Six Seasons and a Movie: How ‘Community’ Broke Television

Pop culture writer Barsanti (What Would Keanu Do?) teams up with Cogan and Massey (coauthors of Everything I Ever Needed to Know About _____* I Learned from Monty Python), associate professor of communications and professor of English at Molloy University, respectively, to transport readers to the “less-than-hallowed halls” of fictional Greendale Community College in this shaky “curriculum” on the sitcom. Community, which was first broadcast in 2009 and ran for six seasons, “broke the bounds of television” by using its characters’ “apparent relatability” to subversively “scramble expectations... and rewrite what people thought the American sitcom was capable of,” according to the authors. Thesis notwithstanding, most of the book is spent outlining actors’ and writers’ pre-Community work (including creator Dan Harmon’s improv days and actor Donald Glover’s brief stint as a writer for 30 Rock), recapping each episode; and recounting the post-Community careers of the cast and crew (with a full chapter dedicated to Dan Harmon’s Dungeons and Dragons podcast, Harmonquest). The authors’ passion for their subject and irrepressible wit (“Community might have been [NBC’s] weird kid with glasses and a tree nut allergy who had strong opinions about... Star Wars”) will charm some readers, though ardent fans may leave disappointed—the bulk of the book is composed of episode-by-episode summaries and includes relatively little new information while also precluding more extended analysis. This comes up short. (Oct.)