Review: _Community_
Mar. 31st, 2021 08:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurKate and I finished watching through Community last night, and it's worth a mention.
For those who aren't familiar with it: Community was a weird little half-hour comedy that ran on NBC for five seasons, then concluded with a sixth season as basically the only thing of any note to come out of Yahoo!'s attempt at a TV service. On the surface, it was a straightforward sitcom about a study group at Greendale Community College. In reality, well...
It's hard to figure out how to categorize Community; the best comparison I can come up with offhand is The Simpsons -- it is very much screwball satire, with each episode taking on a different concept to make fun of. Unlike The Simpsons, it had a little bit of lightweight arc running through the story, and a slightly sweeter tone.
The series is largely defined by its cast, all of whom are a tad two-dimensional but who jelled almost perfectly from the outset. The lead is notionally Jeff, the lawyer who faked his degree and now has to get a real one, but the real lead is arguably Abed, the film student who interacts with the world through film and television concepts, breaks the fourth wall with aplomb (this is one of the most self-aware TV shows ever made), and whose perspective (and reflexive goodness) tends to frame everything else.
While it was by no means consistent, Community was at its best when making fun of TV tropes themselves, which it did regularly. For example, there was an occasional running theme of the "darkest timeline" (I believe that was where this now-common phrase came from), complete with evil-opposite goatees, stemming from the episode that explored how the roll of a die could produce different outcomes. There was the glorious two-part war of the pillow forts, serving as a deadpan parody of The Civil War documentary. And there is the annual Paintball Wars event that takes over the Greendale campus once a year, serving as the backdrop for everything from Mad Max nihilism to Westerns to espionage.
As so often happens, this is an utterly brilliant five-season series that ran six seasons. After Troy and Shirley leave at the end of Season 5, and are replaced by new characters for 6, the cast never quite regains its balance. The stories in 6 tend to be less funny and less well-observed, and the episode-end tags (one of the traditional joys of Community) turn much more explicitly satirical and way less fun; many are just dumb.
The final episode of the last season manages to recapitulate the whole series, in a way: it is the one truly great episode of the season, with a concept and story that fits in with the story's traditions, and really does end the series, in a bittersweet but honest way. And then it ends with a tag that is uncomfortably dark, unpleasant, and unnecessary -- it's worth skipping the last minute.
The motto of the show, from fairly early on, was always "Six Seasons and a Movie". I don't know if the movie is ever likely to happen; if it does, I'm probably cautiously on-board, but with the understanding that the chances of it catching the spark that made the show great are kind of slim.
So overall: the first five seasons are highly recommended -- this was a brilliant, fun, well-observed comedy. It's not quite capital-a Art the way The Good Place was, but it was pretty consistently delightful, especially seasons 2 through 5. Season 6 is a very mixed bag: not terrible, but not remotely as good as the previous ones, so make your own mind about whether to be completist there. (You don't miss anything terribly critical if you skip it.) All of it is currently on Netflix.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-03-31 04:52 pm (UTC)Thank you for the recommendation though --I watched most of it when I was in college, and could probably use a rewatch of at least the "good" seasons
(no subject)
Date: 2021-03-31 05:50 pm (UTC)The gas-leak year.
Otherwise, agreed.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-03-31 06:31 pm (UTC)10/10 would recommend. Thank you for your review.