Community

Rating: 5/5

I think it goes without saying that Community is one of the greatest, if not the greatest sitcom to grace television. It ticks all the boxes of the sitcoms and breaks its limit, like the Beethoven of the sitcom medium. It is funny as much as it is endearing, witty, irreverent and meta. But so what? What makes it stand out from other sitcoms? Aside from its groundbreaking humour, Community, at least for me, is the gold standard for heartfelt and sincere storytelling that is engaging as much as it is an emotional masterpiece.

I think the clearest set of examples for its humour is its repertoire of beautifully-crafted “high-concept episodes” (aside from Introduction to Felt Surrogacy. That one is just… ugh). Although the premise of the show is very much grounded in reality, it is not afraid to experiment with different genres and concepts, and I believe no other sitcom in broadcast history has dared to venture out this far; Brooklyn Nine-Nine will always be about detectives going about their day at work, The IT Crowd will always be about the misadventures of the IT department in a company, Mind Your Language will always be a classroom of people from all over the world trying to learn English. Arguably, Community will always be a study group (or a committee of alumni and staff in the later seasons), but it isn’t afraid to explore this premise in fresh new ways. One of the most beloved episodes of the show, A Fistful of Paintballs, is a full-on parody of the Wild West genres, while its sequel, A Few Paintballs More, is a creative take on Star Wars, strewn with subtle references, direct quotes and an almost-perfect copy of the Mise en Scene in the movie franchise. When these episodes come about (and they do come about pretty often), it is extremely enjoyable to find the parallels between the inspiration and the episode. When you get the references, you can’t help but think for yourself “This is genius”, if you don’t, it’s still extremely enjoyable to see an entire school devolve into a paintball match...thrice. Community’s lack of fear in pushing its premise to its absolute boundaries allow it to create fresh and new takes on an old premise, breathing new life into it in a way that no sitcom has done before, and it is this experimentation that makes Community one of the most exciting and most engaging sitcoms out there.

The genius of these episodes aren’t always limited to references though, some episodes stick to the premise while still delivering a masterclass in writing. Take the fan-favourite episode Remedial Chaos Theory. The premise is simple: one person in the study group needs to pick up a pizza downstairs, and they roll a dice to decide who will go down. This episode, in its short 20 minutes run-time, explores all the possible combinations of events that will transpire, depending on who in the study group goes down to receive the pizza. Despite having a small deviation each time, reality eventually branches out to six different “timelines” with drastically different outcomes, making smart use of its characters’ personalities to cause small differences that snowball into different realities. For many writers, this might sound like a technical nightmare, but Community ensures that every single timeline builds up from that decision cleanly and organically. There’s nothing pretentious, nothing abrupt, nothing jarring, just a series of well-planned out events that are believable and creatively put together. The amount of skill to write something like this is immense, and it is with this amount of effort that Community writers treat each and every episode, churning out top quality humour that breaks the limits of what a sitcom truly is. This level of top-notch humour and high-quality writing that permeates through every single episode of the show makes it stand out, at least to me, as one of the greatest sitcoms of all time.

Personally, the selling point of this show is its ability to create sincere and heartfelt stories with characters that are, above all, inherently human.