Community has really been coming into its own this year, and it's clearly become one of the most consistently sharp and well-written comedies on TV.
It's always ambitious, using things like bottle episodes and animated musical episodes in only its second season. And it makes a great ensemble cast work despite the inclusion of Chevy Chase, a star who had the potential to tower over the rest of the show.
Community began its first season looking pretty formulaic -- it seemed to be heading in the direction of a standard two-lead romantic sitcom, with the early plotlines of Joel McHale's Jeff eagerly chasing Gillian Jacobs' Britta. They also made a lot of jokes about the plight of all of the characters attending a community college. While that's part of the inherent humor of the show, it did feel cheap at times.
This season is completely different. The show has found its sweet spot of character-related humor, supported by an excellent ensemble cast. This is certainly a show for which the viewer would benefit from having watched all of it, because the characters are designed so wonderfully and so much of the humor is based in knowing them all so well. When the great writing is combined with the great characters, that makes almost every line a laugh-out-loud moment.
I have great hopes for Community. It's on a roll right now and as the characters grow the show can only get better. But for now, it was without a doubt the best show of 2010.
Video: Best TV Shows 2010: Community
Check out the episode entitled "Mixology Certification" in full from Hulu, while available:
Great job on this Reuben!
I do have to disagree just a little on Community circa Season One -- I thought it was a special show from the outset. Definitely it has grown since then, but the first season did much to establish the characters and even ground them in ways that allows the second season to take off in wilder and more radical directions.
If anything I'm a little concerned that the show may go too far in the direction of making every episode a mega/meta-parody episode (that said, many of them continue to be brilliant) and lose sight of its relative roots as a comedy about a "community" of eccentric characters attending community college.
Well I do agree with you on season 1. I didn't mean to put it down, because its set-up of the characters was certainly valuable, but now that they're done with that, season 2 I think is funnier from line to line.
I also think that sometimes the show gets too meta. That was actually my problem with the beginning of this season, which I thought had a few bad episodes. Of course I tried to avoid criticizing the show in this piece, but that would be my biggest problem with show if I had to pick one. There's also some ripple effect with the meta-ness - Abed's always been the character associated with that, and there have been a lot of episodes very centered around him, which I think can detract from the ensemble as a whole.