Community

This week I’ve been watching Community.

Simon Pegg sits down for yet another media interview. He’s in town to promote another Mission Impossible movie, executive produced by friend and epidural-denier, Tom Cruise. After answering questions on what it’s like to be Cruise’s rent-a-geek, he’s asked about Spaced, the 90’s sitcom that put him on the path to stardom. In creating Spaced with co-writer Jessica Hynes and director Edgar Wright, Pegg re-wrote the sitcom, packing in more pop-culture references than you could shake a dick at. Re-watching the sitcom this week I noted allusions to The King and I, The Shining and The Terminator in the first episode alone. This cut and paste approach to movie history demonstrated a love for cinema, a love that made for a unique televisual experience. It is no wonder then when Pegg works the media carousel they ask him about Spaced: What became of Tim and Daisy? Will there ever be a third season? Will he revive the fading fortunes of BAFTA winner, Jessica Hynes, and Hollywood director, Edgar Wright, to take back the sitcom crown? No is the answer. He doesn’t need to because another sitcom has beaten him to it.

Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes as their characters Tim and Daisy

Community is the sitcom that Hynes and Pegg never wrote. It invokes Spaced’s way with intertextuality and directorial innovation without ever copying it. Like Spaced, there are zombie horror parodies, spaghetti western pastiches and action movie caricatures; however where Spaced put its coat on the floor and danced around these genres, Community dives straight into them, dedicating whole episodes to these homages, spinning the comforting regularity of sitcom tone and setting on its head.

Community, not wishing to alienate its viewers, starts like many others by playfully conforming to sitcom conventions. Its opening scene involves the hapless Dean introducing the ethos of Community College to his students – only one of his cue cards is missing:

 PELTON: What is Community College? Well, you’ve heard all kinds of things. You’ve heard it’s “loser college” for young people who couldn’t make the cut at a university. It’s “halfway school” for twentysomething dropouts, crawling back to society with unskilled tails between their legs. A tax-funded self esteem workshop for newly divorced housewives piecing together shattered identities, That’s what you’ve heard. However I wish you luck. Wait - Confused, Pelton flips through his cards as the slightly deflated students resume their activity. Pelton calls out to them. PELTON (CONT’D) There was... a middle part of that speech, if you see a card...

As the Dean references each demographic (young people/twentysomething/newly divorced housewives), the camera cuts to the relevant persona, meaning within seconds the viewer has the background information for each character. Troy and Annie are the young people who didn’t make the cut at university; Britta is the university dropout and Shirley is the divorced housewife looking to re-build after a broken marriage. The only three main characters we’re yet to be introduced to is Abed, an autistic case study; Pierce, an OAP of expensive wealth and cheaper taste; and Jeff, a silver-tongued lawyer, forced to re-enrol in college when his golden legal qualifications are exposed as bogus.

All seven characters are brought together when Jeff, ever the opportunist, learns Britta needs help with her Spanish, so invites her to attend a ‘study group’ under the pretext of seducing her. Britta, however, pours cold water on Jeff’s erection by inviting members of her Spanish class to attend; thus the seven characters form the ‘community’ that the show will revolve around.

These characters aren’t remarkable in their construction: they have been seen before in other sitcoms. Abed as autistic has become a popular type off the back of Big Bang Theory’s success; Troy as handsome idiot isn’t a world away from Joey Tribiani; Jeff as the calm wave in a sea of idiots isn’t far removed from George Michael Sr. in Arrested Development. What is different is how the characters acknowledge the types and tropes of sitcoms in their asides to cameras. In one episode Abed is surprised to be paired on screen with Annie explaining: “I figured we were more like Chandler and Phoebe: they never really had stories together.” Each episode often ends like Scrubs with some grandstanding moralising from Jeff, a fact that Abed references in later episodes. For some this kind of self-referential humour could be smug and annoying but for people all to familiar with the conventions of comedy it is fun to have Abed, the meta double agent, destroying the practises from within.

Yes that's Chevy Chase in the top left hand corner. No, that's not a bad thing. He's great in the show.

And what about those movie pastiches then? In a Halloween episode Batman, like a rotisserie bird, is skewered and flamed when Abed clad as the cape crusader comes to the rescue of his friends; later delivering a stream of non-sequiturs ridiculing Nolan’s earnest superhero:

“If I stay, there can be no party. I must be out there in the night, staying vigilant. Whenever a party needs to be saved, I’m there. But sometimes I’m not cause I’m out in the night, staying vigilant. Watching. Lurking. Running. Jumping. Hurtling. Sleeping. No, I can’t sleep. You sleep. I’m awake.”

At other times the pastiches are more loving like the Goodfellas one in ‘Contemporary American Poultry.’ Here, the gang unhappy at the cafeteria selling out of chicken wings orchestrate a plot to get Abed a job there, so he can control the chicken supply and make an empire out of bootleg poultry. Hearing Jeff mimicking the mobster voice-over with his own cut-throat narration is a thing of beauty: “To us lines were for suckers, hacks. Sheep. We were wolves and we had the chicken to prove it.” Show creator, Dan Harmon did the clever thing in playing the comedy straight early, allowing us to be introduced to the group’s quirks and characters; later, with a loyal following secured, he subverts the sitcom, taking his characters out of the commonplace, putting them in the extraordinary, making the show more bold, more daring, as he fits his creations into Dawn of the Dead, Apollo 13 and Goodfellas tributes. In doing this, Harmon does sometimes over-reach himself: jokes are lost to indulgence; character drowned in genre, but even when the show isn’t hitting the high gag quota of Season One, it is still thrilling to see a maverick at play.

And Spaced fans: there’s not just one paintball episode, but three. So while Pegg puts the sitcom on permanent hiatus, why don’t you pick up the remote and give Community a go. Come on, it’s what Tim and Daisy would have wanted.

Community Season 1-5 is available on Netflix