100 Favorite Shows: #3 — Community
“You’ve become something unstoppable. I hereby pronounce you a community.”
[Disclaimer: Dan Harmon, the creator of Community, was accused by former Community writer Megan Ganz of sexual harassment in the writers’ room of the series. Ganz’s tweets have since been deleted, but Vox chronicled her accusations, as well as Harmon’s subsequent apology and discussion with Ganz.]
After being ousted from his lawyer job when it was uncovered that he lied about his degree, Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) is forced to attend Dean Pelton’s (Jim Rash) Greendale Community College and attain a legitimate law degree. While there, he concocts a fake Spanish study group to get closer to Britta Perry (Gillian Jacobs), but when he reveals his plan to Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi), who possesses social cue reading as a weakness, a real study group forms. Troy Barnes (Donald Glover), Annie Edison (Alison Brie), Shirley Bennett (Yvette Nicole Brown), and Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase) turn up in Greendale’s study room, prepared to do whatever it takes to pass Señor Chang’s (Ken Jeong) class and become the Greendale Seven. At first, Jeff is reluctant, but slowly, he begins to accept a group of friends who want to hang around him and steadily chooses to become a better person over the course of genre homage episodes, high-concept meta reflections, and the occasional “hug and learn” sitcom installments. This only barely touches upon what was so magical about Community, the Dan Harmon-created comedy that developed the most massive following in the history of cult television shows. Steadily developing its unprecedented identity in the annals of TV over the course of seasons, Community became a lightning rod for the cancellation radar of bears and Michael Ausiello. Through its iconic #sixseasonsandamovie rallying cry (which originated in “Paradigms of Human Memory” as an allusion to The Cape), Community survived the firing of Harmon at the end of season three, the reviled installment of David Guarascio and Moses Port (giving it their best shot) as showrunners for season four, the return of Harmon for season five and NBC’s subsequent cancellation, the losses of Glover, Brown, and Chase, and a last-second rescue by the now-defunct Yahoo! Screen streaming service for the coveted sixth season. Even if the movie never arrives, Community’s run from 2009 to 2015 will be cherished forever.
(This essay contains spoilers for Community and for all of its timelines. Even the darkest one. Also Scrubs.)
“It has to be joyful, effortless, fun. TV defeats its own purpose when it’s pushing an agenda or trying to defeat other TV or being proud or ashamed of itself for existing. It’s TV; it’s comfort. It’s a friend you’ve known so well and for so long you just let it be with you. And it needs to be okay for it to have a bad day or phone in a day. And it needs to be okay for it to get on a boat with LeVar Burton and never come back. Because eventually, it all will.”
This is the monologue delivered by Abed in the series finale (the real series finale) of Community. It’s essentially the final emotional breakthrough for the character (more emotional pay-offs for the others were lying in wait), realizing exactly what television means to him and exactly how he plans to compartmentalize the obsessive part of his brain as he moves forward and moves on from Greendale.
Throughout “Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television,” Abed is acting perfectly within his meta, self-aware parameters ascribed to him as the voice of Community’s own hyper-consciousness of its own status as a television show. He brings a metronome to their final meeting of the semester, he asks if every billiards shot starts a “scene” somewhere. And in the writerly climax of the episode, Abed espouses what television is supposed to be and, likewise, what Community was supposed to be, before being choked up (a rare instance in the series) to recall Troy, his best friend, who left a season and a half prior to obtain Pierce’s inheritance (Pierce died in season five’s “Basic Intergluteal Numismatics”) by sailing the Childish Tycoon around the world with LeVar Burton.
Earlier, in season six’s “Basic RV Repair and Palmistry,” Abed contemplated the story structure of the group’s stranding in the desert with a giant hand to the point where Jeff rose to his level and debated television meta concepts with him, eventually permitting him to make that week’s show a show about the RV breaking down instead of a show about there not being a show for them to riff about. (If you’re lost, don’t worry. So was Frankie Dart (Paget Brewster), the sixth season ringer who joined the cast with Elroy (Keith David), who responded to their diatribe, “What the hell was that?” By the sixth season, the Greendale group just knew each other so well.)
At the time that the sixth season was airing on Yahoo! Screen, it seemed like the show was building its popularity. (In Harmon’s final rant, stemming from a metaphysical “in-universe” board game, he states, “Show may be cancelled and moved to the Internet where it turns out tens of millions were watching the whole time, may not matter.” He also recognized, “Some episodes too conceptual to be funny. Some too funny to be immersive and some so immersive they still aren’t funny.”) I thought that, with this new life on streaming, Community never had to end. It was finally where its audience was and the good times could just keep rolling.
Upon rewatching it for the ninetieth (citation needed) time, I realize now that season six was always preparing us for the end of the show and Abed’s monologue was the final punctuation on those efforts to show that there was no show with the “Save Greendale committee,” an object of contrivance if there ever was one. The entire final arc of season six is an example of what Community always did best: deconstructing the format of television, the sitcom, and itself.
In the series finale, the gang uses a meta lens (comparing their time at Greendale to “seasons,” basically equating the school itself to the show, in an exterior context) to evaluate the current state of Community. Each character makes a pitch for what their ideal seventh season would look like and, all along, Harmon and Chris McKenna knew there wouldn’t be such a thing.
Instead, they play around with conceptual riffs that dress Dean Pelton as a baby or a time wizard, finally unleash the first (and second) Community use of “fuck,” and result in Abed’s eyes twitching when he pitches within his own pitch. (The characters shown within the pitches speak in the dialect and mannerisms of each pitcher, resembling “Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps.”) Abed critiques their “formula” (Britta absurdly reacting to Jeff’s put-downs, Annie re-shifting focus to the episode’s A-story) and remarks that they’re hemorrhaging characters, making it impossible to peak after season seven.
At first, Jeff balks at the idea of their lives being compared to a television series, but when Annie arrives at the bar at which they’re hanging out with the news that she will be an FBI intern for the summer, Jeff finally commits. He concocts a series of pitches, each at least decently plausible for the trajectory of Community, which was clearly about to be outgrown by Brie, at the very least. “How do we make it real?” he asks, reminding Abed about “six seasons and a movie,” oblivious to what Annie wants and only recognizing her moving on from Greendale as the last bastion of change that he can stomach.
