Love the One(s) You're With: Community

At a certain point in your life, you realize that nothing's turned out like you thought it would.

You're not working in the field you studied in school.  You're single or married, when you always predicted you'd be the opposite.  The age you thought you'd have figured everything out?  You're still fumbling and confused as ever, maybe even more so. 

There's also the people you surround yourself with.  At a certain age it becomes a motley crew: those you grew up with, maybe even dated at some point; pals from high school, college and work; and then the ones who are way more random.  The person you agreed to give a ride to one time, from rehearsal of a show you almost dropped out of, that ten years later is like family.

It's meeting these random people, and letting them into your life, however reluctantly at first, that helps you to realize: not having the exact future you wanted or predicted can be a very liberating thing.

I started watching Community for two reasons.  One, a friend in the industry recounted a little exchange from the pilot script that cracked me up (similar to the way I was sold on 30 Rock because of one line: "If you're a gay guy looking for a beard, I don't do that anymore").  And two, well, Joel McHale.  In the days before my obsessive fandom kicked in, I read an interview where he said that he was offered several sitcoms and Community was far and away the best.  No matter what you think of The Soup, the guy has made some good career decisions (witness: The Informant!).  I was intrigued.  Besides, it was on after The Office.

Never have I seen a pilot that touched on moral relativism, Asperger's syndrome, and The Breakfast Club in twenty-two minutes.  With Trudy from Mad Men, the sex addict from Reno 911!, and Chevy MoFo-in Chase.  As in Fletch, Gerald Ford, Clark Griswold: any way you slice it, the guy's a comedy legend. 

McHale's character, Jeff Winger, is a cocky former lawyer disbarred when it's discovered his undergraduate degree is fake.  (Yes, I know it's a slim premise, but think of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and sing along with me: "Just repeat to yourself, 'it's just a show.  I should really just relax.'")  He enrolls at Greendale Community College and immediately starts hitting on his cute Spanish 101 classmate Britta (Gillian Jacobs).  Britta, however, is not having it, and when Jeff invites her to form a one-on-one study group, she brings along a whole crew: sitcom aficionado Abed (Danny Pudi, Chicagoans represent!), fallen football player Troy (Donald Glover), rehabbed type A Annie (Alison Brie, almost completely unrecognizable from Mad Men and just as awesome), and Christian mom Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown).  Oh, and corporate magnate-turned-dirty old man Pierce (Chase) also wanders in.  Quite possibly the most diverse group on network TV, the gang experiences weekly dalliances and misadventures, with recurring characters such as the overenthusiastic Dean Pelton (Jim Rash) and surly Professor Chang (Ken Jeong) along for the ride.

A group of wildly different people finding out they have a lot in common, and learning a little bit about themselves along the way?  We've all heard that premise before, but Community makes it fresh while at the same time reminding us that it's the simple stuff that good shows are made of.  The cast is fiercely witty, the writing even more so.  Creator Dan Harmon based the series on his own experiences in a community college study group, and it shows: not only is there a real tenderness in even the silliest joke, but the characters both play into and play with the very stereotypes they're dealt.  Jeff isn't the show's moral center, nor are most of his actions particularly commendable--but he's learning, even as he stumbles along the way, that he's capable of poking fun at himself and doing nice things for others.  Though Britta is smart and confident, she can be awkward in dealing with sensitive social matters (she's sort of a walking Stuff White People Like).  Even Pierce, with his heinously backwards worldviews, is at heart a lonely dude: and though his younger counterparts don't always love what he says, they embrace him for the old fart he is.

I freaking heart the group dynamic of the core cast: they're the kind of characters that are so fun to watch even when they're not doing anything particularly interesting (which according to one of my favorite bloggers, is one of the marks of a kick-ass protagonist).  I love Mad Men, but I wouldn't really want to be friends with any of the characters (except maybe Peggy and Joan).  However, I'd hang with Community's Spanish 101 crew any day of the week.  And the characters form relationships, they stumble, they screw up, they learn from one another.  They may have been thrown together by random acts of course catalog, but now they're thick as thieves (and they protect each other to the end!).

Yes, there have been some eps that aren't so great: just like with Modern Family, Community can falter when it lets itself slide into wacky-antics territory.  At its strongest, however, Community (again, like Modern Family) works real magic combining absurd with emotional, satirical with genuine, and motormouthed with simple.  Think Avenue Q without the puppets.  And at its heart, it's a show about being okay with your place in life, no matter how imperfect that may be.

Did I mention that McHale is naked on one episode?  From a feminist perspective, it's interesting how the show objectifies the hell out of the guy.  Not that I'm complaining.  I just find it intriguing: men usually aren't blatantly objectified on a show that's NOT specifically geared toward women.  Not just the naked ep: he's in tight jeans and T-shirts quite a lot.  That's normally reserved for female characters.

Community airs Thursdays at 7 on NBC.  The most recent episode, along with a host of really funny clips, can be found on Hulu.  Also, there's a hilarious website for the fictional Greendale Community College.

Here's a video of the cast finding out that they were renewed for a second season.  They're so genuinely surprised and happy (and unaware they're being filmed), it's adorable.

Guest Post: Modern Family

I am really missing y'all, but never fear: I'll be back next week!  Until then, enjoy a second stellar guest post, this time from the doyenne of Are You There Youth?  It's me, Nikki . . . Nikki!

Every decade can lay claim to their own. The Cleavers, the Bradys, the Keatons, the Seavers, the Cosbys, the Conners. They’re all TV sitcom families. And for a while, after the Fox Network pulled the Bluth family out from under us, many of us thought there would be no more TV sitcom families not named Simpson.

