Community
Our Review
The smartest sitcom of its generation, and the one that treats TV itself as a language. Dan Harmon’s study group at Greendale Community College is a perfect sitcom engine — six broken people who need each other and refuse to admit it — but the real joy is what the show does around the engine: paintball episodes shot like action films, a clip show made of episodes that never existed, an entire episode shot from inside a fridge.
Seasons 1-3 are the golden run: the daredevil ascension of Modern Warfare, the tabletop RPG of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the Remedial Chaos Theory timeline episode that every show since has tried to copy and failed. The cast is a murderer’s row — Donald Glover’s Troy leaving was the beginning of the end, but Chevy Chase’s Pierce, Alison Brie’s Annie, and Danny Pudi’s Abed (the greatest sitcom character of the 2010s, full stop) carry it through even the gas-leak year.
Verdict: Essential. Six seasons and a movie happened — now go see what all the fuss was about.
