Top 10 reasons why Community is my favorite comedy series of all time

Greetings, reader!

Last month marked the 10-year anniversary of my all-time favorite sitcom, Community, airing its final episode. Here are the top 10 reasons for why I love this utterly amazing masterpiece of television so much.

Here are my honorable mentions:

- Consistency (even the least good episodes make for an abundance of laughs)

- The abundance of unserious hijinks and shenanigans that always inspire me to not take life too seriously

- The casting was so f**king ridiculously on point (main and supporting cast alike)

- The genius long-term storytelling (especially in season 3)

- The rampant pop culture references and satire are very satisfying for my nerd brain.

10. Ping-pong dialogue

The banter in this show f**king rules. I'm not alone with this opinion - it's not just the fans, but the cast itself as well. When the Community cast reunited for a Zoom table read of a classic episode during Covid, they reminisced on what a good time they had shooting the series - and pretty much everyone singled out showrunner Dan Harmon's "ping-pong dialogue" as one of the big reasons for the show's success and acclaim.

Whether it's two people arguing (especially if it's Jeff (Joel McHale) and Britta (Gillian Jacobs)), or a big group conversation, or any other variation, the rapid-tempo dialogue is always delightfully filled with clever zingers, one-ups and comebacks. It's a big part of the show's signature feel.

9. Ludwig Göransson's pitch-perfect score

I'd like to rank this higher, but there's just so much that I love about Community! But, yeah - you may know Ludwig Göransson from his insanely masterful work as a producer/instrumentalist/co-composer in Childish Gambino's music, or for his Oscar-winning scores for Black Panther and Oppenheimer. Those are all really good, but for me, he'll still always be the guy who made the Community soundtrack first and foremost.

The little bits and pieces of music that play at the beginnings of episodes, interludes between scenes and in the background during a dramatic speech or other memorable moment, are massively nostalgic for me, holding great sentimental value. Göransson went beyond that, however, as he really understood the assignment for the multifaceted needs of the show.

Whenever Community would do a thematic concept episode (more on those later), he'd come up with the perfectly genre-appropriate score for just that episode, whether it be action thriller, spaghetti western, video game music or anything else. Not to mention the several songs and mini-songs that are a part of the fictional world - when re-watching, you realize how about every other episode features a moment where a song starts to blast as part of a scene, and instead of it being a pre-existing song, it's something that Göransson composed and arranged just for that fleeting moment to be extra perfect.

8. A series for nerds, by nerds

I'll try my best not to turn this into a rant about The Big Bang Theory.

So, anyways, here's my problem with The Big Bang Theory: while the show is decent sitcom entertainment and has its moments, it always rubbed me the wrong way how it was marketed as the show for nerds and nerd culture - and then about 93% of the jokes are at the expense of nerds, based on assumptions like "Haha, isn't it funny how all these nerds are pathetic losers who have miserable love lives and get made fun of, haha, isn't it funny how they got beat up in school", while also enforcing negative stereotypes like all male nerds being misogynistic creeps, et cetera. As a young nerd, I was excited to hear there was a series supposedly for nerds, but felt disappointed upon realizing that the show often felt like an additional way for society to laugh at people like me than something actually for people like me.

And that's one of reasons why it meant so much when I discovered Community.

Not only is showrunner Dan Harmon a big nerd himself, but he realizes what a cool thing being a nerd can be, therefore making his series f**king empowering for our kind. Just think about the main cast - while all of the main characters are flawed, the ones who are the most flawed are the ones representing various social norms and mainstreams - the socially skilled Jeff, the rich white guy Pierce, the Christian housewife Shirley et cetera. And the two least flawed main characters, the ones who spend a majority of their screentime being likable and often saving the day by being good friends to each other and the characters around them, are the two huge nerds Troy and Abed.

Dan Harmon's genuine love for nerd culture can be seen and felt throughout the series, whether it be in the clever ways in which the series references various films and shows, in the moments showcasing the cozy lifestyle of the nerd characters, and just the whole general vibe. Community is the safe space for nerds that The Big Bang Theory wishes it was.

