Community’s 10 Best Concept Episodes — Paintball, Pulp Fiction, Law & Order, the Darkest Timeline and More
On Sept. 17, 2009, a band of junior college misfits stopped being a study group and became a community.
NBC’s Community launched as a conventional ensemble comedy that quickly evolved into something much more. Series creator Dan Harmon seemed determined to challenge preconceived notions of what a half-hour sitcom could be. His first high concept outing was a Goodfellas parody, which he followed with a paintball game made to look and feel like a high-budget action movie.
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By the end of its second season, which included an Apollo 13 parody, an ode to spaghetti westerns and a Claymation adventure made in the style of a Rankin/Bass Christmas special, Community had cemented its status as one of the most experimental, pop culture-obsessed comedies in TV history.
Community: The Movie — Everything We Know
In honor of its 15th anniversary — and with #AndAMovie on the way — we here at TVLine have singled out 10 of the very best high-concept episodes, all of which are available to stream on Peacock. Some tough cuts were made along the way (such as the Ken Burns-inspired “Pillows and Blankets,” the Hearts of Darkness spoof “Documentary Filmmaking: Redux,” and the 8-bit video game caper “Digital Estate Planning”), but we emerged with a final list that we’re confident showcases Community at its peak.
Scroll down to see which episodes we considered “cool, cool cool cool” enough to make the cut — spoiler alert: none of them are from Season 4 — then drop a comment and tell us which high-concept episodes would have made your list.
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‘Contemporary American Poultry’ (Season 1, Episode 21)
Abed gets to live out his fantasy of being in a mafia movie — in this case, Goodfellas — when the study group morphs into a chicken-finger crime syndicate. Pretty soon, the pop-culture obsessive grows drunk with chicken power — “The entire campus is controlled by our group, our group is controlled by chicken, and the chicken is controlled by me,” Abed says — and Jeff makes it his mission to bring him down. This episode also includes Pierce’s attempts to coin the phrase “streets ahead,” and the first appearance by Troy’s monkey, Annie’s Boobs.
‘Modern Warfare’ (Season 1, Episode 23)
Greendale morphs into a post-apocalyptic wasteland in the first (and arguably best) paintball installment. Helmed by Fast & Furious director Justin Lin, the episode pays homage to numerous actions films, including Die Hard, The Matrix and Terminator. It also gives Ken Jeong his best moment as then-Se?or Chang, whose grand entrance is remniscient of both Chow-Yun Fat in Hard Boiled and Al Pacino in Scarface.
‘Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking’ (Season 2, Episode 16)
Abed gets behind the camera in this sendup of mockumentary-style comedies, a la The Office. The aspiring filmmaker says that “it’s easier to tell a complex story when you can just cut to people explaining things to the camera,” then captures members of the study group as they grapple with specifically chosen gifts “bequeathed” to them by the evil Pierce. Best of all is Troy’s wide-eyed reaction when he is greeted by none other than childhood hero LeVar Burton. Instead of talking-head interstitials, we get glimpses of Troy as he breaks down and openly weeps on the floor of the men’s bathroom.
‘Critical Film Studies’ (Season 2, Episode 19)
Birthday boy Abed goes Method when he invites Jeff to a fancy dinner and engages in a semi-serious discussion modeled after the conversation had in the 1981 film My Dinner With Andre. While the rest of the gang awaits Jeff and Abed’s arrival at a Pulp Fiction-themed party, Abed describes his time on the set of Cougar Town, forever linking the two comedies. In fact, Danny Pudi would appear in the background of Cougar Town‘s Season 2 finale, running off at the very moment that Abed supposedly pooped his pants. Cougar Town‘s Busy Philipps and Dan Byrd would return the favor when they appeared (as themselves?) during the paintball war that wrapped Year 2 of the NBC comedy.
‘Paradigms of Human Memory’ (Season 2, Episode 21)
As far as concept episodes go, this one’s actually quite simple: It satirizes the tradition of clip shows by creating entirely new (and deranged!) flashbacks. The group gathers to work on their 20th and final anthropology project of the semester (a diorama of the group building its 19th diorama… how meta!) and reflects on sophomore year, including a trip to an old ghost town populated by a racist prospector, Abed’s love affair with NBC’s short-lived drama series The Cape (“Six seasons and a movie!”) and that time the Greendale 7 filled in for glee club (because the entire glee club died in a mysterious bus crash accident).
‘Remedial Chaos Theory’ (Season 3, Episode 4)
The Darkest Timeline is established in one of the all-time great episodes, in which the study group gathers for Troy and Abed’s housewarming party. A Yahtzee! dice is used to determine who has to get up to retrieve the pizza and inadvertently sets up seven different scenarios. That includes the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Darkest Timeline wherein Pierce suffers a fatal gunshot wound, Shirley becomes a drunk, Annie gets locked in a mental ward, Jeff loses his arm in a fire and Troy loses his larynx after he tries to destroy a flaming troll doll by eating it — all because Jeff rolled a one.
‘Regional Holiday Music’ (Season 3, Episode 10)
Dan Harmon’s hatred of the TV show Glee culminates in this savage, holiday-themed parody that blends elements of Fox’s musical dramedy and the classic sci-fi horror film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. SNL vet Taran Killam is perfectly cast as a demented Mr. Schue stand-in (who reveals himself to be responsible for the previous choir’s demise), and the original songs (which include Troy and Abed’s “Christmas Infiltration” rap and Annie’s “Teach Me How to Understand Christmas”) are genuinely great.
‘Basic Lupine Urology’ (Season 3, Episode 17)
This spot-on Law & Order parody gives every member of the study group a specific role: Shirley is the no-nonsense lieutenant; Britta is the computer tech; Pierce is the informant; Troy and Abed are the detectives; and Jeff and Annie are the prosecutors. After Annie discovers that the group’s yam experiment has been compromised, the Greendale 7 works the case in an attempt to expose an assailant and save their biology grade. The episode ends on a bit of a downer: Classmate Alex “Star-Burns” Osbourne dies in an off-screen meth lab explosion… or so it seems.
‘Basic Intergluteal Numismatics’ (Season 5, Episode 3)
We never did find out the identity of the Ass Crack Bandit, but this homage to David Fincher movies was nevertheless a top-to-(ahem) bottom delight, featuring Troy as the ACB’s shattered victim. The episode also reveals that Star-Burns faked his own death, Pierce has (gulp!) died, and Jeff is (ugh!) a Dave Matthews fan. (Not so coincidentally, Star-Burns portrayer Dino Stamatopoulos, who served as writer and consulting producer during the first three seasons, returned only after Harmon was reinstalled as showrunner following that traumatic gas-leak year.)
‘App Development and Condiments’ (Season 5, Episode 8)
A new app that allows students to rate each other on a scale of one-to-five MeowMeowBeenz paves the way for this dystopian sci-fi tale. Britta leads the charge against Greendale’s newly imposed class system, but is only able to galvanize support when she has a giant streak of mustard on her face. Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim (aka Tim & Eric) play the app developers responsible for Greendale’s quick descent into madness, while Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz has a memorable turn as middle-aged college prankster Koogler, who gets his very own party-school movie trailer.
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