Last year I wrote a column titled, “Even the Funniest Comedies Must Come to an End,” in which I wrote, “‘30 Rock’ remains my gold standard for primetime comedy.” Although I still love “30 Rock” very much, I’ve come to realize that another show on NBC has successfully dethroned Tina Fey’s creation: “Community.”
Created by Dan Harmon in 2009, “Community” revolves around a study group at a small community college in the fictional town of Greendale,Colo. It reeks of Breakfast Club, but in a good way. Jeff Winger (Joel McHale), a silver-tongued, disbarred lawyer recovering from a fake bachelor’s degree, created the group in order to get closer to Britta Perry (Gillian Jacobs), an attractive pseudo-revolutionary. Unfortunately for Jeff, Britta has “douche-ray vision,” which allows her to foil Jeff’s advances by inviting many others to this study group to learn Spanish. The other five members who make up the “study group,” are Troy Barnes (Donald Glover, a former writer of “30 Rock”), a jock-turned-geek; Annie Edison (Alison Brie), an academic crusader recovering from an addiction to Adderall; Shirley Bennett (Yvette Nicole Brown), a devout Christian mother and Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase), a wealthy and racist man who has turned to education in order to find some meaning in his life.
The last main character, Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi), is the one who really sets “Community” apart from all other shows. Abed is completely meta. You might think that I’m using that word like everyone else on this planet without knowing what it actually means, but I do and he is. If something is “meta,” then that particular thing refers to the structure and world in which it exists. For example, “metadata” is data about data; “meta-emotion” is one’s emotions about their particular emotional state; and “meta-humor” is comedy about comedy itself. This is an odd aspect of a telelvisionshow you say? Well, here’s an Abed quote, where he talks about Dean Pelton’s (Jim Rash’s) frequent announcements over the PA system: “I like it. It makes every 10 minutes feel like the beginning of a new scene of a TV show. Of course, the illusion only lasts until someone says something they’d never say on TV, like how much their life is like TV. There, it’s gone.”
Before I change the subject to something other than the main characters, Señor Chang (Ken Jeong) is the former Spanish teacher who constantly tries to prove his worth in order to be invited as a member of the study group. So far, he has not succeeded, which is awful for him, because he also doesn’t “Chang a lot of chicks.” Not a lot going for El Tigre.
As everyone on this planet (which now has seven billion people apparently) will be able to recall, I wrote a column last month about “Arrested Development,” which was never able to garner high viewership despite fantastic reviews. “Community” seems to be the second pea in that injust pod. With its viewership dropping about one million people per season, it doesn’t seem entirely likely that “Community” will be renewed for a fourth season, which breaks my heart. How on earth is it possible that a petty and juvenile show like “Two and a Half Men” can attract an enormous number of viewers, but comedic gold like “Arrested Development” and “Community” stagger? I might have to blame this one on the devious monkey that Troy and Abed adopted, whose name is Annie’s Boobs.
Steven Piccione is a junior in the College. He can be reached at [email protected]. HULU SAXA appears every other Friday in the guide.
