Community (TV series)

Premise

Jeff Winger is disbarred and suspended from his law firm when it is discovered that he lied about possessing a bachelor's degree from Columbia University. This leaves him with no choice but to enroll at Greendale Community College to earn a legitimate degree. Jeff quickly becomes attracted to his activist classmate, Britta Perry, and pretends to run a study group in order to spend time with her.

However, things don't go to plan when she invites Abed Nadir, a pop culture-loving nerd, who brings other classmates along: Shirley Bennett, a highly religious single mother, naïve over-achiever Annie Edison, former high school football star Troy Barnes, and cynical elderly millionaire Pierce Hawthorne. Despite their differences, the group soon become close friends.

While taking select classes together semester after semester, the group members are often roped into helping the college's flamboyant Dean, Craig Pelton, in his schemes to make the school seem more respectable, as well as have to deal with the antics of their unstable teacher (and eventual classmate) Ben Chang.

Cast and characters

The show features an ensemble cast of characters, focusing on the members of a study group and a recurring group of faculty of Greendale Community College, including the dean.

Episodes

Most episodes feature titles designed to sound like the names of college courses such as "Introduction to Film", "Anthropology 101" and "Cooperative Calligraphy".

The first season premiered on September 17, 2009 in the 9:30 pm ET Thursday timeslot. After three episodes, the show was moved to the 8:00 pm ET timeslot. In October 2009, it was announced that the show had been picked up for a full twenty-two episode season.

In January 2010, NBC ordered an additional three episodes for the first season, extending it to 25 episodes. On March 5, 2010, Community was renewed for a second season and premiered on September 23, 2010. On March 17, 2011, NBC renewed Community for a third season. On May 10, 2012, Community was renewed for a fourth season consisting of 13 episodes. On May 10, 2013, the show was renewed for a fifth season. On June 30, 2014, it was announced that the show would be returning for a sixth season of 13 episodes on Yahoo! Screen.

Webisodes

In addition to the regular episodes, NBC produced a series of webisodes. Some focus on the daily life of Dean Pelton and others include a Spanish project, study breaks, and Abed copying his friends' lives and turning them into student films. These webisodes are featured on the front page of the Greendale Community College website on the AV Department page.

On March 2, 2012, it was announced that three animated webisodes would air exclusively on Hulu in lead up to the return of the series on March 15, 2012. Titled Abed's Master Key, the shorts were written by Dave Seger and Tom Kauffman of Channel 101 and animated by Animax Entertainment. In the webisodes, Abed becomes Dean Pelton's assistant and is given a master key to Greendale.

Casting

Dan Harmon emphasized the importance of the cast to making the premise of the comedy work. "Casting was 95 percent of putting the show together," he said in an interview. He had worked with several of the cast members earlier; Joel McHale, John Oliver, and Chevy Chase all had cameo roles in episode 9 of Water and Power, a short film series produced by Harmon for Channel 101. Actor Chevy Chase had long been a favorite of Harmon. Though initially not very partial to sitcoms, Chase was persuaded to take the job by the quality of the show's writing. Harmon saw similarities between Chase and the character he plays on the show. Though Chase has often been ridiculed for his career choices, Harmon believed this role could be redeeming: "What makes Chevy and Pierce heroic is this refusal to stop." Harmon had to warn Chase against playing a "wise-ass" the way he often does in his roles, since the character of Pierce is a rather pathetic figure who is normally the butt of the joke himself.

McHale, known from the E! comedy talk show The Soup, was also (like Chase) impressed by Harmon's writing. He commented that "Dan's script was so head and shoulders above everything else that I was reading." McHale appealed to Harmon because of his likeable quality, which allowed the character to possess certain unsympathetic traits without turning the viewer against him. For the role of Annie, Harmon wanted someone who would resemble Tracy Flick, Reese Witherspoon's character from the 1999 movie Election. Originally the producers were looking for a Latina or Asian Tracy Flick, but could not find any. Instead they ended up casting Alison Brie, known for her role as Trudy Campbell on Mad Men.

Development

Harmon based the premise of Community on his own real-life experiences. In an attempt to save his relationship with his then-girlfriend, he enrolled in Glendale Community College northeast of Los Angeles, where they would take Spanish together. Harmon got involved in a study group and, somewhat against his own instincts, became closely connected to the group of people with whom he had very little in common. "I was in this group with these knuckleheads and I started really liking them," he explains, "even though they had nothing to do with the film industry and I had nothing to gain from them and nothing to offer them." With this as the background, Harmon wrote the show with a main character largely based on himself. He had, like Jeff, been self-centered and independent to the extreme before he realized the value of connecting with other people.