7. Jokes on top of jokes (on top of jokes)

Community already became my all-time favorite sitcom during my first time watching it start to finish. As if my opinion needed more backing, I was delighted to find out that it has some of the most insane re-watch value in any media - upon watching it for the second, third, fourth, even fifth and sixth times, I kept running into jokes I had missed during previous viewings!

Of course, it's not only that - even the jokes you catch are likely to make you laugh out loud upon re-watching, as they're simply so good. But I love it how there are just so many layers of gems in the show's humor - whether it's an effect of the ping-pong dialogue (jokes often come at such a rapid pace that you'll miss one or two when laughing at / processing the one you just got), jokes so subtle that they'll easily evade you the first few times (Frankie's IT lady line in season 6 took me forever) or clever background details that feel made for multiple-time viewers (there are several examples, but you can't really beat the one season 2 episode where an entire Abed subplot takes place exclusively in the background of various shots where the first-time viewer's gaze is bound to be on the forefront).

Every Community episode feels like an endless treasure trove of jokes happening on multiple levels, and you can always laugh at the old classics while discovering new ones in the process.

6. It taught me a lot about life

I can honestly say that I consider myself to be a better person thanks to Community, and it's quite something that a TV series can leave that sort of mark. But yeah - even though many of the episodes don't have particular lessons to them, and some episodes contain poorly aged sentiments that one might get the wrong takeaway from, that doesn't change the fact that at their best, the themes of Community are the kind of stuff that this society of ours needs more of. Themes of personal growth, forgiveness, friendship, the effects that one's kindness can have on others, and, well, community itself - they're explored a lot, and I have taken in my share of lessons.

Troy and Abed's friendship taught me a lot about friends at a time when I didn't have many, and that really helped me later in life. Jeff Winger's character arch often serves as a reminder that people can grow when met with openness and empathy instead of immediate judgment. Many of the more hijinks-filled episodes remind not to take life too seriously, and the aforementioned nerd elements often feel like an empowering reminder that it's okay to be your weird self.

5. The meta of it all

I've loved meta humor and meta storytelling for as long as I can remember (no, really, I was like 4 or 5 when I amused my dad by explaining that the imaginary characters in my imaginary worlds know that they're imaginary). And without taking anything away from the likes of Deadpool or Rick and Morty, I dare say that no piece of media has perfected the art of meta as well as Community.

Sometimes, it's what people refer to as breaking the 2nd or 3rd wall - lines and moments so subtly self-referential that you barely catch them, like the talk of moving on from soapy relationship drama into high-stakes escapades in the new semester during the season 2 premiere, Abed pointing out that sequels are a bad idea during the show's second paintball episode, or the several subtle references to Troy's imminent departure in the season 5 premiere. Sometimes, it's traditional 4th-wall-breaking, like Abed saying cheesily sentimental lines to "create a finale vibe" in the season 1 finale, Abed looking into the camera after saying "We'll definitely be back next year. If not, it'll be because an asteroid has destroyed all of human civilization - and that's canon" in the season 5 finale, or season 6 opening with a montage to the backdrop of Dean Pelton making an announcement that Abed wrote for him "to catch everyone up".

And sometimes, it's the kind of next-level genius shit that could be referred to as breaking the fifth wall due to its extra layers, such as the opening titles disrupting the rhythm of the line "I don't want to throw things off their natural rhythm" mid-sentence in that one episode, or the show's series finale largely consisting of every major character imagining their own perfect "season 7". All of the show's meta material, from the clever individual jokes to the episodes entirely based on a particular aspect of the series on a reality-breaking level, is gold for viewers like me.

4. The utterly cozy re-watch value

In addition to all its unconventional extra layers, Community also takes the time to do what a sitcom is conventionally supposed to do - for me at least, it's just the ultimate comfort show. Greendale Community College feels like a fictional home to me, and just the perfect place to escape to every now and then when reality feels like a bit much. I love the show's atmosphere, and how safe and amiable the general vibe is. This ties into many elements, such as the likability of the characters, the adorable pieces of music by Ludwig Göransson, and the show's signature humor - in addition to many other kinds of jokes, a big chunk of the humor is the kind that paints Greendale as a zany, chaotic but ultimately lovable place, one you really come to care about.

