Somewhere in the blur of the four-plus years of my tenure as
sports editor at SVM, I stumbled upon the sitcom “Community” in syndication in
late night (probably more like early morning) programming. The time slot, which
didn’t seem fixed in a spot for very long, was the same sort of treatment the show
received during its original run on NBC. I am pretty sure the syndication time
for at least a little while was like 1 AM on Monday morning. I worked every Sunday
night, so I have clear memories of getting home after deadline and this show
being on.
The issue I initially found with Community, as I always seemed
to catch the same handful of episodes and, at the time, I had little knowledge of
the show or how many seasons it was on, was that it was a “hit-or-miss” kind of
show. The season three episode entitled “Chaos Theory,” where various scenarios
play out depending on the roll of a dice, was a gem while the Claymation Christmas
episode where Abed (Dani Pudi) sinks into a delusion due to the dissolution of
he and his mother’s seasonal traditions seemed to lack the humor and punch of other
episodes.
Even in the misses, I could tell there was more going on with
this show than the average sitcom. While it often presented the familiar tropes
found in other shows, the characters – usually Abed – identified the scenarios
as the tropes they were and thus bent them away from the expected outcomes – or
in other instances played right into the tropes and thus concluded that sometimes
tropes are manifestations of reality.
The show required a more thorough and linear exploration.
The setup is of students of various backgrounds and ages
forming a study group for a Spanish class at Greendale Community College. The shows
initial hook was of Jeff Winger (Joel McHale), who has been disbarred after it
was discovered he was practicing law without a legitimate bachelor’s degree,
enrolling at Greendale to quickly earn said degree and return to his swarmy and
shallow existence. In an attempt to woo an attractive, but also world-savvy (she
had once lived in New York, after all) classmate, Britta Perry, he sets up a
study date with her. When he arrives that evening, he finds she’s invited a
bevy of classmates to make it a study group.
The first season revolves around Jeff’s pursuit of Britta,
his flirtation with younger group member, Annie (Alison Brie), along with Annie’s
infatuation with Troy (Donald Glover), Abed’s reliance on television and movies
to relate to the real world, Shirley’s (Yvette Nicole Brown) pushing of
Christian beliefs on the group while also dealing with her divorce, and Pierce Hawthorne’s
(Chevy Chase) relentless desire to prove that he’s still relevant and hip
enough to hang with his younger peers.
The backbone of the series comes from a classic Winger pep
talk where he says “we are no longer a study group, but a community.” The
lesson for Winger, a perpetual loner, being that the individual thrives in a
community.
For the last five or six years, Jodi and I have been
watching the series from beginning to end, and on Sunday night, we watched the
finale of season six bringing this chapter to a close for me (us). While we
have several shows we are watching like this, this is probably the first one
that I’ve ever watched from beginning to end, so it was a little bit of a
lesson on storytelling, but more a trip for me where I’ve grown along with the
characters. It started when I was at a very different place in my life, coming home
late at night, often overwhelmed and exhausted and sometimes feeling lost to
the place I am now, more stable, more attentive to the important things in life
(family, etc.), and focused on new goals and hobbies. While I am not going to
say the finale was anything earth shattering, watching it was a little hard,
because it did feel like a door closing for me.
By the sixth season, half of the original cast had moved on.
Chevy Chase left after three seasons and much feuding with show creator Dan
Harmon and other castmates, Donald Glover left to become a bigger star in music
and television, and Yvette Nicole Brown left for various reasons including
getting a spot on another short-lived show. The dynamic of the show never truly
recovered to the magic of the first three seasons and original cast, but it also
was a better reflection of the real world – particularly one at a community
college where students usually change every two years or so. The show’s final
season aired on the short-lived Yahoo TV (the show is blamed for the internet
station’s demise), and while there’s occasionally talk of a movie (a running callback
within the show was six seasons and a movie), it seems likely the show is
destined to slip further into obscurity.
I can’t recommend checking this one out enough if you like
shows that break the mold a bit. If meta isn’t your thing, then you might want
to pass. As someone into writing, it’s also worth a study on how to juggle an
ensemble cast along with complex themes and breakneck-paced wit. Most of all it
is fun, often individual episodes feel like mini-movies and the paintball
episodes in seasons one and two are epic.
Cool, cool, cool.