By this point in the show, Jeff found love within his study group-turned-friend group. Part of him fears the loss of that group and his reverting back to the person he was before meeting them, but part of him is just afraid of change and aging in the first place. Community was comprised of a chummy group by this point, one that “saved [Jeff’s] life” and “changed it forever,” but there was also no inherent conflict driving the series. To continue manufacturing some would be a disservice to Annie, who had fun with the group, but also recognized that staying interminably at Greendale wasn’t a good choice for her; she was ready to embrace change.
Sure, Community probably could have gone on without Brie and, eventually, without Pudi or Jacobs or whoever decided it was time to move on from Yahoo! Screen, grateful and all. But if the show was hard to recognize when Elroy sat in Shirley’s seat, Frankie in Pierce’s, and Chang in Troy’s, it would have been ever more distant from the glorious beacon of television’s comedic and creative nadir than it was in season six.
One of Jeff’s pitches consists of the show’s exterior, recurring bulletin board gang of characters sitting around the table. Instead of the Greendale Seven, it’s Jeff, loud, spastic Garrett (Erik Charles Nielsen), elderly food vlogger Leonard (the late Richard Erdman), sociopathic war veteran Todd (David Neher), background law student Dave (Darsan Solomon), jealous underachiever Vicki (Danielle Kalopwitz), and new tech mogul Scrunch (Seth Green). Yes, if you squint, this would kind of resemble Community, but — as much as the supporting characters helped populate Greendale to glorious heights — who would want that version of the show? They’d force more paintball homages, but merely sustain Greendale, rather than save it.
Even though it could go on, it was clear that Community had built to the conclusion it so richly deserved and one provided by Harmon himself, refreshingly. That was the emotional consequence of broadcast television; it was Community’s turn, back in 2015, to venture into the great beyond of the medium. “Emotional Consequences” was Community’s first series finale (it ran through a couple over the years) to actually resolve the larger emotional arcs of the characters and actually splinter them into different locations. And for as much as I’ll always love the contemplative, melancholic music and the nostalgic “one last look” at an empty room where we “had all these fun adventures,” the part of Community that hits the hardest is when Jeff hugs Abed goodbye at the airport, holds him by the shoulders, looks into his eyes, and hugs him again.
It was Abed who started the study group that saved Jeff’s life and unlocked the joy he was capable of feeling; it was always Abed. The double hug is a beautiful button on their friendship, the core of the show, but also on Jeff’s re-arc. Yes, season three’s “Introduction to Finality,” brought closure to the magnificent character arc of Jeff Winger. But in “Repilot,” Harmon set the show up to pull it off again and really test what Jeff had learned. The double hug shows he’ll never be a crooked lawyer again.
“Repilot” is one of my all-time favorite episodes of Community and, by virtue of this, one of my all-time favorite episodes of television. Initially, it plays almost like a reunion episode of a beloved television show or a revisit to a famed movie franchise decades after its most recent installment. When Jeff returns to Greendale, he wanders the halls like a weathered Luke Skywalker stepping back into the Millennium Falcon or the Jurassic World children uncovering a dusty, fallen banner from 1993. He smiles at the debate trophy he won with Annie in “Debate 109,” he maneuvers the cluttered remains of his former study room, he has an immediate impact on Dean Pelton, who was otherwise going about his day. “Repilot” even plays on Community’s original “Pilot” by having Abed reverse Jeff’s first dialogue back onto him with “I see your value now.”
Never intent to lean too much into the melodrama, Abed undercuts his own callback by referring to his callback as a callback to his season one dialogue. It’s not just the return of Community for a fifth season (as the rest of the study group, sans Pierce, quickly follow Abed to jump at the opportunity to “re-pilot” and re-enroll), but it’s also the return of Dan Harmon, who was unfortunately ousted as showrunner for season four. But in this brief moment of dialogue between Jeff and Abed, it’s clear that the writing is back, properly balanced between sarcasm and sincerity, and honest to Community’s center, rather than simply trying to emulate it.
In a few swift motions, Harmon undoes the absurdity of season four, with its proclivity for puppets, body-swapping, and origin stories. (Mercifully, it kills the “Changnesia” subplot with Jeong dialogue that refers to the fourth year as the “gas leak” year at Greendale. He was always game for whatever Community called upon him to do.) Instead, Harmon supplants the fourth season’s cheery, network do-goodedness with a dark, upsetting smolder of what remains of the study group. (The episode is even shot with a muted tint by Tristram Shapeero.)
Yes, the study group is eager to recapture their old adventures at Greendale, but it’s not out of warm, accomplished nostalgia. Rather, each of their post-graduation lives has led them down a path of irony. Britta’s not a psychologist; she’s a bartender (on sabbatical, she claims. Troy’s excited to learn of her Judaism). Annie pushes pills (with “giving up on your dreams” as a side effect). Troy is riding Abed’s push towards greatness and contributing nothing. And for Shirley, Andre (Malcolm-Jamal Warner), her husband, left again, taking the kids, her business aspirations (for Shirley’s Sandwiches), and her DVRed episodes of Bones with him.
Not even a full year has elapsed between their graduation and “Repilot.” There’s still time for them to right their ships and work up to what they always dreamed of doing. But when Jeff turns up at Greendale, they’re in immediate danger, even if it’s not physical or mortal danger.
The last time Harmon wrote Jeff Winger before “Repilot” came in the season three finale, “Introduction to Finality.” (Steve Basilone and Annie Mebane wrote this episode, but Harmon’s fingerprints are all over each episode from the first three seasons.) In this episode’s denouement, Jeff resolved his character arc (the best on Community) from shameless, shallow, shady lawyer to a man consciously striving to do the best thing for his friends, rather than for himself.
“The pathetically, stupidly, inconveniently obvious truth is,” he preaches, flustered, when defending Shirley against Pierce, who wants to claim ownership of her sandwich shop. “Helping only ourselves is bad and helping each other is good. Now, I wanted to get out of here, pass biology, and be a lawyer again instead of helping Shirley. That was bad.” He explains that the lawyer who originally burned him to instigate the show, Alan (Rob Corddry), offered him his original job back in exchange for throwing the case. It’s a condition Shirley accepts, which sparks this speech from Jeff, who continues, “But now, Shirley’s gone good. Shirley’s helping me; it’s that easy. You just stop thinking about what’s good for you and start thinking about what’s good for someone else. And you can change the whole game with one move.”
