Community

Now that I spend almost all my time either working at home or pottering at home, the importance of the background show has grown.  I’m not sure if the background show is a concept that will be familiar to most readers, but it’s normally something under thirty minutes that you have on while doing other things.  In my case, this is probably while making breakfast in the mornings (convincing myself it’s a weekend by scrambling eggs and brewing freshly ground coffee before realising I was supposed to be on a work video call at 9.30am) and then throughout the day while eating all subsequent meals and (unnecessary) snacks.  For food prep in particular, the background show provides a bit of company while chopping onions and crushing garlic.  As such, it needs to be something that works with half an eye and half an ear on it.  This is how I got through hundreds of seasons of South Park and It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.  It’s the purpose my re-watch of Friends is serving.  It’s something that didn’t work with Community.

Community demands your full attention.  At first sight, it seems simply to be a cute sitcom from the realm of Parks & Recreation or The Office US.  But while it shares charm DNA with these two beloved shows, Community routinely displays such lofty narrative ambition that I’m telling you now: it needs your full attention.  I’m sure your desperate to know how I made this happen.  In short, it became the show I watched in my weekly bath, laptop balanced on some boxes next to the tub while I soaked my exercise soreness away over two episodes.  If you’re experiencing a mental image, then, you’re welcome.

We’ve talked before about community college, something American readers won’t need explained, but for everyone else, please see previous posts on Last Chance U and Cheer.  For Brits, it’s a bit like Lidl: you don’t want to be there, but it’s a necessary evil.  Indeed, a great deal of the lampooning around which Community’s arcs are structured has roots in the fact that community colleges are known more for their perennial students than for their academic prowess.  Nevertheless, we focus on a certain study group, representing many walks of life, whom the plot contrives to come together in the pilot episode to forge bonds whose strength you never really buy, but which you accept so the following six seasons of instalments can actually happen.

If, like me, you’re a lifelong spod, you’ll experience only disgruntlement at how little learning the study group does.  Instead, multiple missions are undertaken, most with the aim of saving Greendale Community College.  Proceedings have a point-and-laugh approach to diversity: no matter who you are, you’re ridiculous.  Of note is Abed as his Middle Eastern heritage is one of the least interesting things about him.  Instead, we’re high-fiving over brain diversity, revelling in the character’s autistic-spectrum emotional unusualness, leading to the wonderful coping mechanism of seeing the world through the construct of TV shows (ring any bells…?).  This allows the study group, in all its encompassing of age, income, faith, gender and skin tone, to embark on adventures that become so meta that they even end up being meta about their meta-ness.  There was a brief risk though that, as the straightest and whitest, the will-they-won’t-they-I-don’t-care romance between Britta and Jeff would become a central focus, but luckily everyone realises this isn’t interesting.  For the first three seasons, this is joyful, but somewhere around the fourth, I was slipping away.  There’s a glut of themed episodes (video game, animation, puppets) whose creatively I laud, but it feels as though there should be more of a foundation to establish what’s normal before branching out in this way.  And tune out now if you don’t like paintball or pillow forts.

The later seasons suffer the absence of key cast.  Donald Glover is first to move on, and the only reasonable response is to mourn the galling loss of the pure happiness that Troy Barnes provides.  Of all the end stings, Troy And Abed In The Moooorning has the highest LOL success rate.  Let’s commission this now for a full run as they perfectly pastiche the inanity of breakfast TV.  By the sixth and final season, which seems to be some sort of Yahoo-funded death rattle, we’ve lost Chevy Chase and Yvette Nicole Brown as well.  This, compounded by increasing plot complexity, meant I had no idea what was going on.  Luckily, after snaffling all the best lines, Dean Pelton’s role is expanded to fill some of the void, but it’s still only relief that you can feel as the show finally bows out (with a surprisingly highly rated meta meta meta ultimate episode).  Overall, Community, I salute you, despite your (self-recognised) inconsistency.  Its intelligence, absurdity and charm are all summarised in this clip I now leave you with, holding my breath for that Troy and Abed Spanish rap album we’ve all been dreaming about: best end sting ever.

CORRECTION:  Thanks to @communiess and @ButtsCarlt0n on Twitter, I can now reveal that Chevy Chase actually left first, in season four.  Shows how much attention I was paying.  Just One More Episode will, however, remain poorly researched.