The Best Sitcoms — Community: Pop Culture and fun for everyone

In 2009, The NBC Network and Sony Pictures Television premiered a sitcom about a study group in an American community college. What they didn’t know was this would be one of the most original, chaotic, funny, iconic, important and (most likely) expensive sitcoms ever produced. Through 6 seasons, we saw how a bunch of unstable morons developed an endearing friendship and became the best version of themselves to survive into an equally (or more) chaotic world. We saw their unpredictable adventures and misadventures full of references, tributes and contributions to the new sitcoms' era. It's been 10 years since we said goodbye to Greendale Community College; that's why now I think it's a good time to remember it. I will be recapping the highest and lowest points of Community and see why it worked so well and what made it so unique.

A lawyer is forced to go back to college, where he creates a study group full of weirdos.

Community was created by writer and animator Dan Harmon. The idea came from his own personal experiences in a community college. He got himself enrolled for a girl he was in love with but ended up joining a study group full of people he had nothing in common with. Regardless, somehow a deep and strong bond was created between them. Harmon based on himself and his friend to create the characters and built a whole exaggerated world from exaggerated versions of his time with those friends. According to Dan, he didn’t use to write the show as a sitcom, but as a movie. Alongside him, he had Anthony and Joe Russo as executive producers, writers and directors of most episodes. They managed to make every episode feel unique, always trying new ideas and keeping the directing style fresh.

Before talking about the series, we need to know the characters. Jeff (Joel McHale) is the sarcastic, selfish, but charming protagonist whose only goal is to get his degree as soon as possible. Britta (Gillian Jacobs) is a new kind of “dumb blonde”, who dropped her studies and made many bad decisions as a failed attempt to be a “rebel/anarchist” and always thinks she's smarter than she actually is, which makes her make stupid mistakes. Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown) is the mother of the group and mother outside of class, who got enrolled after a divorce. Pierce (Chevy Chase) is a rich but lost elder with a desperate need for attention. Annie (Alison Brie) is the youngest one and the group’s voice of reason; a sweet, innocent but smart and ambitious girl, who lost a scholarship and many life opportunities after a nervous breakdown. Troy (Donald Glover) is a positive, sensitive and kind of clueless young boy who lost a sport scholarship after an injury. And last but most important is Abed (Danny Pudi), the best character and weirdest guy among all these weirdos. He's a film student with a tremendous love for pop culture who sees his life as a TV show and is always doing meta-references. Also, there’s Ben Chang (Ken Jeong), the unhinged Spanish teacher of Greendale Community College, the only character who is crazier than the rest of students and teachers together. He was not part of the group from the beginning, but takes part in many of the episodes' plot.

Now, it's time to talk about the series:

Season 1

As a sitcom fan, I've realised there are four key moments/episodes a sitcom must have on its first season.

• A good pilot: Every series must have a good enough pilot to show to the network/streaming service producers in order to get the whole season produced and to keep the audience interested in the characters and story. Community's pilot worked pretty well. Presented the main cast and established the archetypes they represented in just a few seconds, which is perfect in terms of writing. The rest of the episode set the tone and how this show was going to work: the group will get into a problem that will make them fight only to be solved by Jeff skills as a problem solver, which will also make him learn valuable lessons.

• The “I think I'm going to like it here” episode: Everyone has a favourite episode, but the first favourite one is special. It represents how much these characters have grown on you and how much you care about the show. It could be the season finale or the mid-season finale or even the pilot. For me, it was “Debate 109” (S1.E9). The climax of the debate about human nature made me feel so happy of being watching this show.

• The scene that made me cry with laughter: It was “Basic Genealogy” (S1.E18). It was Family Day at Greendale; Troy was visited by his grandma, and Jeff is hanging out with Pierce's step-daughter. This scene is so good, it is the most watched clip on their YouTube channel. This kind of scene can go viral on social media and make people know about the show. It might not be the best episode, but the scene is extremely memorable.

• The first best episode: This episode must be magnificent, not only for your personal view, but for everyone's opinion. This is the episode that would bring popularity and prestige to the show. For Community, it was “Modern Warfare” (S1.E23). It gave them the reputation of the series where they once had a high budget and well-produced paintball war. It was directed by Justin Lin, known for the Fast and Furious saga.

Outside those points. This first season was also full of many amazing tributes, parodies and references to pop culture titles like Goodfellas, The Godfather, Ghost, The Breakfast Club, Dead Poets Society, Die Hard, Good Will Hunting and classic college movies and police TV shows. Additionally, we had touching moments, like Abed opening emotionally with his father. Furthermore, there were more iconic moments like Britta and Troy's dance sequence and the pool game in shorts. They even had their firsts amazing guest stars, which is another thing sitcoms must have (not necessarily on the first season).