About the creative process behind the writing, Harmon says that he had to write the show as if it were a movie, not a sitcom. Essentially, the process was no different from the earlier work he had done, except for the length and the target demographic that would add value to the importance of its show.

Writing

Each episode of Community is written in accordance with Dan Harmon's template of "story circles" that he developed while at Channel 101. This writing method was continued through the fourth season without him. Harmon rewrites every episode of Community, which helps lend the show his particular voice. Members of the Community writing staff have included Liz Cackowski, Dino Stamatopoulos, Chris McKenna, Megan Ganz, Andy Bobrow, Alex Rubens, Tim Saccardo and Matt Warburton. Additionally, cast member Jim Rash, who won an Academy Award in co-writing the 2011 film The Descendants, wrote a season four episode.

The show is well known for its frequent use of thematic episodes every season, which use cliches and television tropes as single episode concepts that play with suspension of disbelief while maintaining continuity of the plot. An example of a notable thematic episode is Season 3's "Remedial Chaos Theory", where the cast explore seven different parallel realities of the same night, with one key variation being a roll of a single 6-sided die in a game of Yahtzee that Jeff uses to dismiss a member of the group to go get a pizza (the seventh variant being that the die wasn't allowed to roll at all). Frequent episode themes are school-year holidays (Halloween and Christmas being the most frequent), paintball, and various forms of animation.

Filming

Filming the show involved a lot of improvisation, particularly from Chevy Chase. About Chase, Harmon said that he "tends to come up with lines that you can actually end scenes with sometimes." He also mentioned Joel McHale and Donald Glover, the actors who portray Jeff and Troy respectively, as adept improvisers. Apart from a few exterior scenes shot at Los Angeles City College, the show was filmed at the Paramount Studios lot in Hollywood, California during seasons one through five. For season six, the series moved to the CBS Studio Center, and featured exterior scenes from Los Angeles City College for the first time since season two.

Third season

The series was renewed for a third season on March 17, 2011. Filming for the season began on July 25, 2011. Jim Rash, who portrays Dean Pelton, was promoted to a series regular after having a recurring role throughout the first two seasons. Michael K. Williams was cast as the study group's new biology professor, who is described as a deeply intense character. John Goodman appears as a recurring character throughout the season as Vice Dean Laybourne, the head of Greendale's air conditioning repair school, and is a foe for Dean Pelton.

Community premiered its third season on September 22, 2011. On November 14, 2011, NBC announced that they were removing Community from their mid-season schedule, replacing it with the returning series 30 Rock. Fans of the series began a campaign to get the show back on the air using Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook, making hashtags such as #SaveCommunity, #SixSeasonsAndAMovie, and #OccupyNBC trending topics. NBC responded to the backlash by announcing that the network was still planning to film and air the remainder of the 22 planned episodes after the undetermined hiatus, and that the fate of the series would be determined after the planned episodes air.

On December 7, 2011, CollegeHumor released a video titled "Save Greendale (with the cast of Community)" using the cast of Community in-character to promote the series and the school in a PSA-styled video. On December 22, 2011, fans of the series created a flash mob outside of NBC's Rockefeller Center headquarters in New York City to Occupy NBC. The flash mob dressed in Christmas gear, wearing "darkest timeline" goatees, and singing "O' Christmas Troy" from the first season's episode "Comparative Religion" and chanting "Go Greendale, go Greendale, go". On January 6, 2012, NBC entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt announced that Community was not canceled, though he did not mention a return date.

On February 21, 2012, creator Dan Harmon announced via Twitter that the third season would resume on March 15, 2012, in its regular timeslot of Thursdays at 8:00 pm.

Fourth season

Series creator and executive producer Dan Harmon was replaced as showrunner for the series in the fourth season, as writers David Guarascio and Moses Port (co-creators of the short-lived Aliens in America) took over as showrunners and executive producers. Sony Pictures Television, which produces the series with Universal Television, initially said that Harmon would serve as a consulting producer, but Harmon asserted that he was not informed of the deal and would not return in a position without any executive prerogatives. The end of the third season also marked several other departures including executive producers Neil Goldman and Garrett Donovan, writer/producer Chris McKenna and actor/writer Dino Stamatopoulos. Frequent episode directors and executive producers Anthony and Joe Russo also left the show in order to direct Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

In early October 2012, NBC delayed the premiere of the fourth season, which had been scheduled for October 19, 2012, without announcing a new date. On October 30, 2012, NBC announced that the fourth season would premiere on February 7, 2013, returning to its original time slot of Thursdays at 8:00 pm.

