Community - Not So Communal (That Sounds Witty, Right?)

By Bub

The biggest disappointment this Thursday night was the series premier of Community. This show seemed to be billed as a witty satire of a very specific real life situation in the vein of The Office and Parks and Recreation. At times it was witty but at best it was a spoof. Joel McHale might as well have been played by the Wayans Brothers and Anna Farris should have been in there somewhere. In order to be a cutting satire you have to very sharply reflect the object of satirization. Community reflected a high school drop-out Carlos Mencia's version of what community college is like.


Only in that universe, where freakishly a total underachiever idiot makes it huge in show business, can a high school drop out become a member of the Peace Corps. Only in that idiotic, Entourage obsessed universe can a person trick 'The Board' into allowing you to practice law for years with a fake degree submitted as an email attachment. And only someone that didn't even bother to go to community college would think that you could reasonably spend four years there (sorry Andy). So McHale's character was a stiff prop in a mean spoof and not a Jim Krazsinski to John Oliver's Michael Scott. That's a fancy way of saying it was comedically dull and also horrible. And maybe some people like that. I think it was tired before it started. Instead of seeming like a modern day Fletch , McHale seems more like a rip-off Van Wilder.

Only in that universe is it sympathetic and even endearing to try and cold-heartedly trick a girl into sleeping with you. Luckily she wasn't fooled, exactly (though I didn't really care what happened to her). There were redeeming factors- Chevy Chase was gave a respectable performance, and the Abed character is the only one I will look forward to actually seeing again. Abed plays an Arab community college version of the multiple advanced degree holding life-impotent Buster from Arrested Development crossed with Aziz Ansari's South Asian hip-hop affectation enthusiast, The Game aficionado, character from Parks and Recreation.

But honestly I don't care if Joel McHale gets the girl because his character is an idiot asshole with no redeeming qualities and the girl is marginally pretty and kind of a bitch who doesn't deserve a second chance from community college. The worst offense of Community is not being an unfunny comedy.

The worst offense is un-winkingly making fun of the idea of actual community college. Sure the funny stereotypical things the 'dean' says at the beginning are funny and largely true - that people at community college face obstacles and much of them are self-inflicted. But what Community has no appreciation for is the vast majority of 'community' students that have overcome real obstacles - from financial, to learning disabilities, to addiction, to abuse, to lack of self-confidence.

At community college I drank cough syrup recreationally. I protested wars and held symposiums. I saw complete idiots learn and improve their station in life, I met Harry CHapin's daughter and I got arrested several times (unrelated). I looked in to completing my degree in Nepal because I thought if I opposed the Maoists the King would sponser me. But what is more is that I learned more valuable information in two years of community college than I did in three 1/2 years of university undergraduate study (ask).

The reason why is that half of community college teachers are glorified high school teachers, but the other half are people that are so in love with their subject that normal egoist concerns don't factor. Their life is imparting their wisdom to you, not attending conferences, networking, authoring, researching and publishing. And due to the small class sizes they are able to do so at extraordinary rates. Some of the most influential people in my life have been community college teachers.

Admittedly one of them wears the same home-spun blouse everyday and professes he owns the largest anarchist library in the Midwest, and the other, while older than my grandfather, is currently dating an attractive young girl many years younger than I. But they both made it clear to me that I could matter as much as anybody, and that was a much more valuable lesson than anything else outside of the specific jurisdiction of the Rome Treaty of the International Criminal Court.

In McHale's community I felt like the whole time they were condemning the majority of Americans (who don't attain a four-year university degree)to an existence that is somehow inferior and unworthy. That's not what I look for in a comedy. I look to comedy to feel better about everything, not to feel better about my asshole elitist self.