The family sitcom had a formula that worked for decades. Mom and Dad plus kids equal wacky antics. Some did it better than others. Some families managed to turn the family sitcom on its head (the Bundys or the Bluths) with varying degrees of success. But after a while, I suppose the masses decided that the formula was just too...formulaic. And then Survivor did well and unleashed on us a scourge of reality television which appeared to leave the television sitcom family dead in the water. Washed up. A relic of the past. 

Until now.

Source: thetvlegion.com

Meet the Pritchett/Dunphy/Tucker/Delgado family of ABC’s sitcom, Modern Family. That’s right, a TV sitcom family in this age of American Idol, Top Chef and the Gosselin-family train wreck. A show that teaches us that a show about a functional family can be well-written, funny, heartbreaking and smart all at once.

Jay Pritchett (played by none other than Al Bundy, or Ed O’Neill) is the patriarch of this family. He is divorced, but remarried to a much-younger Colombian beauty Gloria (the gorgeous Sofia Vergara), who has an eleven year old son, the culturally-sensitive Manny (the extremely hilarious Rico Rodriguez). Jay’s grown children, who live in the same town, are Mitch (Jesse Tyler Ferguson in all his ginger adorableness) and Claire (the always dependable Julie Bowen). Mitch is gay and lives with his partner Cam (Eric Stonestreet) and the two have adopted a little girl from Vietnam, Lily. Claire is a stay at home mom married to Phil (Ty Burell) a man who tries far too hard to be liked by...well everyone. They have three kids, Haley, Alex and Luke (Sarah Hyland, Ariel Winter, and Nolan Gould).

So what is it about this family that makes the show work? Certainly they’re a family that has more in common with the family from Little Miss Sunshine than the Cosbys. And that may be the secret. More people can relate to a family like the Pritchett/Dunphy/Tucker/Delgado family than they can to the Cosbys or the Bradys. Families are not made up of a bunch of perfect parents helpfully guiding their precocious children through life’s minor ups and downs. No, people are dysfunctional. And a good family is one that can work with (or, in spite of) its members’ obvious dysfunctions and flaws.

And you want dysfunction and flaws? Modern Family can give them to you. Jay is curmudgeonly. Gloria may or may not be a gold-digger (the jury is still out on that one). Phil is over-eager and dorkish. Claire is all too aware that she’s smarter and savvier than her husband. Mitch can be hard-hearted, while Cam is far too much of a softie.

But everyone loves each other. Why? Because they’re family and sometimes that’s the only reason you need, and quite often, the only reason you can find. You know, kind of like Arrested Development’s Bluth family.  Everything about this show works, but what really makes it is the non-narrative way the stories are told. It’s told in a mockumentary style, much like The Office. Which is brilliant because we not only get to see the situations happening, but then we get documentary-style interviews where the characters can snark. And since this is a docu-style show, security camera footage is used to great effect. In the pilot, Mitch and Cam are talking about how long they’d been waiting for the adoption. Cam, who is jovially overweight, says that he gained baby weight. Now, in a traditional style sitcom, Mitch would have made a joke about the baby not forcing Cam to take two helping of dinner that night. And the laugh track would have exploded. Modern Family does things a little differently. Instead of a joke, Mitch makes a ‘can you believe this guy’ face at the camera, then it cuts away to security camera footage of Cam in his pajamas stuffing his face at the refrigerator. Because Modern Family trusts their viewers to get jokes without being hammered over the head with them, they have thankfully left the laugh track out.

And the dialogue! Have I mentioned the dialogue? It’s funny and fast-paced and sweet and snarky all at once. A few great examples:

Cameron: I'm sort of like Costco. I'm big, I'm not fancy and I dare you to not like me.


Cameron: There's a fish in nature that swims around with its babies in its mouth. That fish would look at Mitchell's relationship with his mother and say, "That's messed up."


Jay [to Manny]: Let's go buddy, it's school time. Oh, and Gloria, if you want to get together with the girls later I can just, you know, watch the football game or something.

Manny: That means he wants to watch a football game.

Jay: I'm not talkin' to you. And what're you drinking coffee for anyway?

Manny: It's my culture, I'm Colombian.

Jay: Oh yeah, what part of Colombia are those French toaster sticks from?


Mitchell: You had your own moments. You had cheerleading, and high school plays, and making out with the quarterback...

Claire: Oh come on, you made out with him, too.

Mitchell: Yeah, but we had to keep it a secret.


Cameron: If I wasn't in school or fishing, I was clowning. There are four types of clowns: a tramp, Auguste, a whiteface, and a character. I am a classically trained Auguste clown named Fizbo.

Mitchell: Between the clowning and the fishing, I'm surprised you had time for the schooling. Aww, there's the fifth type, the sad clown.

Cameron: A sad clown is a tramp.. so there's still only four types.


Mitchell: Still keeping traditions alive, huh?

Jay: Someone has to. I got two Colombians at home trying to turn Christmas into Cinco de Mayo.

Mitchell: You know that's Mexican right?

Jay: Ahh. Burrito, burr-righto.


Mitchell: I had to actually come out to my dad three times before he acknowledged it. I'm not sure if maybe he was hoping he heard it wrong, like I said 'Dad, I'm grey.'


So this Wednesday, watch Modern Family and find out what happens when Arrested Development meets The Office. Because the writing is smart but accessible, the characters are realistic but not boring, the situations are, indeed, somewhat wacky but remain relatable. But most of all, the fifties could lay claim to the Cleavers, the seventies to the Bradys, the eighties to the Cosbys and the nineties to the Conners. The aughts brought a drought of TV families. So let’s let the Pritchett/Dunphy/Tucker/Delgado clan own the teens.