On November 21, 2012, it was announced that Chevy Chase left the show by mutual agreement between the actor and network. As a result of timing and the agreement made, Chase's character Pierce is absent for two episodes—he did not appear in the tenth episode (produced as ninth), "Intro to Knots", and the twelfth episode, "Heroic Origins". He also appeared in a voice-only role in the episode "Intro to Felt Surrogacy", which was the final episode produced for the season, and as part of his agreement to leave the show, Chase was required to record all audio for the scenes where his character, alongside the other characters, appeared as a puppet. The season finale, which was filmed out-of-sequence, as it was the eleventh episode produced, marked the final on-screen appearance of Chase as a regular cast member. Chase would appear in a cameo in the premiere of season 5.

Fifth season

On May 10, 2013, the series was renewed for a fifth season. On June 1, 2013, Dan Harmon announced he would return as showrunner for season five, replacing season four showrunners Moses Port and David Guarascio, with former writer Chris McKenna returning as executive producer. On June 10, Sony Television officially confirmed the return of Harmon and McKenna for the fifth season. Dino Stamatopoulos, Rob Schrab and the Russo brothers all returned as well.

However, cast member Donald Glover decided to not return as a full-time cast member for the fifth season, only appearing in the first five of the thirteen episodes. To make up for the absence of Glover and Chase, Jonathan Banks was cast in the fifth season in August 2013 and appeared in 11 of the season's 13 episodes, portraying Buzz Hickey, a criminology professor. Additionally, John Oliver, who played Professor Duncan throughout the first two seasons, reprised his role in season 5 for multiple episodes.

On May 9, 2014, NBC announced that it had canceled Community. For several years prior to its cancellation, fans adopted the slogan "six seasons and a movie", a line from the episode "Paradigms of Human Memory" regarding Abed's hopeful legacy of NBC's short-lived series The Cape. Bids to continue the series were turned down by popular streaming providers like Netflix and Hulu.

Sixth season

On June 30, the day the cast's contracts were due to expire, Yahoo! announced it had ordered a 13-episode sixth season to stream on Yahoo! Screen, including the main cast along with executive producers Dan Harmon, Chris McKenna, Russ Krasnoff, and Gary Foster. Harmon said, "I am very pleased that Community will be returning for its predestined sixth season on Yahoo ... I look forward to bringing our beloved NBC sitcom to a larger audience by moving it online." However, Yvette Nicole Brown dropped out to care for her ailing father, although she made guest appearances in "Ladders" and "Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television". Paget Brewster was cast as consultant Francesca "Frankie" Dart and Keith David was cast as inventor Elroy Patashnik. Filming began for season six on November 17, 2014, and on December 8, 2014, the series celebrated the milestone of 100 episodes. Filming ended on March 27, 2015.

In a June 3, 2015 interview with TV Insider, Dan Harmon explained why season six would likely be the last of the series:

We've exploded into these successful shrapnel. Dr. Ken is now Dr. Ken. Alison has probably got her eye on movies. Gillian is working on a Netflix show. If there was some magical way of guaranteeing that everyone could come back all at once, let's do it. But it would be a lot easier to put together a movie project and get them all on board than to say, "Let's give it one more season!"

No formal cancellation announcement for the show was made at the end of season six. In October 2015, the departure of Yahoo executive Kathy Savitt led Dan Harmon to infer that a seventh season of Community looked less likely to happen. This was in addition to the primary cast's original contract term expiring after the sixth season wrapped. The end of the original contracts would complicate continuing the series from the likely increase in payroll as most of the cast has an increased demand for other projects. In January 2016, Yahoo Screen was written off as a loss for the company, which included the sixth season of Community.

Film

In a June 2014 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Zack Van Amburg of Sony Pictures Television confirmed that a Community film was in the early stages of development. Asked if Sony had plans beyond the sixth season, Amburg said:

There's no way we're not making the movie now! I think once we make the movie, let's look up and decide how much more Community the world wants. I'd be lying if I told you that we have not had some very early and preliminary conversations that are very exciting about what a potential movie could be and who might direct it.

One year later, after the sixth season wrapped, Dan Harmon commented that he wasn't ready to produce a movie at the end of the season:

I told Yahoo, 'I can't think about writing a movie until I miss Community,' ... They wanted to turn around a do a movie immediately, and Yahoo can get it done. They're like the NSA.

In June 2016, during an interview with Larry King Now, Harmon assured that a Community movie "will happen", while expressing uncertainty on how to begin its production.