Through this first season, the plot was mainly about Jeff learning to be a better person and flirting with different love interests, mainly between Britta and Professor Slater. It all ended with the Jeff and Britta “will they or won’t they” situation getting to a climax where he couldn’t choose who to date. But also, setting another unexpected love interest.

Season 2

One year later, the gang came back together. There were a few changes. Chang became a student and tried to join the study group. Dean Pelton (Jim Rash) would be more obvious in his attempt to be friends with the study group and his obsessive love for Jeff. Also, for directing, they would stop using long tracking or establishing shots for outside scenes; saving most of the cinematic directing styles for the homages on references. Regarding the references and their adventures, everything got bigger and funnier.

The season opened with the realization that Jeff still had a lot to learn in order to become a better person and that he shouldn’t date any friend. After that, the story would continue as usual with just a few mentions to that issue; which was the right choice.

Most fans agree this is the best season. I agree with that statement, too. Every guest star, episode, even tiny moments were memorable, funny and iconic. I's hard to pick one great moment or episode because there are so many:

Epidemiology, the best Halloween and zombie special episode in TV history in a non-zombies series, with a soundtrack full of ABBA hits (S2.E6).

Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas, the best Holiday special episode in TV history (S2.E11).

There was more character development, too. We figured out how insecure Jeff is and that he's been repressing his feeling about his absent father. Abed had a sweet moment of emotional growth and maturity when he understood his mother was not going to spend the holidays with him. We knew more about Annie's rough and lonely life. Shirley got pregnant and reconciled with her husband. Troy learnt that being childish doesn’t make him less mature or cool than people like Jeff. But the character who cause more impact was Pierce; his need for attention and annoying and mean comments slowly escalated to the point of the study group voting to kick him out of the group. All of this was solved in the two-part season finale; an even bigger and more expensive paintball war, now directed by the Russo Brothers.

We love the pop culture references and tributes. But, What about meta-humour? Community took tropes of some TV format episodes, parodied them and delivered two amazing episodes. For “Cooperative Calligraphy” (S2.E8), they made a perfect “bottle episode” (when the whole plot is set in one small location in order to save money); there, they did absolutely everything without leaving the study room. Also, for “Paradigms of Human Memory” (S2.E21), was a parody of a “clip episode” (where the characters just remember old scenes); they shot new scenes as random old memories instead of using actual old scenes. Also, delivered a line that would become a goal for this production: “SIX SEASONS AND A MOVIE”

Season 3

Every TV show and franchise has a huge challenge once they get to their highest peak. What else could you do after that? The answer for some great series is experiment or don’t change anything. Community made some experiments and took some risks on the story. This was against what the network executives asked Harmon to do; he was asked to “low the weirdness” and try not to exaggerate with the episodes' plot, because it was getting more and more expensive. This is how he answered:

That was excellent. Dan Harmon hated Glee; in many occasions, he wrote jokes about it. However, this time, he tried to make amends. That's why this Christmas special was also a musical. In fact, there were a many good musical scenes in this season. But if I had to pick my favourite, that's in “Studies in Modern Movement” (S3.E7). It proved why the Dean needed to be promoted to the main cast.

The other experiments in this season are part of some of the funniest and most memorable moments of the show.

But nothing is as memorable as the best episode of the whole series. In “Remedial Chaos Theory” (S3.E4), the group meets in Troy and Abed's new apartment. The plot is just about what happens depending on who goes for the pizza they ordered. This episode is absolutely legendary in terms of writing, production, directing and acting. With this, Community won their first and only Emmy Award.

As you can see, this season was as glorious as chaotic. But the bigger chaos was the plot, because there were so many plot lines to follow. There's a strange secret society of air conditioner repairmen headed by the Vice Dean (John Goodman), who wants Troy to join in. Abed's pop culture fanaticism gets closer to crossing a dangerous line. Britta starts studying psychology and having feelings for Troy. Annie moves in with Troy and Abed. Shirley starts a sandwich business with Pierce. Chang becomes a College security officer and, eventually, an evil dictator. As always, all those plot lines converge for the finale. Only this time, they added a last one: Jeff facing an old foe/friend who symbolizes his past as a bad person. With this, Jeff finally closed his character arc and the group was finally stable. But everything was about to be disturbed, not by all the subplots that hadn't got a closure, but by what was happening behind cameras.

Season 4

Fans consider this season as bad. I disagree, but also understand that statement. The law of “everything that goes up must go down” almost never fails, and Community wasn’t an exception. In those years, NBC had other successful sitcoms like The Office and Parks and Recreations, nonetheless almost all of them were slowly loosing rating. For Community, the reasons were many. First, Dan Harmon was replaced as showrunner by NBC's orders without his concern and some producers and writers left the show. The most important of them were the Russo Brothers, who left to direct Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Dan's work was good, but he was hard to work with. He had already had some disagreements with the network; adding new ones in the work space, like bad and/or unacceptable habits and behaviour with a specific writer, was enough for the executives to take actions.

