When it comes to pop culture, I consider myself at the very least reasonably aware. As a fan of Community I have never ascribed to the theory that the series is great because it is incredibly pop culture literate. The idea that the show is one big in-joke for pop culture nerds is... Read More »
Early in its run, Community had a seemingly endless well of high-concept, pop culture-riffing ideas to throw out there. In addition to “Modern Warfare,” the show’s legendary paintball episode, it did things like the Goodfellas riff “Contemporary American Poultry,” the zombie epis... Read More »
On a certain level, Community will always be a show about people who hurt each other. It is a story about fundamentally flawed human beings clinging to each other and to the hope that they may someday improve, but it is also a story about their many, many, many failings and the w... Read More »
“App Development and Condiments” is one of those grandly ambitious episodes of Community that flies perhaps a bit too close to the sun. One of the reasons I love this show is that it feels like a constant high wire act, a twenty-two minute slice of television that often tries to ... Read More »
“Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality” is evidence that Community can still do the sort of bruised optimism that it traded in during its peak. This bittersweet tone, which sees the characters facing rejection and mostly relying on each other to get them through the bad times, is proba... Read More »
The Save Greendale committee is an absolutely brilliant idea to give the show driving force as these characters grow past the point where they should realistically be students at the community college. Over the course of its run, Community has proved itself to be a show about a w... Read More »
Community became famed (among the very small subset of the world for whom it is famous) for its concept episodes, where it would do a genre homage that managed to nail its target on every conceivable level. As I’ve said before in this space, those episodes work best when anchored... Read More »
“Cooperative Polygraphy” is an episode that harkens back to one of season two’s classic installments, “Cooperative Calligraphy.” Like that, it is a bottle episode constrained to the study room (excepting the tag in each), wherein the study group is forced to examine their relatio... Read More »
Last week, Community had to do the heavy lifting of recovering from season four’s tailspin, shifting us into season five, and convincing us this show could be good again. Unburdened of at least some of those pressures, “Basic Intergluteal Numismatics” sets out to prove that the s... Read More »
January 2, 2013, 8:0PM (EST), NBC For a stretch, during the back half of its first season, its stellar second, and the first half of its third, Community was very often my favorite comedy on television. It was hilarious, with it’s own unique sense of humor, an amazing ensemble th... Read More »