No matter what, “Repilot” had to reconcile with the fact that Jeff was a changed man and so, to turn on his school and his study group in the name of creating five clients to sue Greendale for a negligent, abysmal education, he had to be reduced to his lowest point. That comes in the form of Alan gloating while Jeff’s pro bono law enterprise is stripped away from him, leaving Jeff to drink and think that there’s no moral dessert to helping people. He stoops to the Jeff Winger he was at the outset of Community.
When he’s ready to manipulate, extort, and emotionally torture his friends just to get ahead on a scuzzy legal case against his own school, Community almost forgets it’s a comedy and becomes dark. Exceedingly dark, especially for a network comedy, but I find it to be so appealing. By going to the low, we can get deeper in the emotions and deeper into what the ultimate legacy of Community is and how we are supposed to progress forward with the four* seasons that aired beforehand.
While Jeff is slapping Alan with a tie, frustrated at how quickly his old legal nemesis managed to drag him back into the muck, he punctuates each hit with a dark sentiment. “That’s for making me go to this school. That’s for making the last four years happen. And now I get to make them un-happen for me and the only people I care about.”
In this moment, it’s clear that Jeff is not fully breaking bad once again, as he acknowledges the undeniable care he maintains for each member of his old study group. Mostly, Jeff resents Greendale and blames his failures on its uncouth operations. It’s not that he didn’t change, it’s that he needs help. He’s thinking in the mindset of, “In real life, the robot wins,” but even just a few moments around Abed, Annie, and the rest again, Jeff can feel the sparks of creativity and drive back within him. Crucially, the study group also ensures that the responsibility for suing the school is on Jeff, rather than allowing him to skirt the gravity of his decision by pinning it onto them.
“What you do is above lying, remember? You show us the right truth,” Abed remarks when signing the agreement to sue Greendale, almost as if he is aware that Jeff has undergone too much “character development” to go through with it. And he doesn’t. It might have been the heartbreak in his friends’ faces that appealed to his sense of empathy, but really, it’s a chance encounter with the one member of the study group he hated most.
With the return of Harmon for season five came the departure of Chevy Chase as Pierce Hawthorne, in a behind-the-scenes decision that was for the best. However, it did leave a gap in the narrative function of the series because of how much Jeff and Pierce’s characters mirrored one another. There’s a father/son element to their relationship, but there is also the sense that Jeff is crippled under the weight of the possibility that he might wind up as bitter and jaded and loveless as Pierce is every day. (The two meritable aspects of season four are in the development of Jeff and Pierce’s dynamic and in the introduction of Brie Larson’s Rachel character.)
When Jeff is ready to burn Greendale down on his way out of the hallway (and he sports no “Darkest Timeline” goatee when debating this), he runs into a hologram of Pierce Hawthorne. (It’s explained that Pierce was banned from campus and Chase shot this scene separate from those he had been such a dick to.) “Looks as if you’ve lost your way,” the hologram Pierce remarks, pointedly speaking to Jeff it seems before transitioning into a pre-recorded GPS-oriented spiel. Crucially, as Jeff plans to stoop away once more, he listens to Pierce giving him one last piece of advice for becoming a person who won’t end up spending the last years of his life in a community college with people who hate him. “Don’t turn your back on it,” he gestures vaguely. “You’re in a special place. A crappy place, sure, but only because it gives crappy people a chance to sort themselves out.” (Even without Chase, the writers were always incredible when writing for Pierce, especially in “Cooperative Polygraphy,” which clearly demonstrates that Community was so well-written that Walton Goggins could deliver Pierce’s lines and it still felt like one last go-around for classic Community.)
With Pierce as the last voice of the study group resisting Jeff’s heel turn, Winger can no longer pretend that suing Greendale is what he wants to do. Instead, he marches to the Dean’s office, shreds the document that could end Greendale, and demands improvements for the school. (“These are the signatures of the five people crazy enough to care about this toilet and tonight, I almost got them to sue it. Heed the warning,” he excoriates after the Dean gave a sly eyebrow to Jeff storming his office while Pelton (Rash’s performance is so lived-in, physical, and hilarious, especially in this moment) was “not decent.”) In classic sitcom fashion, though, the way to improve Greendale is to bring back the study group and, in turn, bring back Jeff as a professor.
It’s not quite the same dynamic as a study group enduring classes at the community college, but it’s still a solid enough reason to keep the cast in one place once again. (Plus, pretending Jeff was a heartless bastard despite all he had been through would’ve been a misstep. It’s one thing to see him lose his way.) After season three, Community never quite reached a similar apex again (and I adore season five (“G.I. Jeff,” Mr. Egypt, Fat Dog for Midterms? Glorious), which shows how immaculate the first half of the show is). Of course, without Pierce or Troy (the heart of the group who’d leave a few installments later, in a J.D. from Scrubs-esque fashion (complete with Zach Braff’s narration in “Repilot”), with “Geothermal Escapism) or, eventually, Shirley, how could it? It was still a special program and the most devoted among us never turned our back on it, but we’re deeply grateful for the memories we had along the way.
One particular memory that stands out above many others had by Community fans is that of “Remedial Chaos Theory,” the fourth (originally, third) episode of the third season and the only Community installment to nab an Emmy nomination for writing. At the beginning of the third season, the show opened up with a musical number, “We’re Gonna Finally Be Fine,” suggesting the show would reign in its own distinct identity (“i-dean-tity”) for the sake of appeasing NBC executives. Quickly, this notion was rebuked when an ashy Jeff took an ax to the study room table, but it was thoroughly slaughtered in “Remedial Chaos Theory.” (By the way, I remember a television critic teasing the episode a couple hours before it aired as an all-time classic in the making. It was a perfect primer; I wish I could remember who tweeted it.)
Centered around a housewarming pizza (and Yahtzee) party hosted by Troy and Abed in their new apartment, “Remedial Chaos Theory” is a demonstration of Community at its most creative, using a minimalist set-up and set to deliver an iconic episode that changed my idea of what television could be forever. (Its bottle episodes met these qualifiers, too, as did “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.”) When Jeff rolls a die to determine who has to get the pizza, he remarks, “Starting on my left with one, your number comes up, you go.” “Just so you know, Jeff, you are now creating six different timelines,” Abed counters and the episode is rolling.
