List #767: Reasons why "Community" Might Be My Favorite Show Ever (As Proved By Comparisons To Other Shows I Enjoy (or just other shows))
1. It plays with Genre in the medium of Television Sitcom in a way similar to how How I Met Your Mother occaisonally plays with Structure in the same medium... except all of the time and better.
2. After watching the first episode or two, I thought it was going to be a throw-away, background, fill-the-time-between-shows-I-want-to-watch kind of show, (or maybe just another dumb vehicle for some former/peripheral stars like Chase and McHale) but like the similarly brilliant Veronica Mars it soon became something far better than I ever could have predicted based on the first two episodes. (and I really hope that the miraculous announcement of another short season doesn't end up as only-just-really-pretty-good as VM did)
3. It was a show that did adventurous and wildly different things each week, but, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it did so while still having the heart of the show be about character development and relationships, just using the monster/trope-of-the-week as the flavoring. It's like every week was a "Once More, With Feeling"... (and several times, even better)
4. There is no TV (ex/fake)lawyer I'd rather hear speechify than Jeff Winger (except maybe Boston Legal's Alan Shore)
5. Its consistency in both seeming absurdity and reference to its own continuity rivals Arrested Development (and the aformentioned HIMYM)
6. Its characters may have unlikeable qualities, but that makes them that much more interesting (so SUCK IT! Seinfeld)
7. It's not going to be the same if the visionary writer behind it all isn't on the show next year, like a Sorkin-less West Wing
8. Lets be really honest now... Abed/Inspector spacetime shows more about multi-dimensionality and character develpment, than that other, 1-dimensional, 'somewhere-on-the-spectrum' guy on that show that's in the exact same time-slot could ever figure out with 5 PhDs in Physics and unfinity equations that the writer had to hire a paid physics consultant to write on the whiteboards.
8a. And also, really, name a character on Big Bang Theory that you actually care about in some way? Name a character that's had any development or growth, or that isn't a one-note (albeit funny) gag character, (except for maybe Penny). Don't me wrong; BBT is highly watchable (I record it) and is, like most things Chuck Lorre makes, good for some cheap, obvious laughs, but, for a show about "geniuses" it's surprisingly dumb... makes me think that Obama's right about the value of Community College.
9. "Remedial Chaos Theory" did everything right with alternate timelines that Lost struggled with, and if last night's episode was truly the last one (which I will consider it to be, if next season is Harmon-less), it did everything right with a final episode that Lost, or The Soprano's didn't.
10. It's a show where the Place (Greendale) is as central to the focus as the Characters are, and it's a show with students, teachers and staff at a school that isn't a "Show about School", (and it's got Michael K. Williams saying "A man's gotta have a code"). Plus Dan Harmon even pretty much admits that he's heavily influenced by The Wire (and last night's episode totally ended with a Wire montage) :
1. It plays with Genre in the medium of Television Sitcom in a way similar to how How I Met Your Mother occaisonally plays with Structure in the same medium... except all of the time and better.
2. After watching the first episode or two, I thought it was going to be a throw-away, background, fill-the-time-between-shows-I-want-to-watch kind of show, (or maybe just another dumb vehicle for some former/peripheral stars like Chase and McHale) but like the similarly brilliant Veronica Mars it soon became something far better than I ever could have predicted based on the first two episodes. (and I really hope that the miraculous announcement of another short season doesn't end up as only-just-really-pretty-good as VM did)
3. It was a show that did adventurous and wildly different things each week, but, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it did so while still having the heart of the show be about character development and relationships, just using the monster/trope-of-the-week as the flavoring. It's like every week was a "Once More, With Feeling"... (and several times, even better)
4. There is no TV (ex/fake)lawyer I'd rather hear speechify than Jeff Winger (except maybe Boston Legal's Alan Shore)
5. Its consistency in both seeming absurdity and reference to its own continuity rivals Arrested Development (and the aformentioned HIMYM)
6. Its characters may have unlikeable qualities, but that makes them that much more interesting (so SUCK IT! Seinfeld)
7. It's not going to be the same if the visionary writer behind it all isn't on the show next year, like a Sorkin-less West Wing
8. Lets be really honest now... Abed/Inspector spacetime shows more about multi-dimensionality and character develpment, than that other, 1-dimensional, 'somewhere-on-the-spectrum' guy on that show that's in the exact same time-slot could ever figure out with 5 PhDs in Physics and unfinity equations that the writer had to hire a paid physics consultant to write on the whiteboards.
8a. And also, really, name a character on Big Bang Theory that you actually care about in some way? Name a character that's had any development or growth, or that isn't a one-note (albeit funny) gag character, (except for maybe Penny). Don't me wrong; BBT is highly watchable (I record it) and is, like most things Chuck Lorre makes, good for some cheap, obvious laughs, but, for a show about "geniuses" it's surprisingly dumb... makes me think that Obama's right about the value of Community College.
9. "Remedial Chaos Theory" did everything right with alternate timelines that Lost struggled with, and if last night's episode was truly the last one (which I will consider it to be, if next season is Harmon-less), it did everything right with a final episode that Lost, or The Soprano's didn't.
10. It's a show where the Place (Greendale) is as central to the focus as the Characters are, and it's a show with students, teachers and staff at a school that isn't a "Show about School", (and it's got Michael K. Williams saying "A man's gotta have a code"). Plus Dan Harmon even pretty much admits that he's heavily influenced by The Wire (and last night's episode totally ended with a Wire montage) :
"And so whether I like it or not, and as risky as it is, I need to lay some plans at the beginning of season three that we’ll build to at the end. And I think that’s going to be a sweeping enough change to accomplish. I’ve been studying The Wire over this break and observing the art of the opposite of modularity, which is serialization. That’s not to say that season three of Community will be season four of The Wire, but it is to say that beyond Modern Family and beyond Parks And Rec, the ingredient that will keep Community alive to season four exists somewhere in The Wire. [Laughs.] I don’t know how to explain that, but I know it has something to do with the way they end their seasons with these glamorous montages and needle-drops of these stories that seemed disparate and all operate on some theme." --Dan Harmon, Onion AV Club
(11. Alison Brie is even more adorable than on Mad Men)
(12. James Franco (of Freaks and Geeks) is the "White Donald Glover" ... much respect to Childish Gambino)
