Community - Not So Communal (That Sounds Witty, Right?)

By Bub

The biggest disappointment this Thursday night was the series premier of Community. This show seemed to be billed as a witty satire of a very specific real life situation in the vein of The Office and Parks and Recreation. At times it was witty but at best it was a spoof. Joel McHale might as well have been played by the Wayans Brothers and Anna Farris should have been in there somewhere. In order to be a cutting satire you have to very sharply reflect the object of satirization. Community reflected a high school drop-out Carlos Mencia's version of what community college is like.


Only in that universe, where freakishly a total underachiever idiot makes it huge in show business, can a high school drop out become a member of the Peace Corps. Only in that idiotic, Entourage obsessed universe can a person trick 'The Board' into allowing you to practice law for years with a fake degree submitted as an email attachment. And only someone that didn't even bother to go to community college would think that you could reasonably spend four years there (sorry Andy). So McHale's character was a stiff prop in a mean spoof and not a Jim Krazsinski to John Oliver's Michael Scott. That's a fancy way of saying it was comedically dull and also horrible. And maybe some people like that. I think it was tired before it started. Instead of seeming like a modern day Fletch , McHale seems more like a rip-off Van Wilder.

Only in that universe is it sympathetic and even endearing to try and cold-heartedly trick a girl into sleeping with you. Luckily she wasn't fooled, exactly (though I didn't really care what happened to her). There were redeeming factors- Chevy Chase was gave a respectable performance, and the Abed character is the only one I will look forward to actually seeing again. Abed plays an Arab community college version of the multiple advanced degree holding life-impotent Buster from Arrested Development crossed with Aziz Ansari's South Asian hip-hop affectation enthusiast, The Game aficionado, character from Parks and Recreation.

But honestly I don't care if Joel McHale gets the girl because his character is an idiot asshole with no redeeming qualities and the girl is marginally pretty and kind of a bitch who doesn't deserve a second chance from community college. The worst offense of Community is not being an unfunny comedy.

The worst offense is un-winkingly making fun of the idea of actual community college. Sure the funny stereotypical things the 'dean' says at the beginning are funny and largely true - that people at community college face obstacles and much of them are self-inflicted. But what Community has no appreciation for is the vast majority of 'community' students that have overcome real obstacles - from financial, to learning disabilities, to addiction, to abuse, to lack of self-confidence.

At community college I drank cough syrup recreationally. I protested wars and held symposiums. I saw complete idiots learn and improve their station in life, I met Harry CHapin's daughter and I got arrested several times (unrelated). I looked in to completing my degree in Nepal because I thought if I opposed the Maoists the King would sponser me. But what is more is that I learned more valuable information in two years of community college than I did in three 1/2 years of university undergraduate study (ask).

The reason why is that half of community college teachers are glorified high school teachers, but the other half are people that are so in love with their subject that normal egoist concerns don't factor. Their life is imparting their wisdom to you, not attending conferences, networking, authoring, researching and publishing. And due to the small class sizes they are able to do so at extraordinary rates. Some of the most influential people in my life have been community college teachers.

Admittedly one of them wears the same home-spun blouse everyday and professes he owns the largest anarchist library in the Midwest, and the other, while older than my grandfather, is currently dating an attractive young girl many years younger than I. But they both made it clear to me that I could matter as much as anybody, and that was a much more valuable lesson than anything else outside of the specific jurisdiction of the Rome Treaty of the International Criminal Court.

In McHale's community I felt like the whole time they were condemning the majority of Americans (who don't attain a four-year university degree)to an existence that is somehow inferior and unworthy. That's not what I look for in a comedy. I look to comedy to feel better about everything, not to feel better about my asshole elitist self.

25 comments:

  1. Here's my Rank of NBC Thursday Night:
    1. Parks and Recreation
    Look, It was a continuation perfectly of what we were left with. I loved it as I loved the first season. I am one of those people that doens't get why 'every album' has to be different. The widely panned Strokes second album is one of my favorites of all time. I loved their first album so much and to me they took that sound and improved it by 15%. TO my favorite rock critics that's a sin. I don't get it. I like Pearl Jam's Vs. as much as Ten. Now you may dismiss me simply by saying (well, you like Pearl Jam) but if you are capable of appreciating Pearl Jam you will understand that they got flack for 'not growing enough' from their first to their second album. But their career is not a movie. Movie characters are supposed to change. Rock bands are supposed to come up with stuff that sounds good. And sitcoms aren't supposed to make me feel like they are dumber than the people that didn't even make it into the community college I once attended.

