Community: A retrospective

Beginning in 2009, Dan Harmon’s Community was always a little unorthodox when it comes to
the sitcom. The late 2000s and 2010s were a monumental era for the genre; like the glitz of
recession-pop, financial turbulence made for TV that wanted its viewers, above all, to have a
good time. Shows like the US Office, Parks and Recreation, and later, Brooklyn 99, dominated
NBC and fought for the coveted Thursday night slots reserved for sitcoms. Community was
different. The Office, Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn 99 – these shows were all peppered with
optimism. You could work at a failing paper company, an underfunded government department,
a police station, and have a good time. While Community’s characters aren’t necessarily
depressing, there’s a sense of pessimism that differentiates the show from its contemporaries.

The sitcom – or situational comedy – is one of the last pillars of cable television. While modern
sitcoms like Adults or Overcompensating exist only on streaming sites with limited episode
numbers, they still retain the dip-in dip-out formula that allows sitcoms to thrive. While a show
may have a few overarching plots, usually focused on romance, an episode is a singularly
contained storyline. That is, you don’t need to watch an entire show to enjoy an episode.

Community takes this to a whole new level. Forget Friends’ ‘The One Where Everybody Finds
Out’. Forget Brooklyn 99’s Halloween Heists. For Harmon, each episode is not just a new
situation, but a new genre. While this starts out subtley, with season one conquering rom-com
premises and action sequences, by season two, the Greendale seven experience space
madness, religious psychosis, stop-motion festivities, and a zombie apocalypse. This is what
makes the show so brilliant. Sitcoms aren’t at the top of anyone’s list when it comes to
innovations in filmmaking, but what Harmon does with Community brings craft to the forefront,
whether that’s expanding the role of animation for adult TV, or bringing in Marvel’s Russo
brothers for complexly crafted fight scenes. Community takes the limited form of the sitcom,
where episodes must happen within their usual setting, and occasionally deviating (think the
Friends apartment, or the Dunder Mifflin office), and breaks down the walls of genre. Greendale
community college is not just the study room; it’s outer space, or an active war zone, or even
something outside of this world entirely.

I mentioned earlier how Community lacks the exaggerated optimism of the mainstream sitcom.
Of course, characters in other shows can be sad, experience loss and pain, or even, in more
modern iterations, explore mental health issues. I would argue that in Community, though, none
of the characters are that happy at all. Michael Scott may have a depressing life, heading a
paper company in the most boring part of the US, but he ultimately believes that his life will get
better.

In Community, we follow disgraced ex-lawyer Jeff Winger at his lowest point: community
college. And, while he develops and grows over the course of the show, he never quite
accesses that sheer optimism and enthusiasm for the future that his sitcom leading man
counterparts do. Similarly, the other members of the Greendale seven start the show at rock
bottom. We don’t meet them in media res, going about their days, but at the start of something
awful. Annie is an addict; Shirley’s husband cheats on her; Pierce is an old racist; Troy’s
basketball dreams are quashed; Britta’s political ‘career’ is a pipe dream, and Abed’s got daddy
issues. The show sets them up to get better, but, due to behind-the-scenes drama, and creator
Dan Harmon’s mental state, they never really do. And, to me, that makes Community immensely
more rewatchable than any other sitcom.

Community is, at its core, ridiculous. An episode in season one depicts Abed, who acts in
tandem with Jeff as the outsider to the world’s chaos, become the leader of a fried chicken mafia
family. A few episodes later, he becomes Jesus. Because of the fantastical elements of the
show, it manages to transcend any time period while still feeling very much rooted in reality. A
zombie apocalypse occurring in a college would be outlandish in any other show, but through
Abed, it’s just another Tuesday. A zombie apocalypse isn’t a particularly dated concept, either,
and so despite the late-2000s setting, Community feels timeless.

If you haven’t seen the show but want to get into it, I thought I’d list a couple of my favourite
episodes to look forward to:
S1E21: Contemporary American Poultry – the aforementioned chicken mafia episode
S2E11: Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas – a parody of animated children’s Christmas specials
that will make you shed a tear
S3E04: Remedial Chaos Theory – perhaps the most famous episode. You’ll recognise that one
GIF when you see it.

• college
• comedy
• entertainment
• television