Greendale Alumni Association

Scott Hardie | July 3, 2017
Has anyone else here seen the series Community? I'm a few years behind as usual, but I just watched the entire run and wouldn't mind discussing our thoughts with fellow fans, if there are any here.

Samir Mehta | July 3, 2017
[hidden by request]

Erik Bates | July 3, 2017
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | July 4, 2017
Well then Erik, I wouldn't read further until you see more! I'm not going to reveal specific plot details, but my comments will probably influence your enjoyment all the same.



I have mixed feelings, because it was such a mixed show. It went through five distinct eras of wildly varying quality:

The first half of season one was just ok. The show was still finding itself. Britta and Troy in particular were quite different than they spent the rest of the show being, and in Britta's case that's a shame. I really preferred the witty, worldly Britta of the first few episodes to the Homer-Simpson-grade idiot that she became in too many episodes.

Once it found its groove, the next two and a half seasons were excellent. The show fully deserves its reputation for very intelligent writing that works on multiple levels and that understands television. I laughed so much! The show could pair up nearly any of its characters to create great chemistry. And the show could take on nearly any subject as a parody and make it work like gangbusters. Obviously they overdid Pierce's evil nature and had to scale him back a little, but otherwise the show was doing nearly everything right.

The Harmon-free and McKenna-free season four was a disaster, just painfully unfunny. Two episodes back to back, the hot-air balloon and Thanksgiving, were the show's absolute worst. It played like amateur writers had turned in spec scripts.

Season five felt like it had something to prove and was really sharp again, maybe secretly even better than the golden years. The first scene alone had more good jokes than the entire previous year. This was my favorite season.

The final year on Yahoo just ran out of gas (literally, in the case of one episode). It wasn't bad, as the people making it were too talented to do truly bad work, but the show went slack and just sort of petered out. I think the show lost its mojo when they stopped being students fighting against this insane system and instead became agents of the system itself; it just didn't have the conflict needed to spark good storylines.

I'm glad that not every TV show is this meta, because it's exhausting trying to reconcile the show's self-awareness with suspension of disbelief, but otherwise i wish that more shows were like this -- more aware of their own strengths and weaknesses, more willing to take huge creative risks, more willing to criticize television as a medium, more willing to fix what's not working and go big on what is working. What a great creative team all around.

Do you agree or disagree with my assessment? Do you have favorite characters or favorite episodes -- or least favorites?