A 15th year retrospective: How ‘Community’ redefined television storytelling

‘Community’ is a celebration of geek culture before it was a thing. Though some elements and jokes won’t fly in the current sensitivities of our times, the depictions of social outsiders bonding together to find family will always be universal.

The elevator pitch for the show Community (2009) can differ every time you try to capture it. For me, it’s about the complexities of a supposed sitcom that somehow deals with the innate concept of humans as flawed individuals finding their way. Community takes the journey of self-realization that blends an absurdist sense of humor and a deep dive into pop culture references, featuring an Academy Award winner delivering the greatest rap about peanuts.

While it might seem absurd to seek advice from fictional characters, when art transcends its boundaries and connects with real life, it can resonate deeply with the human heart.

All of us have our favorite TV shows. Sometimes, even a soundbite from its opening theme can lead to a nostalgic trip that instantly transports us to the past. However, very few have lasting impacts that have shaped my life as an adult. Community was that show.

The show originally ran from 2009 to 2015 on NBC and Yahoo! Screen (Remember the time Yahoo tried to make shows?) had a simple premise: Jeff Winger (Joel McHale), a disgraced former lawyer, decides to enroll at Greendale Community College after he was caught faking his bachelor’s degree. What starts as an attempt to woo a classmate (Gillian Jacobs) by forming a Spanish study group slowly evolves into a community of lovable misfits.

Community creator and showrunner Dan Harmon (co-creator of Rick and Morty) would often deconstruct sitcom tropes, poking fun at typical tactics like holiday clip shows.

From its first three seasons directed by the now critically acclaimed Russo Brothers—Joe and Anthony—to an entire episode dedicated to the characterization and personification of American fast food chain Subway, there is much to be said about Community as it marks its 15th year anniversary.

You never know what you’re going to get

In what many call meta humor, Community creator and showrunner Dan Harmon (co-creator of Rick and Morty) would often deconstruct sitcom tropes, poking fun at typical tactics like holiday clip shows. You know the one, when the cast gathers around reminiscing events in the show? It’s usually a marketing technique when they have some budgetary concerns to reduce production costs by showing excerpts from previous episodes.

The show addressed this in the eighth episode of the second season, titled Cooperative Calligraphy. Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi), one of the study group’s eccentric members, breaks the fourth wall by noting they are about to enter a bottle episode unfolding in their own lives.

In true Community fashion, instead of running a series of clips from previous episodes, the writing team put together a dozen or so scenes that supposedly happened when the cameras weren’t rolling. Yvette Nicole Brown (A Black Lady Sketch Show) who plays Shirley Bennett recalled during the show’s reunion in 2019 at Vulture Fest that they shot around 70 scenes in quick successions within a week to pull it off.

These themed episodes ran when Community was at its peak.

Joel McHale as Jeffrey Tobias “Jeff” Winger

Community’s writing team somewhat foreshadowed the show’s future direction during the finale of the first season in the episode Modern Warfare, which set a fitting precedence of what the show will become in the succeeding seasons. It all started when Dean Pelton, played by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Jim Rash (Best Adapted Screenplay, The Descendants 2011) announced a campus-wide game of paintball, wherein the winner will get priority registration in the next school year.

Throughout the episode, the audience is treated with familiar story beats after another paying homage to iconic films in recent history. As soon as Jeff (McHale) wakes up from his nap, the camera zooms out to show a desolated campus reminiscent of 28 Days Later (2002). Instead of zombies, we see students shooting each other with colorful paintball guns.

Lost and in a daze, Jeff desperately looks for the study group where he is met by Donald Glover’s character Troy Barnes. Assumed dead (he got hit by a ball of paint), the episode taps into the uber macho handshake scene from Predator (1987), a la Carl Weather and Arnold Schwarzenegger style—complete with the line, ‘Jeff Winger, you son of a b****!’

Humor and heart

Perhaps no episode encapsulated Community’s genre-bending style of comedy more than the 14th episode of season 2, Advanced Dungeon & Dragons, an episode held in high regard by the fan base. It opens with a narrative reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001), featuring the study group embarking on a campaign of Dungeons & Dragons to uplift a fellow classmate who’s being bullied.

While paying homage to epic fantasy films, Community finds itself introducing the beloved role-playing game D&D to mainstream viewers on network TV. Like the famous tabletop game, the show didn’t utilize animations or cut-ins depicting special effects but relied on the narrative and script to deliver laughs and a sense of adventure. Chevy Chase’s portrayal of Pierce Hawthorne as a villain was both infuriating and borderline vile, a testament to Chase’s performance, sure, and undoubtedly deserving of an Emmy though sadly overlooked.

My favorite will always be the sixth episode of the first season, Football, Feminism and You. The episode deals with the characters of Jeff and Troy who find themselves struggling to embrace the past and move on. Troy, who was once a promising football player in high school, had his career cut short due to an injury and is being coerced by the sly Jeff to keep his uncaring demeanor that Greendale Community College was beneath him.

The episode also deals with Shirley and Britta Perry (Jacobs) bonding over a conversation about the former’s struggles as a returning student, wife and mother.

I watched this episode right while grappling with the recent loss of a loved one and the insecurities of being thrown into early adulthood. Feeling the weight of my hardships and the importance of moving forward, Troy’s exchange with Jeff resonated with me deeply:

JEFF: Don’t go in there, man. You get the most you were ever gonna get out of football in high school—a life of disillusionment and depression begins on the other side of that door.

TROY: I don’t know about you, but I know I ended up here because things weren’t that great out there. You should try accepting where you at, man. Take a pottery class or something.

It may be ridiculous to find advice from fictional characters, but when art finds itself crossing the thresholds to real life, it can speak volumes to the human heart.

Troy decides not to get hung up about the past and plays football again. It may be ridiculous to find advice from fictional characters, but when art finds itself crossing the thresholds to real life, it can speak volumes to the human heart. The episode flexes an exploration of character-driven stories that embrace the struggles of a person. While it never promises to fix the issue, it attempts to lay a path of healing in retrospect.

#SixSeasonsAndAMovie

Community’s writing team somewhat foreshadowed the show’s future direction during the finale of the first season in the episode Modern Warfare,

This hashtag developed throughout the show’s run because of the constant threat of cancellation. It became the mantra or the calling card of fellow Community fans. Its low ratings didn’t resonate as much with the niche nature of its themes and the cult following it had gained failed to translate into a wider commercial success.

Writing about Community can turn into so many discussions, from simple appreciation to dissecting TV tropes and movie homages.

In history, there is historiography or the discipline that studies how historical works are written. I would even go as far as looking at the show as a modern case study of the evolution of humor in TV shows.

It is a celebration of geek culture before it was a thing. Though some elements and jokes won’t fly in the current sensitivities of our times, the depictions of social outsiders bonding together to find family will always be universal.

The new lifestyle.