Let’s be honest—those of us who saw NBC’s premiere of “Community” last Thursday probably just planned to round out the hour after the Season 6 opener for “The Office.” But after watching the new series’ pilot, I can’t believe I didn’t expect the show to be so promising all along. Next week, it might just be Michael Scott who’s the warm-up act for Joel McHale (of “The Soup” fame) as the lying, scheming, “guy who’s playing Bejeweled all class on his iPhone,” Jeff Winger.
The setting: Greendale Community College is a thoroughly uninspiring place with a dean who, in the first scene, enumerates all the stereotypical students at his “loser college”—“remedial teens, twenty-something dropouts, middle-aged divorcees, and old people keeping their minds active as they circle the drain of eternity.”
“That’s what you’ve heard,” he says brightly. “However—I wish you luck!”
Losers though they are, the denizens of Greendale may just have proven to be one of the most amusing collections of misfits to fill 30 minutes of television with quick, politically incorrect banter and the occasional strangely sweet moment. Meet—
Jeff, a suspended lawyer who must be smart because he wears a sports coat, has no currently identifiable ethical boundaries, and, because he was “raised on TV,” considers “every black woman over 50 to be a cosmic mentor.” Not to mention, he’s infatuated with
Britta, the blonde Elisabeth Shue look-alike, whose “big thing” is honesty, making any sort of contact with Jeff Winger completely undesirable. He, after all, insists that his silver tongue allows him the ability to make anything right or wrong, if he talks long enough, meaning—“either I’m God, or truth is relative. And in either case, booyah.”
Next we have:
Abed, who insists that his family does not hate Americans, and leaves us with the impression that he needs to cut down on the caffeine—and awkward personal revelations;
Duncan, the very easily manipulated (read: spineless) professor with “a misguided grasp of abbreviations” (example, a text message to his lawyer Jeff: “Con-4-s-8-tion on football field now!!! –Duncan”);
Pierce, the seven-times-divorced moist towelette business owner who can’t seem to help making creepy sexual advances on Shirley, a divorcee who has absolutely no desire to have her face smashed through a jukebox ever again… hypothetically, of course;
And finally Annie and Troy, former high school classmates with a love-indifference relationship, who complete Jeff’s “board-certified” Spanish study group (which, incidentally, doesn’t get any studying done—and, if my predication holds true, never will).
Another prediction: “Community” is only going to get better. The student body might be bizarre, but the characters aren’t too far out to prevent viewers from recognizing at least one person they know (if not themselves) in the dysfunction of a loser college like Greendale.
One word: Booyah.
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Isabela Morales is a History and American Studies student who rabidly reviews indie science fiction at http://thescattering.wordpress.com/