Critical reception

The show's first season received mostly positive reviews, scoring 69 out of 100 based on 23 critics on Metacritic. David Bushman (Curator, Television) of the Paley Center for Media called Community the best new show of the fall season. Jonah Krakow of IGN gave the first season an 8.5 saying that "Community eventually ramped up and delivered some amazing stories in the second half of the season."

The second season received high critical acclaim, scoring 88 out of 100 based on 4 critics on Metacritic. Emily Nussbaum of New York Magazine and Heather Havrilesky of Salon.com rated Community as the best show of 2010. In The A.V. Club's list of the 25 best television series of 2010, Community ranked second, stating that the best episodes were "Modern Warfare", "Cooperative Calligraphy", and "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas". IGN named Community the best comedy series in both 2010 and 2011.

Acclaim for the show continued in the third season, scoring 81 out of 100 based on 4 critics on Metacritic. It also topped the Metacritic User Poll in the category 'Best Television Show of 2011', receiving 3,478 points. Community placed on several critics top television lists; including ranked second by Paste, fifth by both HitFix and The Huffington Post, first by Hulu and third on TV.com's Top 100 Everything of 2011.

In 2012, Entertainment Weekly listed the show at #15 in the "25 Best Cult TV Shows from the Past 25 Years," with high praise: "The series' affinity for ambitious, high-concept story lines (e.g. few shows are willing to turn over an entire episode to stop-motion animation), meta humor, and constant pop culture allusions has helped it earn the kind of fervent fan following some of its higher-rated comedic competitors must envy." A user poll on Splitsider named "Remedial Chaos Theory" as the best sitcom episode of all time, beating out The Simpsons episode "Marge vs. the Monorail".

Reviews for the fourth season were generally positive, but less enthusiastic than the reception of the first three seasons. It scored 69 out of 100 based on 17 critics on Metacritic. Verne Gay of Newsday stated the show was "still defiantly Community, still good and still uninterested in adding new viewers." On the other hand, Hitfix's Alan Sepinwall wrote, "It feels like [Moses] Port, [David] Guarascio and the other writers decided to reverse-engineer the [Dan] Harmon version of Community, but couldn't quite manage without the missing ingredient of Harmon himself." Mike Hale of The New York Times has stated that the series "has been dumbed down, its humor broadened past recognition, and the two episodes provided for review...have fewer laughs between them than a single good scene from the old Community."

The fifth season received critical acclaim, scoring an 80 out of 100 based on 15 reviews on Metacritic. Many critics cited the return of series creator Dan Harmon as a strength. Verne Gay from Newsday said of the season that it was "about as good a Community restart as anyone could have possibly hoped for."

The sixth season continued to receive positive reviews, scoring a 78 out of 100 based on 12 reviews on Metacritic, and scoring an 87% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus being, "Despite cast and broadcast changes, Community manages to remain at the top of its quirky class." Amy Amatangelo of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Everything fans loved about Community remains [...] the show has seamlessly transferred to an online venue." The Los Angeles Times' Robert Lloyd considered "something special" about the season, commenting that it "lives in consciousness of its own construction in a kind of existential but also dramatically meaningful way." The New York Times's Mike Hale felt Harmon responsible "for turning countercultural whimsicality into affecting, fast-paced comedy" in the season. Time's James Poniewozik felt it the same show in humor and quality, though he noted an absent "sense of mission regarding the characters. [...] Maybe it’s enough for Community, free of the ratings pressures of NBC, to live its second life free to be weird and playful and experimental."

Awards and nominations

In 2009, the series received a nomination for Favorite New TV Comedy at the 36th People's Choice Awards.

In 2010, at the 41st NAACP Image Awards, Justin Lin received a nomination for Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series for "Introduction to Statistics". At the 2010 Teen Choice Awards, the series received a nomination for Breakout Show and Ken Jeong was nominated for Breakout Star Male. For Entertainment Weekly's 3rd Ewwy Awards, it was nominated for Best Comedy Series, Joel McHale was nominated for Best Lead Actor in a Comedy and Danny Pudi was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy.

In 2011, Betty White received a nomination for Favorite TV Guest Star at the 37th People's Choice Awards. The series received a nomination for Best Directing for a Comedy Series at The Comedy Awards. The episode "Modern Warfare" won the 2010 Gold Derby TV Award for Comedy Episode of the Year. For the 1st Critics' Choice Television Awards, it was nominated for Best Comedy Series, while Joel McHale and Danny Pudi were nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor in Comedy Series, respectively. The episode "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" won a 2011 Creative Arts Emmy Award for Individual Achievement in Animation. At the 42nd NAACP Image Awards, Justin Lin was nominated for Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series for the episode "Modern Warfare". At the 27th TCA Awards, Community was nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Comedy and Danny Pudi was nominated for Individual Achievement in Comedy. The series received four nominations for the 2011 Satellite Awards, for Best Comedy or Musical Series, Joel McHale for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy Series, and Donald Glover for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries, or TV Movie; while it won Best Television Release for the season two DVD set.

