Community Review: "Competitive Wine Tasting" (2.20)
Like most television shows about school, Community has always featured as little depiction of actual schoolwork as possible. Classes and homework are repetitive and pretty uninteresting, not to mention minor compared with what happens during the rest of our lives. For instance, you probably have fewer memories of that science class you took second semester of your sophomore year of college than you do of a particularly bitching New Year’s Eve party.... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsCommunity Review: "Critical Film Studies" (2.19)
One question that’s dogged my constant coverage of various comedies for Paste is how important exactly is it for a show to be funny? That is to say, is the worth of a comedy directly proportional to the number of laughs I have? It’s a question that goes a little further than just TV comedies, too, it’s something that is bound to come up to people giving serious consideration to stand-up comedy or film or even comedy music. It’s also something that dogs criticism anyhow, since there’s only so much you can say as far as finding something funny or... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsCommunity Review: "Custody Law and Eastern European Diplomacy" (2.18)
Community has garnered such a fanbase not just because it has particularly tight writing, which it does, but also because of the way it breaks away from being a sit-com. And no, while I’ve talked a lot about the ways it’s different from traditional sit-coms, that’s not what I’m concerned with here. It’s that the show’s also different from post-The Office and Arrested Development sit-coms. It breaks rules that exist around single-camera shows and the sort of reality they ask us to agree on in a way that, for instance, Modern Family or Outsourced won’t.... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsCommunity Review: "Intro to Political Science" (2.17)
For all of its focus on growth and change, Community has tended to shy away from all but the most temporary sexual relationships. The first season had its somewhat awkward will they/won’t they dynamic between Jeff and Britta, and the second season has had Shirley and Chang’s one night stand, but nothing has stuck and everyone has stayed either alone or, in the case of Shirley, with their significant other largely off camera.... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsCommunity Review: "Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking" (2.16)
After last week’s much more traditionally sit-com-y episode, “Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking” returns us to the strange and wonderful world of Community’s genre parodies. But while in the past these parodies have tended to overpower the rest of the episode, making it so that the zombies or whatever are more important than the show’s continuity, here we get the inverse. The episode is formally parodying the faux-documentary style of other TV shows, in particular The Office, but the focus is really on Pierce’s relationship with the rest of the study group.... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsCommunity Review: "Early 21st Century Romanticism" (2.15)
One of my favorite things about Community is the sheer number of unique episodes the show’s had already in less than two seasons. Last week’s episode was one of those, re-framing the entire show within the world of a fantasy game, but that still leaves us the rest of the episodes. You know, the ones that don’t have a gimmick to rely on, the ones that need to go back to old-fashioned sit-com storytelling in order to get their points through. Unfortunately, those episodes aren’t really the show’s strength, even when there’s nothing particularly wrong with them. It’s just that,... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsCommunity Review: "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" (2.14)
There may be no form of comedy more delightful than a perfectly executed parody. It’d a rare thing, especially these days when the standards for what “parodies” are have been stretched to the point of breaking by Family Guy and Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer of Date Movie infamy. The ones that work, though, from the early Python movies to Shaun of the Dead have become cult classics for a reason. Community’s “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” got every note of its parody so correct that it managed to outdo even “Modern Warfare” or “Epidemiology.” It just clicked in a certain... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsCommunity Review: "Celebrity Pharmacology" (2.13)
With all of Community’s non-stop meta-commentary it’s a surprise that the show wears its heart so very much on its sleeve. Early commercials for it mentioned The Breakfast Club, and while that’s not really what Dan Harmon and company are going for, there’s a lot of that earnestness going into the show. Characters are really supposed to work out their issues and improve as people, which immediately sets the show off from the kind of nihilism of Seinfeld or meandering repetition of The Office. There’s an element of the show that, for better or worse, is a bit didactic. In... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsCommunity Review: "Asian Population Studies" (2.12)
The elastic reality of Community feels more akin to animated sit-coms, and not just because it had a recent episode that was entirely animated. But while the show’s reputation is largely built on a solid sit-com foundation, it’s also dedicated to moving its cast forward as characters and not just spinning its wheels for episode after episode. That’s one of the most unique parts of the show, and while The Office may have personnel changes or relationship drama, ultimately its characters are the same week in and week out.... read more
Found in: TV, ReviewsCommunity Review: "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" (2.11)
If I were one of the characters following along with Abed’s wacky quest I would probably be eaten up by the humbugs alongside Jeff.... read more
Found in: TV, Reviews
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