A great example is the original blanket fort storyline in season 2's Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design - it's not just that there's a hilarious subplot about Troy and Abed building a campus-wide blanket fort, but that they take time to demonstrate the project's out-of-hand enormity with lines and scenes that reveal the fort to have a Turkish District, a Latvian Independence Day Parade ("Don't look at me, they had the proper permits", says Troy) et cetera. Moments like that are pure gold, really giving the show's milieu a distinct personality that feels utterly comforting amidst all the chaos.

3. The concept episodes go hard

One of the things that Community is known best for is its conceptual and creative gimmick episodes. And for good reason - many shows have had concept episodes, but at least as far as sitcoms go, this is the series that perfected the type. The premises alone for the concept episodes are pretty great, but it always goes beyond that - the execution is most often flawless, and there's almost always some deeper meaning or lesson behind the wacky gimmick, instead of just being wild and out there for the sake of it. Here are just some of my favorite examples:

- Season 1's Contemporary American Poultry is about the study group taking hold of the cafeteria's chicken finger business, and it's done in the style of a mafia movie. When contrasted with movie-parodying episodes from other sitcoms, the level of pop culture knowledge and thought put into this is abundantly clear: it would be easy to coast off The Godfather and Goodfellas with a few throwaway lines and a song people associate with the soundtrack, but Community goes so very much beyond that. The cinematography, dialogue, character dynamics and many other little touches make the episode feel like genuine Scorsese. Harmon also finds the time to utilize the premise for character development, as the mafia dynamics ultimately work wonders for both Jeff and Abed’s character archs and their well-written relationship.

- For season 1’s Modern Warfare, a.k.a. the show’s first paintball episode, they got actual Hollywood blockbuster action director Justin Lin to direct. This makes sure that the style feels like a genuine action flick, and there are seamless references to tens and tens of iconic action flicks in the episode (spoofing an entire genre like this is much harder to do than spoofing an individual film, but much more impressive when pulled off).

- Season 2's Christmas episode is all in stop-motion animation, thus paying tribute to classics like the original Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. While a lot of it is wacky fun, the emotional core of the episode always moves me to tears - little by little, it's revealed that Abed is having an emotional breakdown, and imagining everything as stop-motion is his way of coping. When we find out the root cause of the breakdown, the episode becomes utterly heartbreaking (and ultimately uplifting), making the central gimmick hit hard on so many levels (while still feeling fun simultaneously).

Those are just a few choice examples out of many. I could (and often do) go on and on about the wildly imaginative premise of the timeline-hopping Remedial Chaos Theory, the contrast of Pillows and Blankets being hilarious thanks to the civil war documentary style but also heart-wrenching thanks to the character relationship conflict in the center of the story, the utmost degree of fun that is had at the expense of video game tropes in Digital Estate Planning, the pitch-perfect heist caper parody in The First Chang Dynasty, the genius double meaning in the oft-misunderstood season 4 finale Advanced Introduction to Finality, Troy getting a spectacular send-off with a deep layer behind the gimmick in Geothermal Escapism, and so much more.

2. Abed Nadir means a lot to me

This one is hard to put to words. I'm the kind of fiction consumer who really lives the fiction they're consuming, so I've had many 'emotional support characters' who I've grown invested in or felt related to over the years - but no one holds a candle to Abed.

From his very first moments in the pilot episode the first time 'round, I felt seen. Obviously, Abed and I aren't alike in nearly every way (honestly, it'd be spooky and unsettling as hell if there was TV character that had all of my personality traits). But something about the character has always spoken to me, on a level I can't quite describe, but feel deep in my bones.

