Community(NBC, 2009- )

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]ENGL 2030: Experience of

Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

The Community Cast. Front row: Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) and Britta Perry (Gillian Jacobs); middle row: Annie Edison (Alison Brie), Shirley Bennett (Yvette Nicole Brown), and Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi); back row: Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase), Troy Barnes (Donald Glover), and Ben Chang (Ken Leung)

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

Joel McHale as Jeff Winger, a suspended lawyer who enrolls at Greendale after his firm discovers that he falsely claimed to have a bachelor's degree from Columbia. Jeff often acts as the leader of the group. A womanizer and narcissist, he is often seen using his charm to get his way. Jeff often tricks or persuades the other members of the group to do all of the work.

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

Gillian Jacobs as Britta Perry, a former anarchist activist who traveled around the world after dropping out of high school, but now trying to get her life back on track. At first, Britta puts up a facade, appearing intelligent and cool at the start of the series. However, as the group gets to know her and her defenses are stripped away, the charming flaws in her personality become more obvious.

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

Danny Pudi as Abed Nadir, a pop-culture-obsessed Palestinian-Polish film student with an encyclopedic knowledge of TV shows and movies. Abed has trouble interacting with others, and his friends hint that he may have Aspergers. On occasion, Abed has displayed coping mechanisms to things he cannot deal with, such as seeing everything as a claymation adventure, or being convinced he is Batman. Abed is the source of much of the show's meta-humor, and he often interprets the group's everyday adventures by comparing them to TV tropes or clichés.

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

Alison Brie as Annie Edison, the youngest of the group, a compulsive over-achiever, relentlessly organized and comparatively innocent. Despite this, Annie ends up at Greendale instead of an Ivy League school because she developed an Adderall addiction while studying for finals, earning her the nickname Annie Adderall. This led to a major breakdown and a stay in a rehabilitation clinic, as well as being disinherited by her parents. Annie was extremely unpopular in high-school, to the extent that even the teachers hated her and crossing guards lured her into traffic.

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

Yvette Nicole Brown as Shirley Bennett, a single mother and vocal Christian going to school to start a brownie business. Shirley is seen as the "mother" of the group and often uses this to manipulate them by being passive-aggressive and appealing to their sense of guilt.

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

Donald Glover as Troy Barnes, a former high school star quarterback who lost his scholarship to a top-tier university when he hurt his shoulder doing a keg flip. Troy went to the same high school as Annie, but never spoke to her and did not even recognize her at the start of the series. Troy starts the series obsessed with being cool, but due to his friendship with Abed, he lets his guard down and embraces his nerdy, childish side.

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

Chevy Chase as Pierce Hawthorne (seasons 1–4), a millionaire who enrolls at Greendale due to boredom. Pierce is often seen as the least liked member of the group due to his self-importance, incoherence and casual bigotry. Despite his apparent arrogance, Pierce is aware of his place in the group, and he often attempts to appear cooler, fit in, and make others like him more.

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

Jim Rash as Dean Craig Pelton (recurring seasons 1–2, starring seasons 3–present), the dean of Greendale, who desperately wants his school to be more like a real university, and goes to excessive lengths to appear politically correct. Although his sexual orientation is left ambiguous, he is an avid cross dresser who has occasionally displayed an attraction to Dalmatians. Dean Pelton considers the group to be his favorite students and has an obsessive crush on Jeff.

Dean Pelton’s Outfits (Community Wiki)A Video Compilation of Pelton’s Outfits

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

Ken Jeong as "Señor" Ben Chang, an extremely unhinged man, originally the group's Spanish teacher until the school discovers his incompetence and lack of teaching qualification. He goes on to become a student and later a security officer for the school. Chang's insanity and loose grip on reality often lead him to take extreme action for no apparent reason.

