Mythology: Community
By Martin Felipe
March 16, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com

This suit is making me itchy.
One of the themes of this column over the course of its run has been the changing television landscape. No longer do we see mega-cultural hits like M*A*S*H, Cheers or Seinfeld, shows that draw both critical raves and massive audiences. As today’s biggest hits become reality shows and redundant procedurals that enjoy fractions of the viewers that, say, an All In The Family might have once had, the real quality programming has evolved into a bunch of little cult shows that survive by the skin of their teeth, due more to prestige and passion than any sort of massive national success. Think Friday Night Lights, Fringe or Parks and Recreation; shows that, by rights, should have been cancelled after their initial run failed to yield any sort of big numbers.

Yet, shows in this vein find ways of living a respectable television life. We always hear tales of a show that critics love and a handful of loyal viewers champion getting some sort of save-our-show campaign. Arrested Development, Chuck, and even Jericho are examples from the last decade of mini-successes that extended their episode count due to grass-roots campaigns to keep them around. The latest of these, one that has such a vocal fan base that it’s hard to believe that it isn’t already a big hit, is Community.

A few months back, NBC announced that it would be temporarily shelving Community to make room on the schedule for another prestige niche comedy, 30 Rock. Of course, it would be a mistake to confuse Internet culture with regular American culture, but to say that there was an online outcry would be an understatement. The blogs and message boards blew up, expressing concern that this was the beginning of the end. Seriously, you would have thought that it was 1995 and someone had suggested canceling Seinfeld (had the net been as evolved back then as it is now).

Of course, some reaction was to be expected. The show has been a critical darling since the beginning, and the fan base, though tiny, has never been shy about telling folks that they should be watching Community, lest they doom us to a sitcom landscape populated with a bunch of Whitneys and Two Broke Girlses (a proposition, to be quite honest, most non-Community fans don’t fear). However, over the course of the ensuing months, the chatter hasn’t settled down. If anything, it’s grown more and more vociferous, crescendoing with last night’s triumphant return.

Yes, the ratings were up. Quite a bit. At nearly five million viewers, it beat 30 Rock and pretty much matched The Office, the show considered to be NBC’s only real comedy hit. The numbers are a little skewed. The Big Bang Theory, Community’s hugely successful time slot rival, is on a short hiatus, but the general rumblings are quite positive. Rumors (unsubstantiated, of course) indicate that a fourth season pick up is more likely than not, which is really all the show needs to both hit syndication numbers, and satisfy the four years of college structure of the show itself.


Which brings me to what this column is supposed to really be about - the mythology of the show. See, what makes Community so appealing to some, off-putting to others, is that it’s possibly the ultimate post-modern/meta show. It’s not just a sitcom; it’s a sitcom about sitcoms. It doesn’t just have a show mythology; it has a show mythology about show mythologies. Whoa, pretty heady stuff, kinda appropriate for a show about a college, don’t you think? Look, I know all of this stuff sounds pretentious, the very quality of Community which prevents it from being a hit, but that’s what the show is. It’s a sitcom about watching sitcoms.

At first glance, it seems to fit in the mold of a Simpsons style mythology (another meta show, but one with a big difference). You have a fictional locale, in this case Greendale Community College, a core cast, and an ever-expanding supporting cast. Okay, this is pretty common sitcom stuff; most viewers should feel comfortable with it. Then you begin to realize that the show isn’t taking this universe very seriously. Well, that’s not quite fair, it’s not that it doesn’t take it seriously, it’s that it doesn’t seem to have a lot of reverence for it.

As characters embody certain sitcom tropes and archetypes, they call themselves out on it, making what would be both subtext and cliché on most comedies the very point of Community’s existence. It both embodies the formula and examines it with a comedic eye.

Jeff isn’t just the lead of the show. He’s considered within the group to be the leader. The irony of such a misanthropic leader isn’t lost on the rest of the group. They constantly question his appropriateness as leader before accepting him in his role, again and again. Then they acknowledge that they accept him in the role, again and again.

His love triangle with Britta and Annie isn’t just a sitcom cliché. It’s an opportunity for pop culture savant Abed to examine the cliché of sitcom love triangles. The love triangle is both love triangle and commentary on love triangles.

This goes beyond just the core group (openly labeled the core group within the show), extending to the Greendale universe around it. Look no further than the character of Magnitude. Magnitude is designed as a parody of those popular recurring characters that are, at first minor, but then grow to dominate the show, Urkel style. He has a meaningless, calculated catchphrase, “pop pop," a catchphrase so awful, it’s kinda awesome. And, of course, in true Community fashion, the show’s fans have ironically embraced Magnitude as a favorite, even as the Greendale student body embrace him without irony. Which is… the irony of the character.

Community is both sitcom and an examination of sitcoms. It’s like a house of mirrors, reflecting infinitely back upon itself. It’s a very calculated, academic show. And that is its biggest problem in courting a mass audience. We are an ironic culture in 2012, yes. So there is an audience for such a self-reflexive program. But we still have a desire to let go of our pretensions from time to time, and relax with a bunch of great characters that we love. A place where we can go, if you will, where we know everybody’s name, and let go of all of our sneering for 22 minutes.

I think this is where some viewers have problems with Community. The characters don’t always seem to be characters so much as they are characters about characters. Pierce isn’t just a curmudgeonly old man; he is also a representation of a curmudgeonly old man. To go back to the Simpson’s example, yes that show mocks both sitcoms and itself, but, in the end, Homer and the family are loving characters whose warmth overpowers the satirical bite.

Community’s characters never soften to that degree. Well, that’s not quite true. They do, but it’s in the service of commentary on the softening, rendering it cold again. Really, every time you look at any moment on Community, you see how it’s both a legitimate moment, and a commentary on that type of moment in a sitcom. It’s an endless back and forth of meaning and sentiment. While the Simpsons will put the analysis aside for a genuine, heartfelt moment, the heartfelt moments in Community always serve multiple purposes.

As a result, the show can often seem emotionally remote, which of course there’s nothing wrong with. Seinfeld enjoyed quite a bit of success with a similar aesthetic. For whatever reason, however, Seinfeld broke through in a way that Community hasn’t. Again, I think it’s that, despite Seinfeld’s coarseness, it’s still a show with characters, while Community is a show about characters. There is always one intellectual step of removal with Community that I don’t think any other show, no mater how post-modern, has achieved to date. You can never really let go, while watching Community, and the result is that it makes your head swim.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Community is a sitcom about college, and is practically a college course on the sitcom itself. I do believe that the buzz on the show has reached such a fever pitch that we’re very likely to see another year for it. And that’s just about right. A four-year show about a four-year college. The structure is such a delicate balance between storytelling and commenting on storytelling that it could prove impossible to sustain for much longer before toppling over into its own self-reflexive black hole. I doubt it’ll ever be a huge hit, but I do believe it will live a long life beyond its run, Arrested Development style. I think there’s something appropriate about that. A show about itself, living on, and on, both attracting and repelling new audiences for decades to come.