In 2012, Community was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for the episode "Remedial Chaos Theory", written by Chris McKenna. Also that year, the show won the awards for Favorite Comedy and Favorite Ensemble in the 2012 TV Guide Magazine Fan Favorites Awards. "Remedial Chaos Theory" was nominated for a Hugo Award in 2012 for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. Community also won the Hulu "Best in Show" award for 2012, beating 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, New Girl and Modern Family in the first four rounds, and The Walking Dead in the final round by 11,000 votes. It won Hulu's "Best in Show" award again in 2013, beating out Game of Thrones in the final round with 60% of the votes.

At the 2nd Critics' Choice Television Awards, Community received the most nominations and won Best Comedy Series. Joel McHale was nominated for Best Actor in a Comedy Series, Jim Rash and Danny Pudi were nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, and Alison Brie and Gillian Jacobs were nominated Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. Community was also nominated for TCA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Comedy at the 2012 TCA Awards.

Ratings

Premiering in the 9:30 pm ET spot on September 17, 2009, the pilot episode had a viewership of 7.680 million. In the 18–49 audience, it had a rating of 3.7. As such, it held 93% of this audience from The Office, which had been in the previous time slot. The show was called the "bright spot for the night" for NBC, seeing how The Office was down 18% from the previous year's premiere, while Parks and Recreation, in the preceding time slot, was down 30%.

Seasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of Community:
     Note: Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.

Syndication

On March 14, 2012, Comedy Central announced that it had purchased the rights to Community for syndication that began airing in September 2013 at the same time as weeknight syndication on local stations. Community premiered in syndication in Canada on The Comedy Network on September 4, 2012. In January 2014, the show moved to Canadian sister channel MuchMusic.

DVD

The first season was released in region 1 on September 21, 2010 in a four-disc set. The set includes all 25 episodes plus bonus features, including commentary on every episode by cast and crew members; extended versions of the "Pilot" and "Communication Studies" episodes; outtakes; "Season One Cast Evaluations" featurette; "Season One Highlight Reel" featurette; "Creative Compromises" featurette; "Advanced Criminal Law" alternative scenes; and three mini episodes.

The second season was released in region 1 on September 6, 2011. It features commentary on every episode by cast and crew members; outtakes; animatics for "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" and making-of featurettes covering that episode as well as "A Fistful of Paintballs" and "For a Few Paintballs More".

The third season was released in region 1 on August 14, 2012. It features commentary on every episode by cast and crew members; gag reel; deleted scenes; "This is War: Pillows vs. Blankets mockumentary" featurette; and "A Glee-ful Community Christmas" featurette.

The fourth season was released in region 1 on August 6, 2013. It features commentary on every episode by cast and crew members; gag reel; deleted scenes; "Inspector Spacetime: Inspection" featurette, and Adventures in Advanced Puppetry featurette.

The fifth season was released in region 1 on August 5, 2014. It features commentary on every episode by cast and crew members; gag reel; and two featurettes, "Re-Animating the '80s" and "Advanced Television Production: 5 Days, 2 Scripts, No Sleep".

The sixth season was released on DVD in region 1 on March 8, 2016. Special features include deleted scenes, a behind-the-scenes featurette on the making of the finale, trivia with the cast and crew, and a gag reel.

Digital

In the United States, the complete series is available on Hulu. Seasons one through four are available on Netflix in Canada, while the first three seasons are available on Netflix throughout Latin America with Spanish or Brazilian Portuguese subtitles. All six seasons are available via the iTunes Store. The series was available exclusively on Amazon Prime Video UK until February 1, 2015, when seasons one through five also became available on Netflix in the UK and Ireland until 2017. In Australia, the entire series is available on Stan.

Soundtrack

A soundtrack for the first season, titled Community (Music from the Original Television Series), was released on September 21, 2010 by Madison Gate Records. The track list includes the main title theme, "At Least It Was Here" by The 88; original songs and incidental music composed for the show (by series composer Ludwig Göransson); and several songs were performed by the characters (a mix of original compositions and covers).

Other tracks

Songs featured on the show that were not released on the soundtrack are available on composer Ludwig Göransson's official website.

Throughout the series, Michael Haggins' song "Daybreak" can be heard. On several occasions the characters are humming the tune and sometimes it's playing on a radio in the background.