We see each potential timeline unfold, viewing how the character dynamics change among the group when the influence of one person in particular is removed from the equation. This is true anthropology (as opposed to the blow-off version taught throughout season two by Ian Duncan (John Oliver)), studying the interactions between a group of alleged friends (who are almost always arguing amidst one another) and analyzing the crucial balance (or lack thereof) they provide to the rest of the group.
This pseudo-experiment is also buoyed by a number of variables that remain the same in most timelines: The Police’s “Roxanne,” Jeff hitting his head on the ceiling fan, Britta smoking weed, Shirley’s pies being ready to remove from the oven, Pierce referencing having sex with Eartha Kitt in an airplane bathroom. Furthermore, it orders the reveal of each timeline perfectly, allowing the successive versions to play off of those that came before, steadily revealing elements that will come into play later (a high pizza delivery guy, Britta’s blunt, Pierce’s troll doll with which he wants to torture Troy, Annie’s gun, the notion that everyone makes “googly eyes” at each other). (Such complex story orchestration was achieved by the famed Harmon development strategy of “story circles.”)
When Annie leaves, the most normal timeline possible is depicted, perhaps with slight irritation from those in the group who are more prone to grate against one another without Annie in the mix. When Britta retrieves the pizza, the entire structure of the group is thrown off-kilter, as Jeff ends up kissing Annie, Pierce blames Troy for his own loneliness and craziness, and Britta impulsively decides to marry the pizza guy (Robert Tarpinian), illustrating that she is an outlet for and a reflection of their actions that they don’t necessarily think through. (But also, she’s just quick to fall in love with rebellion. How else could she love Subway (Travis Schuldt)?)
Without Abed at the fancy party (there’s a bowl of olives on the toilet, after all), the group finds themselves speaking more openly and honestly, refraining from references or alluding to the fact that they’re in a television series. However, their dialogue leads them to a solemn mood when Abed returns with a distractedly chipper demeanor; sometimes, he protects them from their worst feelings.
After Pierce departs, though, he ends up missing out on “the fun,” but everyone else is vastly more affectionate with one another without Pierce around to remind them their friend group is not solely youth-oriented. Annie tends to Jeff’s head wound (and, admittedly, he does insult Shirley’s addiction to baking) and Britta and Troy bond over mocking Jeff for maintaining insecure masculinity (he keeps his toiletries in a safe). When Shirley leaves, though, the night turns more dour after each member of the study group snaps at her for “having baking as an identity.” (They even say Shirley had a nervous “bake-down,” maintaining the groups’ proclivity for in-jokes and group-contained puns, like when Officer Cackowski (Craig Cackowski) starts his own cop opera. It’s a “cop-era” or it’s a “police-ical.”) Yet, as Shirley storms out, they regret their ploy to ambush Shirley and they only wind up feeling worse about themselves for being direct with her.
And, of course, the most iconic, hysterical timeline is the one in which Troy leaves: the darkest timeline. Immediately, the group descends into chaos as Annie’s purse shoots Pierce, Pierce’s blood ruins Shirley’s pies, and Britta’s joint lights the apartment (and Jeff’s arm) on fire. Clearly the heart of the group, Troy makes each of them become their best selves and, without him, they’re at their worst. (Though, his reaction to the chaos in the apartment is still worth Jeff rolling a one.)
Even though Troy’s timeline is the most memorable, the canon timeline is the one in which Abed catches Jeff’s die and reveals that he’s a “conniving son of a bitch” for devising a system where there are six potential pizza-getters and he is the only one immune to it. (He’s a quick thinker and his amused laughter when they realize his scheme shows he has no remorse.) Throughout the timelines, Jeff would hit his head and Annie would feel bad for him. When Abed insists that Jeff be the one to grab the pizza to atone, he hits his head on the fan and everyone laughs — including Annie.
Without him there, Britta’s singing along to The Police is encouraged and the group begins to dance, sing, and celebrate how much they love being together. Pierce throws away his troll doll, Abed offers Annie residence in their apartment, and the group is just happier and much less guarded without Jeff around to bring them down. Anyone who has managed to find “their people” in life knows what it’s like to be around those who are as carefree in being themselves as you are. It’s a miracle to find the people who will dance to “Roxanne” with you and when you find them, it must never be discouraged. Like Troy and Britta and Annie and the rest of the group, sans Jeff, we must always do our best to relax, be ourselves, and have fun. As Abed says, the best way to do that is to give up on fighting the chaos and unpredictability of their group and, instead, weather that turbulence together. A true friend group is one that accepts both the flaws and the virtues of those who are part of it.
For Shirley, she feels she doesn’t have an identity in the group, which is why she leans so far into a nurturing persona of manufactured sweetness blanketing a genuinely standoffish demeanor. She’s self-righteous, judgmental, and overzealous in her religion, but she still hangs out with a group she considers to be largely “godless” because their cynical selves help Shirley feel better about herself.
However, she’s not actually better than anyone in the group because they all have the fact that they ended up at Greendale in the first place in common. They all have streaks of brokenness within them between Jeff’s cheated law degree, Annie’s psychotic break, Britta’s vaguely demented past, Troy’s pressure to succeed, Abed’s perceived “failures” from his parents, Pierce’s loneliness in old age, and, of course, Shirley’s failed marriage, which is a driving plot point for much of the early seasons. They all have this in common and Shirley starts feeling better about herself when she lets go of the idea that she needs to be better than everyone else and accepts that her true religion is in pushing herself to be better than she was the day before. It’s a mindset that comes through when she names her son Ben after Chang, forgives Andre, and uses her foosball powers only for good.
Plus, she has a ton in common with even the most opposite member of the study group, Britta, who is self-righteous on the other side of the spectrum and is obsessed with acting the part of a good person so frequently that she’ll eventually believe she is the saint she strives to be. (Take “Studies in Modern Movement,” for example, when Britta and Shirley compete over who is the most generous and “Christian” for a hitchhiker (Brendan Hunt). That is, until the hitchhiker sings about drinking human blood and Shirley and Britta shed their differences to kick him out of the car.)
