Christmas Christmas me so merry!
This show is crack. I just found out about the show and in three days I’m all caught up.
The episode with the alternate timelines is one of the best. Really shows the team dynamic. Hope something comes out of the evil timeline.
whats regionals?!
some good save community clips.
“if community was real, wouldnt you think nbc would show promo’s for it?”
Alright… I finally decided to delve into this show. Already got seasons 1 and 2 ready to go. So far, I’m loving what I’m seeing. Quite a few LOL moments. Haven’t watched a show that got more than a smile out of me.
/more news at 11
Ok, it’s almost the last day of the year, so I am going to reveal my top 5 favorite episodes of 2011. The only qualifying factor is they had to originally air in 2011, which means Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas misses out by a few weeks.
- Advanced Gay - This was a hard one to choose, but in the end, Pierce’s father wins it. Plus Spaceman paninis and black Hitler.
- Paradigms of Human Memory - A clip show with clips of episodes that never happened. Genius and meta on so many levels.
- Regional Holiday Music - Annie, nuff said.
- Advanced Dungeons and Dragons - Probably the best episode of season 2, and second overall for the show, just behind…
- Remedial Chaos Theory - One of the most ambitious episodes of television ever. It was a brilliant feat of acting, writing, directing and editing. It proves why Community is probably the most original show on TV, their ability to take risks and exploit the format of television.
Honorable Mentions: Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps, Paintball 2 parter
2 Episodes that would make the list last year: Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas, Epidemiology
Despite how innocuous it is when you think about it, I’m a smidge surprised that Annie singing segment made it onto network TV.
I loved the paintball 2-parter, along with everything in that list. Hope this show doesn’t start to suck like so many other shows. It’s one of the freshest comedies I’ve seen.
This is a post I just put up on my blog, but I thought I’d share it here.
Top 10 Community Episodes
As I have some time to write this morning, I thought I’d give my top ten favorite Community episodes. As of this writing, we are on season 3, episode 10, giving me 59 episodes to pick from. I based my choices both on the overall comedic quality of the episodes as well as my own personal enjoyment of the episode.
10.) Comparative Religion (S1, E12) **
After making this list, I realized that all 3 Christmas episodes make my top 10. This is one of those episodes I didn’t like much the first time I saw it, but it grew on me heavily the more I watched it. What put this on the list was Anthony Michael Hall as well as Forest Whitacker face. This episode just has a ton of quoatables in it, and that’s why it ultimately made my list.
9.) Advanced Gay (S3, E6)
Pierce’s dad, do I need to say more? Ok, I will. First off, this episode could make the list simply for Troy’s B story. Spaceman paninis and Black Hitler. That alone could make this episode make my list, but add to it super racist Cornelius Hawthorne, Abed doing his Troy impression, a priest telling Britta she’s “The worst” and the endless string of gay comments by Pierce at the beginning, and you have a winner.
8.) Debate 109 (S1, E9)
This is another episode that didn’t really stick with me until later viewings. It’s an important episode in the overall story of Community as it is the first time we see the Jeff/Annie relationship start to grow. However, this is not why it made the list. It made the list because of “Zero for Winger!” Ok, not just for that, but that single line has been an often repeated line in our household. I could be wrong, but I believe it is also one of the first episodes where we see the group split off and do separate stories.
7.) Modern Warfare (S1, E23), A Fistfull of Paintballs (S2, E23), For a Few Paintballs More (S2, E24)
Who’s a dirty cheater? I am! I put 3 episodes in one! Seriously though, I couldn’t break these episodes up and judge them individually. They all contain amazing references to their individual movie genres (war movies, westerns and Star Wars). **As a movie fanatic, I greatly appreciate the episodes that play nods to different movie genre’s and archetypes. I think these three definitely exemplify this as well as being 3 very fun episodes to watch. Also, how can you top Chang in Modern Warfare playing his nod to John Woo movies?
6.) Physical Education (S1, E17)
This is the first episode of Community that I watched twice. It is the first one to make I totally fell in love with. It also contains one of the greatest Chang lines ever “Ugh, you’re the worst.” Among my friends, we probably quote this line more than any other from Community. It also became the running joke for Britta. Aside from one amazing line, it has Britta’s pronunciation of the word bagel, Abed’s vampire and the epic game of strip pool. To this day, it is still one of my favorite episodes of Community.
5.) Paradigms of Human Memory (S2, E21)
Here we are, into the top five. These are all episodes that define Community as one of the most original and bold shows on TV. They represent why Community is so good and how it is a TV lover’s show. Paradigms is a clip show. That’s something you see regularly on TV shows, but this one took a new spin on it. It is a clip show of episodes that never happened. They recall things we only get small pieces of. How amazing and meta is that?! Dan Harmon is a mad genius and this episode displays that brilliantly.
4.) Regional Holiday Music (S3, E10)
The newest episode on my list, and as of this writing, the newest episode of Community overall. That should point to how good this episode was, that given the least amount of time to digest it, it still makes not only the top 10, but the top 5. I am a former watcher of the show Glee and I don’t have good feelings about that. However, thanks to that dark time in my watching history, I was able to fully appreciate this brilliant stab at that show. From the constant references to the nebulous “regionals” to the nonsensical musical interludes to the “boyishly good looking” music teacher, it captures Glee perfectly. Also, Annie’s song, which brings up the real brilliance of this episode, the music. The songs are perfect representations of both the personalities of the characters as well as brilliantly mocking the music of Glee.
