The Quarantine Stream: ‘Community’ Broke the Sitcom Mold as One of TV’s Most Unique Network Comedies
Posted on Saturday, May 2nd, 2020 by Hoai-Tran Bui
(Welcome to The Quarantine Stream, a new series where the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The Series: Community
Where You Can Stream It: Netflix, Hulu
The Pitch: Created by Dan Harmon, Community is the fiendishly clever cult classic for every pop culture obsessive. Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Donald Glover, Alison Brie, Danny Pudi, Yvette Nicole Brown, and Chevy Chase star as a group of lovable misfits who form a study group at a community college and grow into a codependent team that go on wild movie and TV show-referencing adventures that routinely shake up the sitcom format. Occasionally they go to class.
Why It’s Essential Quarantine Viewing: Community broke the mold for the network TV sitcom, using its 22-episode runtime to frequently play with the format by way of high-concept episodes that would act as both love letter and genre-skewering satire. But what made Community a cult series with a rabid following (six seasons and a movie!) was the pitch-perfect comedic writing by Harmon and co. that could pack five jokes into two minutes, and the hysterical line readings by its stars, many of whom — Glover and Brie specifically — would soon rocket to superstardom.