Britta has often been described as the “worst” member of the study group and is a frequent pick for fans’ least favorite character, but the importance of Britta in the group should not be understated. Britta desperately wants to prove herself in a world that she believes has destined her for greatness, but yet is hardly content to accept a compliment from anyone whose approval she craves. (In “Origins of Vampire Mythology,” she lets go of hoping for a call from her casual hook-up friend, Blade (Kirk Fox), when Troy pretends to be him and texts Britta a compliment we never get to read.) However, Britta is capable of more than she believes she is and she’s always one of the last ones standing in their school-wide games of paintball, Hot Lava, and more. When she manages to dial back the passion for immortality and accepts that the liberation of herself comes through her friends, rather than by overhauling the entire world, Britta finds a home has been made for her.
Troy is one of the only ones who aims to help pick Britta up and tell her that she’s not actually the worst. “She’s the best,” he elucidates when trying to rally the study group back to hope following their expulsion from Greendale in “Course Listing Unavailable.” Initially positioning himself as a tough jock who was above the group, Troy becomes a more sensitive, more caring friend over time. In Pierce’s will, he tells Troy that he possesses the “heart of a hero,” but Troy’s arc over the course of Community centers around the fact that he has an easier time accepting his own goofiness than accepting the abiding capacity for leadership he maintains.
It’s fitting that he’s pushed towards something greater by Pierce, who saw his heart and knew that Troy was destined for more than watching B-movie vampire trilogies and being courted by air conditioner repair savants. (At first, Troy only wants to hang out with his friends, especially Abed (in the show’s most fun pairing and one of television’s best bromances), but he eventually follows Pierce’s encouragement to not throw away the gift he has.) At first, Pierce is depicted as a self-sufficient, but isolated man, who tries way too hard to fit in.
Over time, though, Pierce became an extremely defensive and insecure villain for Community. Season two tracked Pierce’s journey as a twisted, scurvy old man who could be absurdly cruel. Fortunately, Pierce was eventually reigned back in and posited more as a clueless ancillary member to their youth-oriented antics. In “Virtual Systems Analysis,” as Abed and Annie pop between the members of the study group and travel across time through the Dreamatorium, Pierce chimes in to quip, “I don’t know what the hell’s going on.” Through their frequent digs at celebrities (Carson Daly and Jim Belushi get hit pretty bad by Community), use of their names as puns (“You’re trying to Nancy Screw me out of my credits!,” “Well, well, well, Harvey Keitel”), and collective groans at various members of the group (which Pierce belatedly joins in on), he’s left excluded by a sensibility that’s passed him by.
Considering Chase’s off-screen behavior, the team on Community was likely more generous towards Pierce and his resolution than Chevy deserved. But, in the world of Community, it was owed to evaluate how impactful the character was for both the characters and for the audience. As aforementioned, Jeff’s arc seems to run concurrent to how Pierce’s would have, thirty or forty years prior. At first, Jeff mistakes acts of friendship as sexual advances, drags the group down into dysfunctional territory, and prioritizes his ego over his true identity. All of these are traits and actions within Pierce, as well, but something about Pierce’s heart to heart pseudo-warning in “Pilot” (and perhaps Abed’s slight that Jeff is more like Michael Douglas than Bill Murray) leads to Jeff eventually accepting his surrogate role, not as a “court appointed guardian for [the group],” as Professor Slater (Lauren Stamile) remarks, and not even as a leader. Instead, Jeff eventually becomes content to be their friend.
He arrives closer to this place thanks in large part by Annie. The kind of person who couldn’t sleep at night if she didn’t study her notes cover to cover at least once, Annie is a “tightly wound” “driven idealist” and “sore loser” (the show is filled with apt qualifiers about her character). She works hard at everything, including passive aggression, but it’s only because she demands the most from herself. Likewise, Annie also expects the best from everyone in her life because she can see how they’re capable of behaving and she wishes they’d reach the potential she’s devoted her life to reaching herself. When they don’t reach that potential, like when Pierce abuses any tolerance the group gives him or when Jeff selfishly dismisses the women he tries so hard to sleep with, she winds up taking it personally, but only because of how much she cares.
Jeff’s also brought closer to sincerity by Abed (remember the double hug), who instigates Jeff’s life path towards goodness. A socially inept film student, Abed views his life through the lenses of television and movies, but not because he yearns to be a part of those stories (well, his homage to My Dinner with Andre suggests that he sometimes does), but because they help him understand the world around him in a way that other people do so easily. For him, TV has logic, structure, and rules, which make it more predictable and comforting than reality. For him, movies also contain the “meaning of people,” another frame by which he can better understand society.
When he pays homage to My Dinner with Andre, he’s not only living out a film fantasy. He’s also using a movie to help him understand why Jeff is spending less and less time with him, fearful that a valued friendship will dissolve (like every other companionship Abed’s experienced) and he’ll never be able to understand why. Abed is always worried that people will get sick of him, but he doesn’t know how to emotionally prepare for that (only through character work can Abed express true emotions, like Han Solo, Don Draper, or a gnome departure from his dungeon master role in their D&D game). It manifests in Andre Gregory impressions and Dreamatorium excursions as Inspector Spacetime. It manifests in coveted video game knowledge for “Digital Estate Planning” and the fictional (turned real) game, Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne, or a slavish loyalty to building a pillow fort or a Nicolas Cage-induced psychotic break or a quest to solve the titular question posed by Who’s the Boss? Abed’s ability to connect to others through pop culture also manifests throughout “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas,” which is my favorite episode of any show in the history of television.
While each Community character was damaged in some way, they were also all good for each other and what they needed at their respective points in their lives. It’s why they stand by Abed during this installment’s psychotic break. “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas” is done completely in the style of Rankin-Bass holiday specials and it turns each of the characters into “silicone dolls with foam bodies over ball-and-socket armatures.” However, this is not just a new style of Community for the sake of a new style; there’s a reason for the special and the animation has a point beyond an ambitious feat. Abed sees the world through a Rankin-Bass lens because his mother, who usually visits him on December 9 to watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, wrote him a letter that stated she wouldn’t be coming that year because she found a new family.
It’s a devastating sentiment that seems to position Community’s attitude towards the holidays as a melancholic one. But when the study group returns to “save” Abed from the “Christmas warlock” (actually Professor Duncan attempting to milk Abed’s break for the purposes of publishing a paper) and put things back to normal (“asterisk,” as Jeff notes), a more hopeful undercurrent replaces the bitter one. Abed’s quest for the meaning of Christmas may have been a distraction from the crushing sense of abandonment he feels from his mother, but it also serves as a new lens by which to evaluate the holidays.
