TV Recap: Community

I suppose I'm making a change to column writing when I'm blogging about this, but I'm going to try make this short and sweet.

For those who don't know me well enough, let me just begin with this: I love dissecting movies to the nitty-gritty. Especially good ones. Nothing gives me more comfort when I'm trying to figure out what are the elements that make great entertainment. So my knowledge on movie genres and pop culture is exceptionally wide and is still expanding.

So, lately, I've been obsessing over a U.S. TV sitcom called Community.

Aired on NBC channel in 2009, it's about a group of 7 students, from a variety of cultures and ethnicities, putting aside their differences to form a study group at a fictional Greendale Community College. And while attending school there, they face a lot of absurd and epic adventures that change their lives forever.

Spanning over just 3 seasons, this TV show is one of the finest television scripting I've come across, besides Arrested Development and Spaced, just to name a few.

The pilot episode introduces these characters as stereotypes of their ethnicity and ages, like all TV shows do. You have the once-popular jock, the plump African-American Christian housewife, the obnoxious former-lawyer, an incompetent old man, the studious young girl etc.

As Season 1 progresses, their backstories are revealed, layer by layer in each subsequent episode, and it all adds up to give a unique touch to each character. One particular episode that hit a stride with me was Introduction to Film Studies in early Season 1.

Abed Nadir, a Polish Pakistani, is known for his autistic and naive behaviour. He sees everything as movies and stories, and this makes it difficult for him to have friends he can mingle with. In this episode, Abed is denied by his father to study a film course at Greendale. His friend, Britta, who is all about defying authorities in exchange for freedom of speech, offers Abed money to study what he loves. Jeff, his other friend, thinks it's a bad idea, as he feels Britta should not get involved in other people's lives. With Britta's money, Abed records everything that he sees, including a quarrel between Britta and his father. And at the climax, he shows his finished work to these three people. It's a short film about Abed.

Inside the film, Abed acknowledges he is weird and believes he is the reason why his mother left the family. And his father, having lost his wife, doesn't know what to do with the son. He only wants what's best for his son and even tries to force Abed into the Falafel family business. Britta and Jeff's conversations in it represents what Abed thinks of his parents' exchanges. After watching his short film, his father tears up and tells him "It was never your fault Mom left,", to which Abed replied "You never had to say it," In just one moment, his father has a change of heart and allows his son to pursue what he loves.

Top LH: Nice homage to space excursion movies!
Top RH: Psychotic Ben Chang, played by Ken Jeong
Bottom LH: Annie pointing a gun at Jeff for deceiving her.
Bottom RH: Pierce (old man) and Troy (young dude)

And this was when I realized Community was not any normal sitcom. The story and message is poignantly and sincerely told. It's grounded in harsh reality and yet it manages to tug my heartstrings whenever a character comes to a revelation. It's a lovely comedy! It's so weird that it's perfect. Honestly, I've never seen a TV show explore characters' origin stories so in-depth and manages to corporate all of these elements into 20-minutes sitcoms every week.

Then, the comedic elements. It uses the characters and place them in situations that you'll never imagine. Any Community fan would say that the paintball episodes are brilliant. It's nothing you will ever see on TV. Just watching all your well-developed characters spouting hilarious one-liners and taking actions, according to their personalities, is delightful! And it all makes sense, somehow!

But Community is not just funny, it respects its fans a lot and rewards them with running gags and also being self-aware. Being self-aware is a rare element in TV Shows, because you don't want to refer to your genre (Sitcoms) too much that it becomes annoying. But they incorporate it into their story really well.

"Annie's a little young, we try not to sexualize her." - Jeff Winger

A Bottle Episode is an episode when a TV sitcom is trying to cut down the production costs by just secluding their characters in just one location. In this standout episode, Annie (the girl with control issues) traps the entire study group in the room when she finds out her pens are lost. Chaos ensues with people accusing one another of stealing her pens. The writers use the "Bottle episode" concept and added a story where all the characters go all out with their anger. I thought this was a really bold move and it succeeded!

Of course, credit must be given and it is given to its creator Dan Harmon and his creative and brave team of writers, consultants and executive producers. It is quite evident that all three seasons had an overall theme for each.

Season 1 - Spanish Class => Foreign strangers, who have no business with one another, coming together to learn a foreign language. This forces them to understand each other and become friends.

Season 2 - Anthropology => The study of humankind. The theme is about exploring the limits of friendships. Putting characters to the test and having epic situations happen, so they can change and accept each other for who they are.

Season 3 - Biology => The study of living organisms. In this season, Britta takes up Psychology and tries to understand her friends. Basically, this seasons takes a darker turn to explore characters' psyche and what makes them tick. Also, it delves into the thoughts of what characters think of each other and this leads to some really mature growth in my favourite characters.

After a really touching finale episode of Season 3, I thought to myself, "Wow, what a way to tie up loose ends and finish character arcs," These people are not perfect, but they have gone through enough to know that they're a study group that can survive any thing that Life throws at them.

The amazing Paintball episode!

It's a TV show you can watch again and again to catch up on little details and still laugh at its wisecracks. Sadly, Dan Harmon is not coming for Season 4 and most of the original writers had left. I am still going to watch it, but whatever happens later, I still can relish the touching moments in the thrilling trilogy season of Dan Harmon's Community.

Forgive me if my writing is kind of bad. I tried my best... =/