In addition to this, things were not good with the cast; all because of Chevy Chase. Before the show, he was the most famous actor in the series, as a known comedian from the early years of Saturday Night Live. But not many people knew he had annoyed almost everyone he had worked with. He always acted as if Community was too small for him and looked down to all of his cast partners. He was mean to everyone, but specially to Donald Glover; always making racist commentaries. We know about all that thanks to many interviews Joel McHale has done over the years. After dragging with him and his attitude for four years, The network finally made a deal with him and retired him from the show. That's why he barely appears. All of this made this season get delayed for one year and ended up with only 13 episodes instead of 22 or 25, as usual. It was early 2010s decade; people would know about all those issues eventually. Maybe, that's why they openly accepted all of that with a specific intro just for the first episode (S4.E1). It was a good move considering the other times they changed the intro on previous seasons.

Beyond the behind-the-scenes drama, this season was going to be challenging anyway. This would be the season when Jeff finally gets his degree, which would lead to the end of the study group and Abed's sitcom reality. That was a good plot line, but they didn’t know how to manage it properly for more than one episode. Also, Troy and Britta started a really healthy relationship, but it was too normal for a series based on weirdos. Eventually, they broke up in a boring episode with an interesting premise. That same happened with many episodes; they had a great start with an interesting premise, only to be executed and/or concluded disappointingly. Sure, there were still good memorable moments, but they were just great gags lost in not-so-great episodes. Also, Chang comes back, but his past as a dangerous villain is solved with fake amnesia?

It's really sad great ideas were wasted, like a comic-con, the gang fighting German students over the study room, a new documentary directed by Abed and a Freaky Friday tribute. Fortunately, there were still good episodes that saved this season:

For the season finale, there was a fun but unnecessarily complicated plot about Jeff not feeling ready to leave Greendale and finally becoming a good person, even though that arc was already closed. Anyway, Jeff graduated. Also, Pierce finally decided to do it as well, after being a student for more than two decades and left the show without an emotive scene like series normally do.

Season 5

They had a difficult job if they really wanted to achieve SIX SEASONS AND A MOVIE. Redeeming from the previous season and justifying why Jeff had to go back to Greendale and reunite with the study group wasn’t going to be easy. Fortunately, Dan Harmon came back as showrunner and as a better person alongside all the producers and writers who left before, including the Russo Brothers. Together, they came up with a risky solution: Jeff became an honest pro bono lawyer for good people but ended up broke. That's why he goes back to Greendale to sue them, and going back to be dishonest and selfish. Only to realize his friends haven’t gone well either. Together they decide not to go dark and stay at Greendale in order to save it, because their students are worth saving it and the Dean clearly can’t manage the college by himself. That would be the main topic of the season: Greendale might be a deficient college, but somehow is full of good people. Now, the study group is the “Save Greendale committee” and Jeff becomes a teacher.

This turn works amazingly well. Sure, it hurts to see Jeff failing even as a better person, but we know how life is. Anyone could turn to the wrong path if something like that ever happened. That’s why it feels inspirational to see them joining forces again.

Nonetheless, there was another problem this season. Chevy Chase left the show the previous season and here they gave an explanation for what happened to him after that. But now, another actor decided to leave: Donal Glover. He wanted to solve some personal issues and search for more opportunities. Troy's arc was already closed and didn’t change a lot since then, so it didn’t felt like a totally unfair treat to the character. For his farewell in “Geothermal Escapism” (S5.E5), Abed started a “The Flor is Lava” game that escalated until the school turned into a Mad Max style post-apocalyptic world. One last fun before the end of one of the best TV friendships.

With fewer actors in the main cast, old secondary characters had more screen time, like Professor Ian Duncan (John Oliver). Moreover, they added a new character: Professor Buzz Hickey (Jonathan Banks). Both of them joined the group and had surprisingly great moments. Duncan was rude but also comprehensive, which helped him to have an emotive talk with Britta (S5.E7). Hickey was a wise, grumpy and without filter elder, which made him become a mentor for Jeff and have a teaching lesson with Abed (S5.E7). In fact, Hickey is the best secondary character. As proof, there's “Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons”. For me, it is much better than the first time they played that game in season 2. They even had another guest star (David Cross) as Hickey's son, who he had to reconnect with.

Additionally, they still managed to deliver great episodes. Not as many as in season 1-3, but we owe that to the fact now they could only make 13 episodes (times for TV were already changing). These episodes didn’t disappoint anyone at all. We had more references, but also creative ways to talk about social media and other problems that would be more important years later, such as gentrification. Clearly, Dan Harmon and his crew knew exactly what they were doing.