Throughout the episode, Abed is always on, in terms of his dialogue mirroring some element of pop culture (he refers to holiday carols as being in the public domain and conversations as “non-thematic chatter”), but also deft at developing a Christmassy world (the atmosphere of Planet Abed is seven percent cinnamon, the “humbugs” are attracted to sarcasm, Troy’s holiday figurine is a “Troy Soldier”). Yet, after he finds the “meaning of Christmas” (it’s the first season of Lost on DVD, representing lack of pay-off) and Duncan berates him over trying to ignore the letter from his mother, Abed has nothing to say. He freezes into a hunk of ice, remaining silent and motionless.
“Look what you did to the kid,” Pierce (dressed as a teddy bear — “Bleep bloop for me, too”) says to Duncan, recognizing that just because he’s grown cynical towards Christmas, that doesn’t mean Abed has to follow the same trajectory. In fact, in an episode filled with heartwarming moments of friendship (Troy acknowledging that Abed “added” Jehovah’s Witness Bay to Planet Abed and Annie thrillingly unhooking Duncan’s train car from Abed’s both suggest that they only want to support him, even if it’s obvious that Planet Abed is a delusion), the best and unlikeliest bond is the one between Pierce and Abed.
Throughout “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas,” which was penned by Dino Stamatopoulos (who also played Star-Burns) and Harmon, Pierce explains that he’s only at the “therapy session” for the cookies. But when Abed is all alone in the train headed for the North Pole, Pierce sheepishly returns from the bathroom and admits that it wasn’t about the cookies. “I didn’t want to go home,” he admits, averting eye contact like Abed always does. “It’s depressing there this time of year.” Abed simply smiles in response and the two stand side by side, silently, barreling towards the meaning of Christmas. It’s a perfect moment.
Ultimately, the meaning of Christmas doesn’t have anything to do with Desmond Hume or Terry O’Quinn. Once the study group returns to “ward off” Duncan with a “Christmas pterodactyl,” singing a song about what Christmas is for (meanings range from liquor to video games), they prove Jeff’s initial monologue from “Pilot.” The speech was initially bullshit, but by this season two episode, they really have stopped being a study group and become something unstoppable. But they’re not a community; they’re a family. It’s this feeling that leads Abed to the realization, “The meaning of Christmas is the idea that Christmas has meaning. And it can mean whatever we want. For me, it used to mean being with my mom. Now, it means being with you guys. Thanks Lost.”
From there, the animated format doesn’t stop. Abed sees it through to the end of the episode, but it’s no longer something to be concerned about. Instead, the gentle, lilting, holiday score kicks in (it’s as evocative of the nostalgia I feel when watching Community and hearing tunes like Ludwig Göransson’s “Greendale Is Where I Belong,” especially regarding how much I strove for my own friend groups to be like theirs) and the study group spends December 9 together. Their relationship with the holidays is at different stages (Troy doesn’t celebrate; Jeff is reluctant to commit to anything; Shirley has a family), but they’re all there in that moment for Abed. The idea that Christmas has meaning because of what we project onto it? The same can be said for Community and for television, as a whole. Yes, the creators put explicit meaning into it, but that’s only a part of the cherishing. Christmas isn’t just about Jesus anymore, after all. The magic of Community came in that it could mean whatever we wanted it to, even in later, more musical installments of festivity. Thanks, Dino and Dan.
Community pulled off lots of heartwarming moments like this. Annie comforting Abed in “Virtual Systems Analysis,” after he handcuffed himself inside a metaphysical locker, Jeff dueting “Kiss from a Rose” with the Dean in “Studies in Modern Movement,” Troy and Abed serenading a mouse to “Somewhere Out There” in “Environmental Science.” Even “Critical Film Studies” illustrated the heartening care put into every moment of Community by pitting the two character surrogates of Harmon (Abed and Jeff) into a conversation with each other and, likewise, with the two halves of Harmon’s personality.
Each of these above episodes, though, share the fact of intersecting storylines in common. Musical montages played out to the convergence of each episode’s plot threads (for example, “Studies in Modern Movement” tracks Jeff and the Dean singing together, along with Annie moving, Pierce hallucinating, and Britta and Shirley picking up that hitchhiker), showcasing that Community was able to deftly maneuver multiple plots in its best episodes, as opposed to the show’s occasional tendency to commit fully to an homage.
One such example is season two’s “Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design.” The A-story of the episode centers around Jeff faking a class on conspiracy theories with “Professor Professorson” (actually Kevin Corrigan’s Professor Sean Garrity), who is then used as a prop in various schemes by Jeff, Annie, the Dean, and Officer Cackowski, each of whom want to teach the others a lesson, whether it’s about academic integrity or gun safety. The B-story centers around Troy and Abed building a blanket fort together (for the first time). When the conspiracy begins to unravel for Professor Professorson, Garrity ends up on the run through the blanket fort (he makes a break for the Latvian Independence Parade after the Turkish district), converging the two episode’s stories in a brilliant, impossible-to-keep-track-of manner.
After the group departs from the blanket fort, the fake schemes beget more fake schemes in the study room with each member of the plots (endlessly twisting and turning) thinking another is legitimately dead at one point. It’s an episode that requires as much thinking and diligent note-taking to unpack as, say, The Prestige. Even the Dean, involved with many plots, loses the thread of what’s happening and who’s on whose side.
Rash’s performance is exceptional throughout the episode, as his panicked shrieks become more and more exasperated while his blood pressure is sent through the ringer. (He’s at his best when quoting his own time travel fan fiction while cowering in the fetal position, “Would that this hoodie were a time hoodie.”) After Annie “shoots” Jeff, the Dean cries, “I can’t keep track of any of it anymore; I just keep teaming up with whoever suggests it!” Yet, this is revealed to be another plot to teach the Dean a lesson about conspiracies. “If you conspire with every person, you’re not even really conspiring with anyone, you’re just doing random crap.” Ultimately, the Dean was just eager to team up with whoever offered because he enjoyed spending time with them. The Dean loves the study group and, over time, this would become even more apparent throughout Community.
That’s the true genius of “Conspiracy Theories of Interior Design.” Not just that myriad plots unfold in the study room while Troy and Abed construct their own metropolitan, linen-laden realm in the halls of Greendale. But that the episode introduces the blanket fort conceit, to begin with, along with the Dean’s development towards affection for the group, the romantic tension between Jeff and Annie since the season one finale, and miniature character arcs for Sean Garrity and the officer, which would extend throughout the seasons.
