Community (TV Timeout)

Over the course of its first season, Community went from a promising newcomer to my favorite sitcom on television right now. Not since Arrested Development has a sitcom grabbed me so quickly and continued to fine depth in its premise. The writers of Community know their characters about as well as they know themselves. This season was not without a few minor bumps, but the last third of the inaugural season was as strong a stretch as I’ve seen in a network sitcom.

I have decided to write on this show because the ratings have been dire, and this is a show I do not want getting axed halfway through the second season. This is a show which has its best episodes ahead of it, but it is not going to survive long when it only gets about 5 million viewers a week. To give you perspective, on an average week Modern Family (another rookie sitcom which had an incredible first season, only it was much more commercially successful) gets 9 million, and the “High-Schoolers sing the hits” show Glee averaged about 12 million in its second half. The mind-blowing success of Glee is something Community took shots at often in the latter part of the season.

The pilot of Community left me intrigued if not wholly impressed. I’m still a little too in love with documentary-style comedies, and anything more conventional tends to turn me off based on principle. I decided to check it out week number two, a decision I debated for a little while. Buy, boy, am I glad I did tune in.

The second episode of Community is entitled “Spanish 101”, and from this episode on I was sold. We are introduced to Senor Chang, played by certified maniac Ken Jeong, and while it took a little while for Jeong to tone it down ever so slightly to fit those around him, he adds a whole lot to the show early on. (Actually, I don’t know if he toned down the insanity or the show cranked it up to match him.) In this episode we get to know a few of the characters a little bit better, none more notable than Chevy Chase’s Pierce Hawthorne. After being underused in the pilot, he more than makes up for it here, including a sublime final montage with Jeff Winger, played by Joel McHale.

One of the things I was most skeptical about was the casting of Joel McHale in what appeared to be the lead role. I anticipated it to be nothing but a one-dimensional performance with a bunch of cringe-inducing wisecracks. I was sold relatively early on just how wrong I was, and that Joel McHale actually has skills besides laughing at Jersey Shore on The Soup. In the past year he’s actually become a (gasp) legitimate actor. He can also be seen doing good work in Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! and I hope to see him continue to expand his horizons. Mostly I want to see him still do this. Watch, people!

Well, I talk about all this and I have yet to truly describe the premise of this show I love so dearly. The short version: It’s about a group of people who have ended up at Greendale Community College. Jeff Winger had a successful career as a lawyer only to have it discovered he faked his degree. Britta Perry (Gillian Jacobs) dropped out of high school because she “thought it would impress Radiohead”. (Which is odd, because all but one of them has a university degree. I'm a Radiohead geek, so I know this crap.) She was later able to get her G.E.D. and enroll at Greendale University. The series began hinting at a Jeff-Britta relationship early on, but it soon was put on the backburner only to reappear in the last few episodes of the season.

Other characters include Shirley Bennett (Yvette Nicole Brown) an African-American single mom, Annie Edison (Alison Brie) is smart but she became addicted to pills in high school and now is stuck in Community College, Troy Barnes (Donald Glover) was a high school football star, Pierce Hawthorne (the aforementioned Chevy Chase) is something of a tycoon in the moist towelette business, and Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi) is a pop-culture geek who aspires to filmmaking and spews movie and television references like a robot. Each character gets ample airtime throughout the 25 episodes in the first season, and by the end we feel we have also become part of their study group.

Community was created by Dan Harmon, who in the past has mostly been known for less mainstream cable fare. His work includes the now-canceled The Sarah Silverman Program, and the viewer input-based Acceptable TV which only lasted a handful of shows. He has written for the Oscars, and wrote the screenplay for the animated film Monster House. He is known by many, but as you can see his work has rarely had much longevity, despite its usual awesomeness. The ball is in your court, viewer. Watch Community or risk having the most promising sitcom in a long time be pulled off the air.

I cannot leave without mentioning the incredible episode “Modern Warfare”, which was the best episode of television I watched last year. (Half-hour category. My hour-long award goes to Fringe and “White Tulip”) It is a pitch-perfect homage/parody of post-apocalyptic action movies, and it is not just a gimmick. It is used to add depth to each character, and by the end of the episode the entire series has moved forward. What made the second half of this first season so captivating was the willingness of the show to change styles week-to-week. One of my other favorite episodes was the Goodfellas parody “Contemporary American Poultry”, and much of the episode is nearly identical to the style of a Scorsese mob movie. The music, the camera movements, the editing was all spot-on. This show wants to get everything exactly right.

The season finale “Pascal’s Triangle Revisited” is interesting in its imperfection. Much of the episode that comes before it is incredibly strong, as most of the season was, but at the end the show adds a few twists too many, perhaps trying too hard to have fun with the idea of the “season finale”. I don’t want to ruin it too much for those of you who have not seen it, (again, 5 million viewers, so you probably haven’t) but the characters they had down so well for so many episodes suddenly break form a bit in the final minutes, and a plot line which appeared earlier in the season then disappeared rears it’s not-quite-ugly head once again. It doesn’t ruin much, and if anything it left me wondering where the writers will take it next year. I truly believe this is a classic series in the making, and if people will just watch I feel we could watch something special happen. There’s another show I’m thinking of which struggled through poor ratings its first season and a half but then when on to greatness. What’s it called? Oh, yeah. Freaking Seinfeld.

My 5 Favorite Episodes (By air date)
"Spanish 101"
"Introduction to Statistics"
"Comparative Religion"
"Contemporary American Poultry"
"Modern Warfare"

(By the way, Jack Black is a guest star in "Investigative Journalism", an episode which makes fun of the fact that Jack Black is a guest star in "Investigative Journalism". It's hilarious, including a great surprise cameo at the end which I would never give away.)