3.) Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (S2, E14)
Top 3. The 3 best episodes and man do they fit the qualifications. It came down to marginal points between the 3, however, I think the order is more than correct. AD&D did so many things right. First off, it played Pierce as such a villain, you want to kill him at one point. He is pure evil, the ultimate bad guy. It must have been interesting for Chevy to play that character. I don’t imagine he was happy when he got the script, based on what I know of Chevy, but he played it with such evil brilliance. It is probably his best performance to date on the show. Another point about this episode is how it handled AD&D. Most shows play it up as a joke, but instead, it was the underlying plot motivation, it wasn’t the butt of a joke. It facilitated the jokes, but it was never outright mocked. Also, you have the well pantomimed sex scene between Annie’s character and Abed’s NPC.
2.) Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas (S2, E11)
Here we are, the best Christmas episode and the second best episode of Community. This is another one of the prime examples of why this show is just better than most things on TV. They made a stop motion episode, but did it in a way that it still works within the reality they have created for this show. It isn’t a stand alone episode they made simply to make, it explain why everything is stop motion instead of hoping the audience doesn’t question it. Much like Regional Holiday Music, you can’t talk about this one without talking about the music. From Abed’s opening holiday take on the Community opening song to the sad Brittabot song to the final number, everything is just perfect. Also, they commented on something I’ve always thought, how good food looks in stop motion.
1.) Remedial Chaos Theory (S3, E4)
This was the least difficult choice I made on this entire list. I may have been somewhat cavalier with my placement of the episodes prior to the top tree, but this one was never a question. This is not only the best episode of Community, it is the best episode of television in 2011, as well as one of the best episodes of any television episode I’ve ever seen. It’s up there with Scrub’s episode “My Screw Up.” It will stick with me both as a great episode of TV as well as a brilliant feat of television making. This episode took a culmination of writing, acting, directing and editing that most TV shows will never explore. As a writer myself, I am in awe of this episode. It took such a great understanding of the characters and how those characters interact with each other to pull off. I’d LOVE to see the story boarding that went into this episode, the notes it took to fully explore the idea of seven different time lines. I don’t think this show can ever top this episode and I don’t know if I want it to. If I ever make a list of the greatest TV episodes of all time, this one will probably make it. The more I watch it, the more I am in awe of it. I bow down to Dan Harmon and everyone who worked on this episode. I only hope to be able to write like that one day.
I loved the “fake” clip show ep too. I had watched all of Community up until then and was wondering where I missed these clips until I “got it” halfway into the ep.
Never watched a single ep of community till Nov of last year. I’m all caught up and I never thought a basic cable comedy could be that good. Gets me so angry that the show could be cancelled. If it does get cancelled, I hope it gets another season on Netflix just like Arrested Development.
Rewatching the whole series through episode one. It’s funny, how much of the show’s later personality showed itself in fits and starts even back in the pilot.
same here. took me a bit I think the 3rd clip or so then it clicked for me, and I immediately thought it was genius.
I love going back and rewatching a show from the beginning to see how it has evolved…the thing with Community is that the writers became more and more confident with taking risks as they evolved…this is why you will see more late season 2 and season 3 shows closer to the top of my list.
So, somehow I forgot Epidemiology on my list, I will revise as soon as I’m sober.
I need to kidnap Alison Brie 
There are too many good episodes to pick one and say “This is the best”
I enjoyed the concept of the fake clip show the most though. That blew my mind.
that’s my top 3 too. i don’t know shit about d&d but the writing is undeniable. abed’s xmas is smart, sweet and sad; plus they shit on Lost. the parallel timelines best represents community imo. dinner w/ andre ep. was really great too.
the creator said season 1 was just him after that he got other writers involved.
Dan Harmon is fucking awesome. Not only did he create one of my favorite TV shows ever, he’s a huge video game nerd. He’s been on the Indoor Kids podcast twice now, once geeking out about Skyrim the whole time. Community is a show I’d heavily recommend getting on DVD. Every single episode has commentary. The Russo brothers and Dan Harmon take up a lot of the Commentaries, and they talk about how they made the episode. It’s great insight. Chevy is the only bummer, he sucks at commentary.
Edit: I said I would revise the list to include Epidemiology, but instead, I’ll just add my review here:
Tied 6 - Epidemiology (S2, E6): I loved this episode from the very first time I saw it. It has since grown on me even more. The fact that you have (once again) a completely unbelievable premise to work within the reality of the show, but it still works. It was an amazing nod to zombie films. Annie getting pulled through the window is classic zombie flick stuff. Also, c’mon…Abba as the soundtrack to a zombie story? Genius. (Ironically, if you listen to the commentary, Abba was added in post.)
Community and Breaking Bad are the only shows I desperately wish I could get on DVD, but have no spare money to do so.
Are commentaries on every Community episode for both Season 1 and 2’s dvd sets?