Many episodes of Community serve multiple purposes like this, but even many scenes have to be at their most efficiently constructed to fit into a twenty-one minute time frame. As such, every scene of Community has to operate on multiple levels. Take season five’s “Basic Intergulteal Numismatics,” for example. The episode itself tracks the thread of a throwaway joke from season two’s “Intro to Political Science,” when Annie promises to bring the “Ass Crack Bandit” to justice. However, in the David Fincher homage, “Numismatics” features a scene when Troy (having had a coin placed in his ass crack) speaks out in favor of surveillance cameras around the bathroom. It serves as a humorous vehicle for Glover, but it also serves the purpose of the Ass Crack Bandit sneaking underneath the bleachers at the rally to “crack” multiple people, escalating the case to the point where the Dean must finally commit to a plan of action.
Even though the crimes of the Ass Crack Bandit pale in comparison to those who might have inspired real life copycat murderers, like the Zodiac Killer, Greendale still takes the issue inordinately seriously. Multiple school newspapers report on the crackings, the Dean is assaulted by seemingly hundreds of flashbulbs, and students walk around with memorabilia that refers to the Bandit. It’s just another example of how seriously Greendale takes everything.
When Troy and Abed’s first blanket fort goes mainstream, they blow it up. When their pillow fort spawns another blanket fort (and pits Troy and Abed against one another), the school essentially shuts down for multiple days to accommodate a Civil War send-up between the two fort-building groups. (“Pillows and Blankets” is such a masterful Ken Burns homage that one feels like they have seen every Burns documentary series just by experiencing the episode.) The school dedicates itself to games of paintball and Hot Lava, pillow fights and glee club competitions because Greendale and its students believe that they’re destined for the greatness typically reserved for multiplexes and television events. “Do people even go to classes?” Dean Pelton asks. Yes, it’s set at a community college, but it was always best served as a backdrop to the event episodes than as the force that kept the series’ imagination in check.
Community itself can describe its homage episodes better than me. After all, the show always knew exactly what it wanted to say and how to say it in the most efficient manner.
“Cooperative Calligraphy,” as Abed laments bottle episodes (despite being in one, which revolves around trying to find who stole Annie’s pen): “I hate bottle episodes. They’re wall-to-wall facial expressions and emotional nuance. I might as well sit in the corner with a bucket on my head.”
“Paradigms of Human Memory,” as the group remembers all its past arguments: “Abed, stop being meta. Why do you always have to take whatever happens to us and shove it up its own ass?”
“Cooperative Polygraphy,” as Abed realizes Pierce’s will is following a specific formula against the group and accepts Troy’s apology for stealing the idea for their handshake: “I forgive you, but only to escape the established pattern of self-righteous indignation followed by immediate comeuppance.”
And in season six’s “Modern Espionage,” when Community addresses its own high-concept installments through, of course, Abed. “Occasionally, our campus erupts into a flawless, post-modern homage to action adventure mythology, mischaracterized by the ignorant as parody.” That’s exactly the vibe from the breakout episodes of Community, including Justin Lin’s “Modern Warfare” and Joe Russo’s two-part season two finale, “A Fistful of Paintballs” and “For a Few Paintballs More.” (It’s no coincidence that they are now two of the biggest blockbuster filmmakers alive, also.)
Specifically, “A Fistful of Paintballs” is a stylistically perfect masterclass in efficient screenwriting. This installment of the paintball series is in the lineage of the western genre (the others pay homage to the genres of war, space epic, and spy, respectively) and it maintains a number of elastic tropes to recreate in Greendalian fashion. A dramatic chase scene with Neil (Charley Koontz) opens the episode with spurs jangling to indicate the arrival of a firm-booted vigilante. Deck-of-card nicknames are ascribed to each study group member when they appear in a freeze frame style. (Abed, eating beans with a cowboy hat over his eyes, is the “Jack of Clubs.”)
However, even though the western homage is filled out with a number of the Greendale students from the previous episodes of the past two seasons (like Luke Youngblood’s one-man party, Magnitude, Anthony Michael Hall’s jock, Mike, and Hilary Duff’s mean girl, Meghan), the episode is still about the study group. They’re obviously self-centered and they manage to make every Greendale event solely about them. It’s not about paying homage to Sergio Leone classics; it’s a style through which to analyze whether or not Pierce still belongs in the group. (Just as “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” is hijacked from being an episode about Neil to being an episode about Pierce’s villainy and Jeff’s guilt.)
Additionally, the paintball episodes were always just clever enough that they never seemed to take themselves too seriously. In “Modern Warfare,” Abed quips to Jeff, “Come with me if you don’t want paint on your clothes,” sending up the absurdity of their situation immediately and undercutting the stakes in a more earned way.
“This thing is so much bigger than you could imagine,” the Black Rider (Josh Holloway) remarks to Annie, exaggerating the self-importance of a paintball war between two community colleges in the middle of Colorado that no one else would ever hear about. Yet, the Black Rider is merely a reflection of everyone else’s proclivity for embracing the full potential of a school-wide game of “last one standing.” While the Dean cowers once more and shrieks, “Why does this keep happening?” as his school is torn to shreds and bathed in paint, it shows that “A Fistful of Paintballs” and “For a Few Paintballs More” are about more than just Pierce’s antagonism. It’s also about the Dean’s realization that he’s a terrible dean, Troy’s arc of accepting leadership (begun in “Mixology Certification”), the schemes from City College, Jeff’s insecurity, and “the Annie of it all,” as Jeff refuses to send her any clear signs of the romantic intent for which she unwittingly yearns. Ultimately, the two-part episode ends with Pierce winning and Greendale being saved, proving that the best in-depth homages are the ones that operate on multiple levels, as Community always managed.
Growing up, I learned about television through sitcoms like Full House, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and George Lopez. When I eventually arrived at series like Community, everything I knew about television and storytelling changed forever. Through this sentiment, I think primarily of “Curriculum Unavailable,” an episode from late in season three that sees the study group accompanying Abed to a psychological evaluation session following the group’s expulsion from the school.
