredible moment that borned the show’s fanbase’s battle cry: six seasons and a movie. If you’re a fan of Community, you know that it deserves six seasons… and a movie.
Season 3, Episode 4: Remedial Chaos Theory. “If ye had the chance to change yer fate, would ye?” Same concept, wrong medium. The study group decides to go to “Troy and Abed’s new apartment!” for a dinner party. As they prepare to play Yahtzee, the doorbell rings, indicating the arrival of their pizza. Jeff decides to roll a die to determine who will have to get up to go get the pizza. Abed warns that by creating six opportunities for people to get a pizza, he is creating six other timelines of reality. This episode takes time to explore each timeline, touching on romantic interests, friendship dynamics, and whether or not you should sing along with “Roxanne” when it plays on the speakers. If you’ve been on Twitter in the past five years, and have wondered what people meant whenever someone tweeted “This is the darkest timeline,” it’s this episode. Just wait for it.
Community doesn’t exist on the same plane as The Office or Parks and Recreation. It’s a bit offbeat, it doesn’t play by rules, and it embraces itself for being different. And you know what? You could say the same about any of “The Greendale Seven.” Community ended after six seasons, and received more viewership on Netflix than it did when it aired. It truly has a cult fanbase, one that eagerly watched a table read to raise money for COVID-19 relief during the lockdowns last year. With its presence on Netflix, table read viewership in the millions, and love from both the writers, creators, and actors… we just might get that “and a movie” yet!