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

At an hilariously inept community college in California, a co-ed, multi-racial, multi-generational gang of seven finds itself thrown together as a study group and becomes, against all odds, the granfalloon nucleus of an ingenious new sitcom. The US has long been known, in every decade, for its stellar contributions to the genre, from I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, and The Bill Cosby Show, to Seinfeld, Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, The Simpsons, and Frasier, but none gave us dialogue quite like the following:

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

Dr. Duncan: Listen, I wanted to ask you about that young lady in your Spanish class. You know, the blonde, with the pouty, strident, Cate Blanchett sexuality, and the ridiculous name.Jeff: Britta.Dr. Duncan: That’s it. Can you imagine living with that? Can you imagine? Unbelievable. Anyway, um, are you two an item, and if so, would that item be impervious to sabotage?Jeff: You know, you have the savoir faire of a hyena. How is it that you and James Bond come from the same island?Dr. Duncan: Message received. I'll just wait for you to finish striking out first.Jeff: Cheers.Abed: M*A*S*H.Dr. Duncan: Game over. Have a nice day.

“Advanced Criminal Law,” Community, 1.5

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

This exchange from an early episode of the critically beloved/ratings-challenged NBC sitcom Community may need some unpacking for a newbie to arguably the most inventive show on American television. Dr. Duncan, played by the English expatriate comic John Oliver (a regular on The Daily Show), is a pretentious, opportunistic, alcoholic, lecherous psychology professor at Glendale Community College in Los Angeles. Jeff Winger (played by the host of Talk Soup) is a razor-sharp, full-of-himself, conniving womanizer, a former lawyer now being re-educated because the degree from Columbia which had gotten him admitted to law school was actually a fake certificate he purchased in Colombia. The Britta they speak of, likewise a student, is an attractive blonde woman in her thirties, a high school dropout, former billboard vandalizer, foot model, Radiohead groupie, and Peace Corps volunteer. The Muslim Abed Nadir is a pop culture nerd, perhaps suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome, an aspiring filmmaker defying his father’s plan for him to become heir to a falafel stand. A sitcom-typical colloquy over a woman morphs, without warning and without explanation, into almost idiolectic, intertextual wordplay about, well, sitcoms, both British and American. Community is a self-aware sitcom that trades on its viewers’ knowledge of the conventions of the medium both for humor and characterization.

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

Consider another exchange—this from Community’s Season 2’s first episode (“Anthropology 101,” 2.1). After unexpected revelations lead to Jeff breaking up with both Britta and Annie, the always meta Abed goes for the metaphor:

Abed: By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you “canceled.”Jeff: Oh good. Cancel us. And while you're at it, why don’t you take your cutesy “I can’t tell life from TV” gimmick with you. That’s very season one.Abed: I can tell life from TV Jeff. TV has structure, logic, rules. And likeable leading men. In life we have this. We have you.

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

As another of its signatures, Community (with rare exception) takes its episode titles from the names of real or imagined courses at the community college: "Accounting for Lawyers,” "Advanced Criminal Law,” "Anthropology 101,” "Applied Anthropology and Culinary Arts,” "Asian Population Studies,” "Basic Genealogy,” "Basic Rocket Science,” "Beginner Pottery,” "Celebrity Pharmacology,” "Communication Studies,” "Comparative Religion,” "Competitive Wine Tasting,” "Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design,” "Contemporary American Poultry,” "Cooperative Calligraphy,” "Critical Film Studies,” "Custody Law and Eastern European Diplomacy,” "Debate 109,” "Early 21st Century Romanticism,” "English as a Second Language,” "Environmental Science,” "Epidemiology,” "Home Economics,” "Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking,” "Interpretive Dance,” "Intro to Political Science,” "Introduction to Film,” "Introduction to Statistics,” "Investigative Journalism,” "Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples,” "Mixology Certification,” "Physical Education,” "Romantic Expressionism,” "Social Psychology,” "Spanish 101,” "The Art of Discourse,” "The Politics of Human Sexuality.”

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

Jeff is right, of course: Abed’s Life = Television obsession was well established in Community’s first season, but how can it be that Jeff possesses that extra-diegetic knowledge? “Il n'y a pas de hors-texte” [“There is nothing outside the text”], Derrida insisted, and yet Jeff has apparently been outside Community enough to know that Abed has gone to the well once too often. Abed, on the other hand, knows his TV. He’s absolutely right about Jeff: he is not your standard “likeable leading man.” In fact, he’s pretty much a son of a bitch.