“Curriculum Unavailable” takes a cue from “Paradigms of Human Memory” by being a fake clip show, flashing back to moments from Community that we’d never seen before. It’s an episode outlined by a joke-a-minute script and many fun, one-off (fun-off) ideas, like Abed panicking over Daylight Saving, Shirley adoring Tower Heist, Troy buying an ATV, a noir style paintball escapade, Chang’s belief that Garrett is a pre-cog, the Dean’s idolization of the group, and a class entitled, “Can I Fry That?” The episode also operates as a brief deconstruction of Community’s own formula (while Britta hovers over the therapist (John Hodgman), the group acknowledges that she used to be smarter, alluding to its own flanderized characters), but it contains one specific set-piece that changed my conception of creativity forever.
As the study group begins to probe the therapist’s belief that Abed should be committed, they arrive closer at the truth of Chang (who has taken over Greendale, kidnapped the Dean, and vowed to kill the study group if they try to usurp his Napoleonic takeover of a community college (again, they take things very seriously at Greendale)), prompting the therapist to resort to Plan B: convincing them that Greendale doesn’t exist.
From here, we follow a series of clips that posit Greendale, not as a community college, but as an asylum. The therapist explains, “This fantastical community college where everything that happens is unbelievably ridiculous and it all revolves around you as a group.” Dressed in hospital gowns and strait jackets, we see some of the most famous moments from Community acted out in a padded cell that contains the various students of the school. It’s their alleged “grim reality,” in which the secret trampoline Troy and Jeff found was actually a miniature springboard in their cell and their paintball battles were actually reduced to combatants in wheelchairs behind thin, overturned mattresses. The sequence ends with Garrett, actually a doctor at the asylum, denying increased lithium for the group because he wants “to see what happens if [they] confiscate one of their pens,” alluding to the bottle episode induced by Annie losing her pens to a monkey and blaming the group.
Ultimately, Greendale is not an asylum and it’s not purgatory (these theories are squashed easily by Annie’s Greendale backpack), but in that brief moment when Community stretched further than any sitcom had dared to (and did so without jumping over any marine predators), my mind was undeniably blown and irrevocably altered in terms of how it viewed creative storytelling. The idea that an episode could flip the entirety of a series on its head and then flip it right back immediately afterwards was game-changing. The fact that it came in a highly-serialized, borderline-inaccessible format of a final arc climaxing the final batch of episodes in season three was even more breathtaking.
From when Star-Burns “dies” in Megan Ganz’s Law & Order homage, “Basic Lupine Urology,” to when Jeff asks, “Cellular mitosis: what is it?” at the end of “Introduction to Finality,” it’s basically as perfect a stretch of television comedy as has ever existed. We see the group navigating expulsion, asylum delusions, Chang’s hostile takeover, and an elaborate heist — but Community even makes time for a detour into a 8-bit video game vibes while Pierce accepts Gilbert Lawson (Giancarlo Esposito) as more of a family member than his father (Larry Cedar) ever was. It’s a massive, stirring culmination to season three, which I will adore forever — even if Community never reached those heights again — because Greendale was magic.
It brought the Greendale Seven together and took them in when no one else would. It took its fans in when no comedy on television was meeting the absurd ambition in every episode and kept alive by those who saw the value in that, like Yahoo! Screen. In my own life, I found that sense of belonging at the same time as the characters on Community, specifically Jeff Winger. When Community debuted, I wasn’t the person I wanted to be, nor was I the person I’d eventually become. But as the group grew and I developed concurrently, I found the people I was always meant to be friends with and, beautifully, the lines between reality and fiction began to blur. Suddenly, the events of Greendale could be the events shared by me and my friends, even if they were decidedly less cinematic.
Community was a series that consistently built on itself. A blanket fort is introduced and expanded upon over a season later in service of a greater narrative about the resolve in Troy and Abed’s friendship (and Jeff’s willingness to indulge their more youthful fancy). Notches and ax marks were present in the table because the series always prided itself on continuity, like Abed delivering a baby in the background of “The Psychology of Letting Go,” Annie’s Boobs (the monkey) stealing Annie’s pen at the beginning of “Cooperative Calligraphy,” and Beetlejuice appearing outside the study room in “Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps,” following his third mention in the series.
Little inklings throughout Community built upon themselves, like Annie being attracted to Abed’s pop culture personas (from Han Solo to Don Draper) or Pierce (always buoyed by Chase’s expert physical comedy) steadily losing his mind (prompting an “Uh oh” from his friends) or even the notion of Professor Professorson genuinely existing at Greendale alluding to the fact that that community college is a “toilet.” (But it is their toilet, in spite of a communal cafeteria, lockers, and a class about ladders.)
Through every meaningless meta joke (Annie’s education about set-ups and punchlines, the group tasked with making a diorama about dioramas, and an analogy being a “thought with another thought’s hat on”), Community deconstructed the form of the sitcom. It sent up every trope, every special episode, every bit of animated iconography from television specials’ past. It unpacked the legacy of television and blazed a path of its own, proving that comedy could be as ambitious as it was hilarious. In spite of its quality volatility and cast member overturn, I still love Community with everything I attribute to myself as a human being.
For as much as I might have wanted the show to last forever, Community was always teaching us that it was an impermanent television series, if we learned to “let the kid stuff go,” as Annie suggests in the series finale. In “Biology 101,” three seasons earlier, Jeff asks, “Why are we in such a rush to leave the tide pool when the only things waiting for us on shore are the sands of time and the hungry seagulls of slowly growing apart?” It’s a testament to the transience of a four-year degree, but also to the notion that even if a comedy does last forever (like, say, The Simpsons), its peak is inherently limited. So yes, I wanted Community and its brilliance to last forever. But it never could — and it was never going to. And even if the study group did grow apart, I know how lucky I am to be able to enter back into that world on each obsessive rewatch, feel exactly as I felt when I was younger and still in the tide pool, and relive the glory of Community.
I can dream about it in a way that is “‘spooky monster’ scary” and not “‘Grandma died’ scary.” I can understand a simple message like, “Graffiti is bad. Go play sports.” I can soar through the air to school and know that I’m “gonna finally be fine” when the chords of Community’s precarious theme song kicks in. Knowing that even if Community has a bad day, phones in a day, or gets on a boat with LeVar Burton and never comes back, that it’s still there for me. A messy, dreamy, ambitious vision of comedy, deconstruction, and homage, but mostly? Just a comedy about a group of people who find a home among one another. That’s canon.
#AndAMovie