Now, in many ways, Abed is a better human than me - but that has always served as a sort of motivation, to be more like him (at least in some ways). When Jeff says "Abed is a shaman - you ask him to pass the salt, he hands you a bowl of soup, because you know what, soup is better! Abed is better!", I always think that that's the guy I want to be in life. Or in season 1's Home Economics, when Jeff is bewildered by Abed's unassuming way of looking at life, and how easily he can be content - I've learned so f**king much from that storyline in that episode, and still see it as a sort of guiding post for my own attitude in life.

It's pretty f**king funny how I watched the whole series through as a teen without thinking that the character is definitely on the autism spectrum - I mean, there are a few lines that straight-up say that, but I must've missed or misunderstood them during my first viewing. Because when I heard the general consensus that the character is considered one of the best (and most obvious) autism representations in TV, it was news to me. I remember being confused - "then how come I feel such a strong sense of relation and belonging and feeling seen in the character, even though I'm not autistic?". Haha. Fast-forward a few years, a lot of self-reflection, and suddenly it all makes sense (now, I still don't have a diagnosis, but I mean, I'm pretty f**king sure. My blog post just a few weeks from now is a ranking of every movie I have ever seen, that I've worked over half a year on, and I just don't think that's something a neurotypical person would ever do).

But, yeah. Abed means more to me than any other fictional character. In the combination of how Dan Harmon wrote him and how the utterly brilliant Danny Pudi plays the role, I always felt that someone very much like me is being represented in this show - and I can't tell you how much that meant to a teenage Veikko, being bullied and feeling alone in junior high school. This show and this character did a lot of heavy lifting to help me through those tough times, and when times got better and I found my own community, I knew how be a part of it because Abed had taught me so much about friendship, growth and navigating one's social life while being a weird autistic nerd who most people don't seem to get.

Also, Troy and Abed's friendship hits extra hard because I see so much of me and my best friend Atte in them (although which one is Troy and which one is Abed in our dynamic very much depends on the situation). And there are so many little things more that I could discuss - the character's way of often seeing real life as a TV show or a movie because the narrative structure makes more sense to him than the sometimes discomforting chaos of reality, or the character's creative ambition in creating scenarios and wacky adventures for him and his friends in order to make life more colorful, and so much more. But really, it's about the big picture. Abed Nadir has helped me understand myself better, helped me love and accept myself more, and helped me grow and be a better person for 10 years now, and will probably continue to do so for the rest of my life. If I ever meet Dan Harmon and/or Danny Pudi, I really want to thank them for creating something so special.

1. The emotional core

This feels partially like a combination of many already-discussed elements, but I felt like something was missing unless I ranked it separately. It's probably something that many viewers, especially emotionally inclined ones like myself, love best about whatever their #1 favorite series is - for me, Community makes me feel more (and feel bigger) than any other show. Even though it's a silly and often deeply unserious series full of wacky concept episodes - hell, sometimes it's because of that.

The combination of pretty much all the things listed above - the familiar vibes I get from the ping-pong dialogue, the way Ludwig Göransson's music enunciates every scene, how the nerdiness makes the milieu feel like the way I see the world, how excited I get when noticing the layered jokes, the life lessons, the enjoyment I get from all the meta humor, the cozy atmosphere, and my investment in the characters (Abed especially, but who am I kidding - they all feel like family to me) - makes for a whole even greater than the sum of its parts.

And beneath all the layers of shenanigans, blink-and-you'll-miss-it jokes, niche references and timelines, there's a raw, vulnerable layer of humanity at the core of it all. Stripped of all the extra geekiness and stylistic touches, Community is, at the end of a day, a series about flawed and broken yet ultimately humane people, who grow and become better versions of themselves via each other. Sure, some character archs work out better than others (man, I love Britta, but they really kind of dropped the ball on her), but at its best, the character development just feels so real that it makes even the craziest high-concept escapades feel relatable and humane. And at the center of that side of the series is the show's best character relationship - no, I'm not talking about Troy and Abed's legendary friendship. I'm talking about Jeff and Abed.