Jeff is not the only easily/possibly dislikeable major character we will meet in this survey of American sitcoms: flashforward to Barney Stinson of How I Met Your Mother and Sheldon Cooper of Big Bang Theory.

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

If Community is the most self-referential sitcom since The Simpsons, it is, like its animated forebear, wonderfully, fiendishly, hilariously intertextual. In a Halloween episode “Introduction to Statistics” (1.7), Abed impersonates the Christian Bale Batman (although the episode’s final image seems decidedly non-superheroish).

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

One year later, in “Epidemiology” (2.6), a costumes-required school dance (Abed comes as the monster from the Alien films, Pierce as Mr. Spock, Troy as Ripley-in-the-futuristic fork-lift [from Aliens], and Chang as Peggy Fleming???), taco meat purchased from the military turns everyone into a zombie and the episode into a spot-on homage to an attack-of-the-zombies movie.

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

An entire episode (“Advanced Dungeons and Dragons,” 2.14), built around a marathon session of the eponymous role-playing game, succeeds in advancing several major (and one minor) character arcs. A Christmas episode, told from Abed’s point of view (“Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas,” 2.11), unfolds as a stop-motion cartoon, with clay versions of all the characters . . .

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

The Community Cast with Feet of Clay (screen capture from “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas”)

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

In “Critical Film Studies” (2.19), the study group dresses up as characters from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction for a surprise birthday party for Abed.

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

But without at first realizing it, Jeff gets caught up in the birthday boy’s reenactment of My Dinner with Andre (Louis Malle, 1981).

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

The final two episodes of Community’s second season, "A Fistful of Paintballs" and "For a Few Paintballs More," in which a rival community college seeks to destroy Glendale by unleashing a property and psyche destroying paintball tournament brings Leone back to life.

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

Community’s ingeniousness is not without risks however. As its creator Dan Harmon recognizes in his conversation with New York magazine imaginative brilliance may work against the long-term interests of quotidian television:

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

Dan Harmon (photo from Salon)

New York Magazine: Obviously this is a show that's not afraid to take a leap into the absurd and the fantastical. But do you ever worry you've gone too far?Harmon: I constantly worry that we've gone too far. I especially worry about that right now. At the end of season one, we decided to end the season itself on a departure episode. And I worry about the volume with which we fantasize in season two. And then I get worried that I really need to take stock and watch all the episodes again, because there are political reasons to worry about that stuff, too: When that conversation is happening in your head, it's happening also in hallways where people make decisions about scheduling and promotion that affect the next twenty episodes, and I

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

Dan Harmon (photo from New York Magazine)

need those conversations out of people's heads. Whether or not the show needs to change in this way or that way, I need people to stop using certain buzzwords when they talk abut our show at the water cooler, like "weird," "inaccessible," "off-putting," "torture," "experimental," "irritating." I've got to replace those words with "Parks and Rec." [Laughs.] If this show is going to for seven years, it's going to need to somehow roll out the red carpet for my mom in the third season, without alienating the fans that we have who love nothing more than the unpredictable nature of the show, people I'm compulsively unable to betray because I'm one of them.

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

In a featurette on the Season 1 DVD set of Community entitled “Creative Compromises,” Harmon shows us his original vision for the series—before it was “watered down” and “gutted” by “the TV machine.” What follows is a series of clips in which his female characters pass gas uncontrollably thanks to a newly-laid-down flatulence track. The joke, of course, is that Community, while remaining faithful to comedy’s centuries old allegiance to sex and scatology, is anything but a prolonged fart joke. It is (so far) a sitcom masterpiece.

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

At the end of Season Three, after a very public battle with Chevy Chase, Community’s mastermind Dan Harmon was fired by NBC, a network in its death throes. Without Harmon in charge, Season Four was, IMHO, awful. Surprisingly, Community was nevertheless renewed and Harmon was brought back for Season 5.

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

"Remedial Chaos Theory" [3.4]—Onion

TV Club

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]

ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Drama [Lavery]