Special Exhibit: COMMUNITY

 Year: (2009-2015)

Seasons: 6

Episodes: 110

Duration: 20-30 minutes

Where to watch: Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu

Another cult favorite which never found a broad audience, Community is nevertheless  essential sitcom viewing.

Created by Dan Harmon, from the animated hit Rick & Morty, you might recognize its very idiosyncratic brand of humor, marked by constant metafictional bits and pop culture commentaries of every kind. Community is particularly memorable because of the expertise it has on genre tropes, and the ease with which the show uses them to make almost every episode completely different from the rest.

Besides being hysterically funny, Community manages to find a strangely satisfying emotional heart that never detracts from the humor yet leaves you with much more than empty laughs. The basic premise is about a study group in a subpar community college who despite their wild differences end up becoming friends. With all its references to pop culture and a seemingly cynic view of its setting, at its core it’s a great show about found family.

It wouldn’t work if the ensemble wasn’t structured around such great characters. The main seven are wonderfully constructed, and after a couple of episodes, you know exactly who they are. A big chunk of the comedy comes from understanding their personalities and how they’re going to react to the situations, so this is a sitcom you have to watch from the beginning: I imagine it wouldn’t be half as funny if you don’t quite grasp why Annie needs her pen so badly or why Abed and Troy would start a pillow fort Civil War.

The best scenes often involve the full group interacting with each other around their table, proving both their chemistry with each other and their individual, top notch comic timing. The only weak links among the cast (and this is a very personal opinion) are Ken Jeong and Jim Rash, whose cartoonish characters worked better when they were supporting ones, but turn quickly annoying once they try to force them into the main storylines.

High praise should go to Danny Pudi, whose character Abed could have become similarly ridiculous, but he plays it in such a way he is instead the emotional heart of the series. Alison Brie is hilarious and adorable as Annie Edison and proves she should be a bigger name by now. Donald Glover also achieves the same, and it’s not surprising that he exploded into stardom before the series ended. Gillian Jacobs is another favorite of mine. And just because they’re also great in what they do here, I’ll namecheck the remaining three: Joel McHale, Yvette Nicole Brown and veteran Chevy Chase. Be advised that the whole cast doesn’t make it until the end of the series, and this hurts the group dynamic a bit.

On that vein, I should also point out that the quality of the series is not consistent during the whole run: there’s a season that’s a particular low because Harmon was fired by the network. Luckily, he was rehired, and things picked up before the end, so the whole run remains recommendable. Great moments can pop anywhere, and the finale is satisfying enough.

Still, I’m eager to see a reunion film, as constantly predicted by the series itself: #SixSeasonsAndAMovie