My Favorite Season: #5 - "Community"

Left to right: Joel McHale and Allison Brie

Every Tuesday, I will be attempting something unique. I will look through the pantheon on TV and determine what my favorite season of any show is. The goal is to explore the heights of these shows and better understand why they are beloved, at least by me. This is an experiment that I hope will last for awhile, though I am sure around the 30th entry, things will look a lot different and I will be grasping at straws. Anyways, join me for as long as this last and feel free to share some of your favorites with me as I go through this wonderful medium.

The Show

Left to right: Ken Jeong and Donald Glover

Community (2009-present)

It is the underdog cult comedy from creator Dan Harmon that for five seasons became the strange success story on NBC. For those who watched, it was a highlight of the TV seasons with stories that infused college antics and diversity with pop culture tropes and a high flying mixture of jokes and self-awareness. The show embodied nerd culture better than other popular series such as The Big Bang Theory by not focusing on the nerdiness, but more on the subject of obsession and how it impacts daily lives. After five seasons of amazingly being on the bubble, NBC cancelled the series only for it to be picked up by Yahoo!, thus making it the underdog series that continued to strive despite any obstacle.

MY FAVORITE SEASON

Season 2 (2010-2011)

EPISODES

1. Anthropology 101

2. Accounting for Lawyers

3. The Psychology of Letting Go

4. Basic Rocket Science

5. Myths and Ancient Peoples

6. Epidemiology

7. Aerodynamics of Gender

8. Cooperative Calligraphy

9. Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design

10. Mixology Certification

11. Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas

12. Asian Population Studies

13. Celebrity Pharmacology

14. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

15. Early 21st Century Romanticism

16. Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking

17. Intro to Political Science

18. Custody Law and Eastern European Diplomacy

19. Critical Film Studies

20. Competitive Wine Tasting

21. Paradigms of Human Memory

22. Applied Anthropology and Culinary Arts

23. A Fistful of Paintballs

24. For a Few Paintballs More

HIGHLIGHTS

5 Reasons Why It's the Best

1. It expanded upon its concept of being a community college series with pop culture references by going into overkill this season with episodes parodying Apollo 13, Pulp Fiction, and the films of Sergio Leone on top of a parody of flashback episodes.

2. The claymation episode "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" was the series' first foray into weird, very specific animation humor that would continue to be explored in later seasons. What makes it particularly fascinating is that the animation is used to explore Abed's psyche and better understand why he is obsessed with making his world into a claymation landscape to begin with. It is heartfelt and full of bizarre, wondrous specificity that still manages to be accessible.

3. "Epidemiology" is a Halloween episode that focuses on an outbreak that when set to Abba music and featuring pop culture costumes such as the robot from Aliens, it becomes a surreal embrace of overload on pleasurable eccentricity that pushes its nerdiness over the top in ways that are hilarious and still clever enough to justify its credentials as the funniest series to have been on NBC that season.

4. Community possibly pushed its boundaries a little too far and because deserving of the cult moniker when it decided to do a two-part episode dedicated around the concept of paintball fights in the school. These episodes, "A Fistful of Paintballs" and "For a Few Paintballs More" expanded on the ideas set in motion during season 1's finale and turned it into an epic of amazing proportions. The series vowed never to do a paintball episode again, yet with this finale, it managed to find its core appeal and push it into interesting directions. Did it isolate? Very likely. However, the build around embracing its unique appeal has managed to make it one of the best series while also being particularly niche and a triumph unto itself that the show lasted 97 episodes on a major network.

5. The first appearance of Levarr Burton, starting an uncomfortable relationship with Troy:

Left to right: Levarr Burton and Glover

BEST EPISODE

"Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas"

In a season packed with the series' best episodes, it is hard to find one that stands out above the rest. However, there's something quite special about watching this one for the first time. Considering that claymation hasn't been popular in quite some time, to see a live action sitcom dedicate an entire episode to the medium just seems ballsy. Also, the countless references to old school properties is likely to go over people's heads. While it doesn't quite hold a candle to the isolating strangeness of later animated episodes, this one has a lot of charm and creativity that amounts to a very great Lost reference. Most of all, it reflects the series' ability to be funny yet also touching when it wants to be by making characters who have deep inner problems and it doesn't so much let people be nerdy. It allows them to be that while trying to understand why. Few episodes before or after compare to the immediacy and definitive nature of this one.

WORST EPISODE

Left to right: Glover and McHale

"Mixology Certification"

It isn't a bad episode, but considering the heights of many of the other ones, this is probably the least memorable for me, even with Paul F. Tompkins in tow. The idea of Troy celebrating his 21st birthday by driving around his drunken friends to bars is an inspired premise. However, it isn't an episode that I entirely remember what happens other than that he eventually blows up and causes all sorts of problems. It is an all right episode, but maybe its rooted nature in more normalcy than the other episodes contribute to its problem of simply feeling like a filler episode. It isn't a terrible thing to say, but it isn't a great thing, either. 

FAVORITE PERFORMANCE

Left to right: McHale and Danny Pudi

Abed in "Critical Film Studies"

The fact of the matter is that the performance is great because of the last second reveal. When Jeff decides to throw Abed a Pulp Fiction-themed birthday party, Abed refuses with a dinner reflecting how he grew up. For the most part, it feels like a sincere apology for being a big nerd for the past two seasons. While this is true, the big reveal at the end makes this particularly great when he reveals that it was all an act of My Dinner with Andre parodying. It is excellent how quickly things turn and the con is revealed. Has Abed done better performances this season? Yes. However, sticking a My Dinner with Andre-themed episode in the middle of NBC's prime time line-up is profoundly ballsy. I love it just for that and its ability to get everyone else to parody Pulp Fiction in ways that turn the tables on Communit's otherwise familiar pallet. 

IS THE REST OF THE SERIES LIKE THIS?

Yes, though only technically. The wonderful thing about season 2 is that it expanded on ideas of season 1. In many ways, it is wilder and more challenging in ways that make its predecessor seem tame. It pushes the pop culture envelope by doing anything and everything over 24 episodes. While 30 Rock was the barometer of weird for NBC at the time, Community quickly replaced it with pop-culture themed episodes that not everyone who tuned in understood. It was an outcast in its brilliance. With season 3, the show continued to expand on its ideas, arguably getting into more of the niche, cult-like concepts such as time travel and computers. Still, mixing heart with references has been the show's success. While some would debate that season 5 was a return to form, it still felt like rehashed ideas meant to appeal to fans. It wasn't a terrible move, but Community's best episodes all come in the first three seasons with the disastrous season 4 quickly becoming a forgotten memory. The show has been consistent when Harmon was involved, but it never quite got as good as season 2 in embracing its weirdness while also trying to be accepted by a larger audience.