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  2. I forgot to rank the other shows I was on such a tangent. 2. The Office - it was kind of suspect the first 2.3rds and then the last part made me laugh out loud several times, maybe I was just rooting for them. To be fair I was rooting for Community as much as anything - I love The Soup and Joel McHale and I thought Chevy Chase could be transformative in a sitcom (even though I had seen Cops and Robbersons). 3. Was SNL which was funny but still kind of weird and not as good as TDS/Colbert. And of course 4th was Community.

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  3. Leno doesn't deserve mention...

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  4. I thought Community was pretty good for a pilot. It wasn't as nearly good as the Office or Parks and Recreation, but it has promise. I didn't watch the SNL show because I don't want to see fake news.

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  5. Two things: Woah, avatars? Also, I haven't read this yet, but I'm about to. Then I'll comment again.

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  6. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't 'Two and a Half Men', it was moderately funny, but I was expecting so much more.

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  7. I'm not sure but it seems you meant to write your second comment first...

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  8. No, I wrote the first one without reading the article.

    Now I have read it and will comment again:

    I agree with you on most of your main points like Joel McHale's character was an asshole and the writers are probably assholes who look down on community college. I disagree that it was unfunny. It wasn't hilarious, but it had a few laughs and could be good eventually.

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  9. I know exactly what professors you are talking about!! BHC was rocking Dr Booth is my teacher for life!

    Community College is a great experience and I am sick of people shitting all over it.

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  10. Exactly, according to 'Co.' our friend Gary is a laughable has-been, when in reality, even as much as I like his work on The Soup, Joel McHale hasn't really amounted to much. Maybe if Chevy Chase was the one playing the self-confident asshole (which he is in kind of a weird hippy way) it would work much better. It's just that Joel McHale is a smug asshole to begin with and doesn't earn any sympathy points from us by portraying his real-life character on a TV sitcom.

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  11. I like Anna Feris. She was great in Smiley Face.

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  12. Exactly Dr. Booth is in my top three best life-teachers. Big-time lecturers at major universities simply don't care about people the way they do. I was lucky in that I met a few grad student student-teachers that fit that bill but honestly the Ph.D. lecturers had a lot more important things to do than to deign to discuss my ideas. Now, that is not how it is in Australia, but I don't want to digress.

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  13. Jesus Jake, yes she was great in a lot of movies, like Lost In Translation which is one of my favorite movies of all time, but she was still in all four 'Scary Movies' and she was also in 'The Hot Chick' with The Wayans Brothers which I personally walked out of the theater with YOU! So stop trying to contradict me everywhere you can of.

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  14. The Hot Chick was with Rob Schneider and that was awful. I didn't even know she was in it. The Wayans Bros. are horrible.

    One final thought on Community from me. Why did Chevy Chase only get like 4 minutes of screen time? I thought he was going to be the star and Joel Mchale was the supporting actor. Maybe the focus will shift to Chevy after a few episodes.

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  15. I would be down with that. Chevy was very funny. And there was some promise. I think I just expected too much. I am definitely watching it next week, but I can't guarantee beyond that.

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  16. I had to work so I am holding out judgment, but I was afraid it was going to hing a lot of the jokes on "boy isn't community college lame and for people who suck at life!?!?".

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  17. Yea, and it was almost exclusively that. And I did not expect it, mainly because so many funnier shows could be made out of it. But the base idea won out and I don't see it going very far unless it sheds that anti-cc facade and evolves into something most people (or at last most people who aren't douche bags) can relate to.

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  18. At the end they at least made a point of saying that you still have to work hard to pass your classes.

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  19. I just watched it and thought it was really really funny, though I can understand why you'd be pissed at the cheap shots at community college.

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  20. You have to read this review only as entertainment. This is not my case against Community. I really liked the show too. I just like finding ways to criticize things that are really good. There's no point in criticizing things that aren't. I like criticizing things that I like because it's kind of like how I used to memorize basketball statistics or how I like to list off foreign capitals - I am obsessive and it lets me revel in minutae of things I like; basketball, geography and comedy. And unfortunately it's not as easy to cleverly give praise as it is to criticize. What is more unfortunate, as evidenced, is that it may not have been as easy to make clever criticisms as I thought... So, yes I was just being lazy. Maybe I will watch it again tonight and write a different review.

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  21. I thoroughly enjoyed that Bub. Whether or not I thoroughly enjoy the show is pending.

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  22. And now Bub loves Community, which is one of the best shows on TV currently.

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  23. What Bub left out is his impressive lobbying effort for Thursday night's other show later in that year: the Marriage Ref. He is the reason it is coming back for another round.

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