Community Made Joel McHale Feel Like An Action Hero
The following article contains spoilers for "Community" season 1.
Your acceptance letter from Greendale Community College has arrived! Almost 10 years after we got the last of our "six seasons ... ," we're getting the "...and a movie" part of the "Community" fan rallying cry. From 2009 through 2015, we watched the absurdist adventures of Britta (Gillian Jacobs), Jeff (Joel McHale), Abed (Danny Pudi), Troy (Donald Glover), Annie (Alison Brie), Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown), Pierce (Chevy Chase), Dean Pelton (Jim Rash), and Señor Chang (Ken Jeong) at Greendale. Perhaps you, like me, did several rewatches during the early parts of the pandemic as well.
If I were to ask you about the first episode that comes to mind when you think of "Community," it's likely either going to be the one with the "darkest timeline," which we are clearly living in, or the first paintball episode. All the way back in 2010, before the dark times (and before anyone rolled dice and tried to avoid answering the door for the pizza guy), McHale did an interview with Vulture where he spoke about feeling like an action hero during the first paintball episode, "Modern Warfare." It initially aired on May 6, 2010, and started a trend of event episodes for the show.
"Modern Warfare" pays homage to films like "Die Hard," "The Matrix," "Scarface," and even "28 Days Later" when Jeff wakes up from a nap to find the school looking like a dystopian nightmare. McHale spoke about shooting the episode, playing action hero, and getting in shape for his shirtless scene (when he and Britta finally hook up).
'Like a boyhood fantasy of being in an action movie.'
In the interview, Joel McHale said it took about eight days to shoot the 23-minute episode. He explained:
"You'd walk into the cafeteria, and they'd turned it upside down; there was a fire in it. And it was the most physical episode I've done, with the jumping and the stunts; it was like a boyhood fantasy of being in an action movie. They hired a paintball company and brought them in to shoot up the place. They just kept handing us loaded paintball gun after loaded paintball gun."
Of course there was a fire in the cafeteria. That poor school went through a whole lot in those six seasons. Still, this was the first season, and no one was really expecting the show to produce an episode like this. It was already meta and full of pop culture references, but this one showed how far "Community" was willing to take its comedy. "Modern Warfare" is, in my opinion, one of the best of the entire series, though the second season's paintball episode was pretty darn funny as well.
It was also notable for the hook-up between Jeff and Britta, which "Community" had been teasing. The beginning of season 1 set up a hot character will they/won't they scenario for these two, but their characters got weird (read: awesome) really quickly, and a regular old sex scene just wouldn't do. This was the "wounded soldier" fantasy, as Britta says. It was fantastic, but it also had the result of killing that tension trope and switching everything around. That scene was also why poor Joel McHale had a crash course in toning up quickly.
'I just started doing push-ups as much as I could'
Joel McHale told the publication about his training:
"I just starved myself and started doing push-ups every night. I didn't have time to go to the gym, and I just chased my kids around. It was like when Rocky chased the chicken, in 'Rocky' I, that's basically what I was doing with the kids. And I just started doing push-ups as much as I could, 'cause knowing I was going to be naked, I didn't want to be embarrassed. I think I ended up losing 10 or 15 pounds. I starved myself and ate hard-boiled eggs and salad. They also spray-tanned me because my skin is nearly translucent white."
That seems extreme, but he didn't say how early he was notified about what was required for the episode. Still, chasing your children around like chickens isn't the worst exercise one could do.
We may not be getting paintball in the upcoming "Community" film, but it will be streets ahead (if you know, you know) just to get to visit these characters again. Go Human Beings!