In the end, this season worked pretty well, against all odds. It ended with the gang teaming up on a ridiculous plan to save the school from being sold out. Everything was set and ready for season 6, but suddenly the show was cancelled by NBC. Leaving thousands of fans craving a renewal with #Sixseasonsandamovie. The question was: Would it be possible?

Season 6

The answer was YES. After fans started showing their support to the show, some streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu made their offers, but in the end it was Yahoo! who renewed the series. There was a time before the boom of streaming platforms, when not every studio or technology company was interested in streaming. At that moment, Yahoo! thought Community would be their best investment to make the now extinct streaming service, Yahoo! Screen, compete in this market. Yahoo! didn't want it to be their last season; actually, they were open to making a seventh one. In the end, it was the last one, as the show intended; besides, the platform proved to be non-profitable. In a podcast of Inside Of You Clips, Joel McHale tells Yahoo! even blamed them for the failure of Yahoo! Screen. Fortunately, the series finished in a high note, but only not its highest note.

The series was renewed, but not saved from problems. The first problem was the Russo Brothers didn’t come back for this finale; they were busy with Captain America: Civil War. Second, more cast members left the show. Yvette Nicole Brow (Shierley) left to take care of her ill father, Jonathan Banks (Hickey) had to leave to reprise his iconic role from Breaking Bad in Better Call Saul. John Oliver (Duncan) left as well and started his own late night show: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. None of their characters had a properly emotional farewell like Troy. Only Shirley had two last appearances as comedic gags, but not as a farewell or a good closure for her arc. The third problem were the new cast members: Frankie Dart (Paget Brewster), a consultant hired by the Dean to improve Greendale in the most professional way, and Elroy Patashnik (Keith David), a failed inventor who enrols in the school. Again, Greendale is home for people who search for a chance to become better persons; the problem is it takes time for the group and you as a viewer to get used to them, just like it takes them time to get used to Greendale. The fourth problem was the new management. Writers were asked for 27–28 minutes long episodes, instead of 21–22 minutes long, as before; creating problems with the rhythm. Also, seems their budget got reduced, because many episodes feel like bottle episodes, from their second act. Most of the time, they argue in one location until the episode or argument is over. The writing was still clever; there were many laughs among their arguments. Only this time, after six years of chaotic and over-the-top adventures, standard sitcom episodes are just forgettable.

On the bright side, they managed to save enough money to spend it on just a few more great episodes. Some of these episodes are mostly like new versions of previous ones, but are written to feel fresh, even if we already know how these episodes work. They even had a last paintball war. They had already said they didn’t want to do it so often, but if this was going to be the end, they had to say goodbye properly.

So, it all comes to an end. We were all wondering what kind of reference, tribute, parody, gag, meta-joke would be part of the series finale. In the end, they chose to be real. On a first watch, it is just another episode of the characters doing some meta-jokes and talking about the future. But when it ends, you just feel sad; not because of what happens, but because of what it all means. Everyone is talking about their own idea for a hypothetical seventh season. Many of these scenarios are pretty funny, some others seem too good to be authentic, few others look not interesting enough to be continued and one is just sad but fair for them. After all those hypothetical scenarios, you realize they didn’t come from Abed's mind, it's Jeff's. Abed is actually ready to move on, that's why their adventures were not as exaggerated as before; Jeff is the one who understands his friends are all moving on and he stays. Because that's life, not a TV show, just like Abed and the others learnt over the years. Everything ends with a final meta-joke from Dan Harmon and the rest of the writers, as a farewell and a retrospective on their lives through the show. Then there's just a last message in a black screen: #ANDAMOVIE.

That was Community. One of the best sitcoms in TV history. May not have been as popular as Friends or The Big Bang Theory, won as many awards as How I Met Your Mother, or has as many memes as The Office or Malcolm in the Middle or the most consistent cast. But it has one of the most devoted fandoms of the last decade and may have been the best love letter to pop culture ever made. Once, Harmon was asked about the show's obsession with pop-culture. He just answered it's the language he speaks and loves; and that was enough.

Regardless, one question remains with no answer. Where is the movie? Until today, nobody knows anything about it. Every year, on their social media accounts, there's at least one post about it, but it's all summed up in “it's happening”. We just know the main cast (except for Chevy Chase) is coming back and Joel McHale is also producing alongside Harmon. We still don’t know if some of the guest star will show-up or if some of the newest characters will be there as well. Anyway, even if we know absolutely nothing about the movie, we'll be at the theatres to watch it. As loyal fans, we still want to see more adventures at Greendale Community College, a place where people learn to become better persons and chaos feels comfortable and a bunch of over-the-top weirdos are the most complex and friendliest people you could ever meet.