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Jan. 6th, 2011 11:29 amEvery so often, when I was in high school, I would go through short periods of time when I would feel the urge to devour a sitcom whole - the greater the backlog the better. This inevitably happened around finals week. I have had no finals since I graduated, so I pretty much haven't been watching sitcoms, but I think something about the grad school application process triggered the same urge in my brain, because very shortly after sending in my December 1st application I started watching my way through Community at record (for me) speeds.
Community is a show about a lovable assortment of misfits who for various reasons are attending community college, and form a study group together for their Spanish class. At first I was pretty much characterizing it as 'fun and relatively inoffensive,' but before I realized it, it was hitting many of my buttons - highly meta genre-play! Unlikely groups of people bonding and ~discovering the power of friendship!~ - and then I was zooming through Yuletide fic, and then they did their own zombie apocalypse episode, and now I seem to be hooked.
Other things that make me respect the show: they make an effort to ensure that all of the characters interact in different combinations; they generally do their best to challenge stereotypes, although they don't always succeed; they focus on everyone's character development; they have one of the better and more thoughtful portrayals of a non-neurotypical character that I've ever seen on TV. In other words, unsurprisingly, Abed is my favorite. But I like pretty much everyone! I went in expecting to hate Jeff, the smarmy privileged lawyer who is the show's ostensible lead, but then I found myself strangely fond of him, mostly because the show acknowledges when he is terrible and because pretty much every episode ends with him endorsing the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP despite himself. I love Troy and Abed's friendship, and I like it even better when Annie comes along, as in the taser episode, but I also like it when all the ladies hang out together. I wish they generally made more and better use of Shirley, but on the other hand there is the episode where she captains a pirate ship. (I can usually do without Pierce.)
I also don't ship anyone; I want them all to stay occasionally-awkward platonic friends forever. DON'T MESS WITH THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP.
Community is a show about a lovable assortment of misfits who for various reasons are attending community college, and form a study group together for their Spanish class. At first I was pretty much characterizing it as 'fun and relatively inoffensive,' but before I realized it, it was hitting many of my buttons - highly meta genre-play! Unlikely groups of people bonding and ~discovering the power of friendship!~ - and then I was zooming through Yuletide fic, and then they did their own zombie apocalypse episode, and now I seem to be hooked.
Other things that make me respect the show: they make an effort to ensure that all of the characters interact in different combinations; they generally do their best to challenge stereotypes, although they don't always succeed; they focus on everyone's character development; they have one of the better and more thoughtful portrayals of a non-neurotypical character that I've ever seen on TV. In other words, unsurprisingly, Abed is my favorite. But I like pretty much everyone! I went in expecting to hate Jeff, the smarmy privileged lawyer who is the show's ostensible lead, but then I found myself strangely fond of him, mostly because the show acknowledges when he is terrible and because pretty much every episode ends with him endorsing the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP despite himself. I love Troy and Abed's friendship, and I like it even better when Annie comes along, as in the taser episode, but I also like it when all the ladies hang out together. I wish they generally made more and better use of Shirley, but on the other hand there is the episode where she captains a pirate ship. (I can usually do without Pierce.)
I also don't ship anyone; I want them all to stay occasionally-awkward platonic friends forever. DON'T MESS WITH THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP.