The first real conversation we see in the show's pilot is between Jeff and Abed. The exchange ends with the dialogue "I see your value now" / "That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me", which is reversed to an amusing yet poetic end in the pilot's final scene (not to mention the clever and ultimately touching callback to it in season 5's Repilot). From thereon out, the show's best and most important character relationship is formed. It's a subtle one, and one that you only fully appreciate after watching the show a few times. So much of both characters' growth happens via each other - Abed is pretty likable to begin with, but learns to recognize some of his flaws and how to better deal with a world that doesn't understand people like him throughout the series, and it's almost always Jeff who ends up getting through to him on that. Jeff has the show's (and the whole sitcom genre's) best character arch, starting out as a shallow, arrogant and utterly selfish asshole, and ends up an infinitely more considerate, likable and mature person while still being the believably same character - and while this happens thanks to all of the major characters, Abed definitely has the biggest influence.

Not too many episodes focus on that character relationship, but the ones that do are f**king special. Their honest, heart-to-heart exchanges toward the end of episodes such as Contemporary American Poultry, Critical Film Studies and Intro to Recycled Cinema have some Oscar-worthy dialogue and acting. Not to mention the several little moments that speak volumes, such as Jeff (despite still being in the very beginning of his asshole-to-okay-guy journey) immediately standing up for Abed when he sees him getting bullied in the cafeteria in the season 1 Christmas episode - as somewhat of a real-life Abed who was used to the real-life Jeff Winger types never sticking up for the little guy, I can't tell you how much that scene always meant to me, making it physically impossible for me to hate Jeff despite the many jerk moments we see from him at his worst. Or, in Physical Education, when everyone else is telling Abed to basically change his personality in order to have a shot with a girl (I can't tell you how much of this I heard from well-intentioned people in my youth, and how much damage it can do) - there's something profound about it being Jeff, out of all people, who calls out the bullshit and encourages Abed to be himself.

The power of this series-defining relationship carries on to many major milestones in the show, such as the under-appreciated season 4 finale I mentioned earlier. Before then, we had seen a few "darkest timeline" episodes, where the sci-fi premise was always used as a metaphor and/or framing device in order to explore Abed's mind - his way of dealing with various crises was to imagine that "Evil Abed" or the "Evil study group" from the darkest timeline are trying to cross over. This appears to be happening in the season 4 finale, until it hits you - the sci-fi scenario we see isn't taking place in Abed's head, but in Jeff's. Because he's scared of leaving Greendale and becoming a lawyer again, and especially of what that might do to all the growth he has experienced in the last four years. This works on so many levels - over the course of four years, Greendale has had such an effect on Jeff, that instead of dealing with his problem in a normal way or any way that the old Jeff would've done, he deals with his personal crisis in the exact way that Abed would - imagining the Evil Study Group from the Darkest Timeline trying to take over. I always shed a tear in the scene where Abed, in Jeff's head, explains what is happening and how cool it is and what he has to do to stop it.

Out of all the moments in the insanely fitting series finale Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television, the one that always gets to me the most is when Jeff drives Abed to the airport and hugs him goodbye, and after the initial hug, embraces him again. No words are spoken, but the two actors make it abundantly clear what the moment means - both individuals have changed so much, for the better, via each other, that they want to thank each other without being able to quite put it to words. A close second is the final tag before the end credits, where Dan Harmon opens up about what the show meant to him in a hilarious yet gripping and heartfelt manner. That really adds a lot to the show's emotional core as well - remembering that the broken, flawed characters trying to be grow in a challenging world were all envisioned and developed by a writer who was broken and flawed himself, and how working on the series was a therapeutic experience for him.

So, all in all, Community is a pretty good series. I highly recommend watching it (and becoming obsessed and basing your entire personality around it and quoting it like 30 times a day to the great delight of your fiancée).

Thank you for reading! Well, we're just two weeks away from The Big One: my 300th post, where I rank all 1000 movies I've seen. Tune in next week for my 299th post, where I amp up the hype by ranking the phases of that passion project based on how fun each step was.