Community: “Comparative Religion” (Episode 1.12)

Arrested Development was the best sitcom of the past decade. If you’ve paid attention to either our list or one of the various other ones out there, this is starting to look like less an opinion than a certain level of fact at this point, so generally agreed upon that it’s not that controversial. That being said, while the show is certainly a situational comedy in the literal sense, part of its greatness was to transcend and, frequently, ignore typical sitcom tropes. Single camera, laugh track free, contuity based—these are all small parts of how the show broke away from its genre. It became the best of its genre by not really being a part of its genre, throwing off the shackles of its conventions and blazing new trails.
One part of why I like Community so much is that, while it learned some lessons from Arrested Development, it’s also a lot more of a conventional sitcom. Community shoots on location, leaves the laugh track off and has certainly been developing a level of continuity between its episodes, but as for the episode plots and characters themselves, those are traditional sitcom material. This hybrid between the two has kept the show interesting, seeing how far things can go while never forgetting its roots. The streak of great episodes we’ve had is as much a result of pandering to these sitcom expectations and twisting them out of place as it is from anything else.
“Comparative Religion” follows this pattern perfectly and the pay-off is an episode that fits together with elegant, classical plotting that’s matched by over-the-top wackiness and one-liners. The episode is intentionally a traditional Christmas, or holiday I suppose, special. As the semester closes down, Shirley plans a Christmas party for her new “family,” and soon learns that she’s the only real Christian amongst them. Will she learn to accept their differences in a truly Christian manner, or will she try to convert them to her religion in as blunt a way as possible? Of course, she’ll do the latter and then end the episode with the former, but the plotline allows her to tackle the old-fashioned Christmas coming together of a family while still pointing out that, ultimately, that sort of cloyingly religious way of thrusting the holiday onto people is past its time.