DVD review: "Community" season one

While watching the sometimes uneven but often very hilarious first season of NBC's Community on DVD, I had to wonder: Why don't more TV shows aiming for the funny take on college?

Teen shows often avoid it like the plague. Judd Apatow and his crew found gold - if for only one season - with Undeclared, the natural successor to Freaks and Geeks. But not until Joel McHale and his Spanish study group at Greendale Community College entered NBC's Thursday night lineup last fall has a show so successfully tapped into the contradiction that our four years or so of "higher learning" are often the silliest and most hedonistic time of people's lives.

Watching the first six or so episodes of Community, last fall and again back-to-back on DVD, I really wasn't sure NBC had a winner on its hands. One of the show's biggest assets on paper was also - at least to me - its biggest early problem: A little Joel McHale goes a long way.

His character, a former lawyer booted from his profession because he had a fraudulent college degree, has all the often-misplaced ego that he should have, but McHale just doesn't have the comic chops to make his Jeff Winger much more at all than a one-dimensional wise ass. The character would be much funnier if, like Jason Bateman's Michael Bluth on Arrested Development, he were more comically unaware of the fact that he's the king of crazy in a group that has tons of it.

It's when Community really became more of an ensemble production and tapped into all of its comedic assets - and the genuine geek bona fides of at least two of its stars - that the show really got into its groove. By the time Abed's (Danny Pudi) Dark Knight rescues McHale and a rather disastrously high Chevy Chase (dressed, naturally, as the Beastmaster) from a collapsing fort of tables and chairs at Annie's (Alison Brie) Halloween/Day of the Dead party in episode six ("Introduction to Statistics"), you knew this was like nothing else on TV right now in all the best ways.

From this turning point, Pudi's Abed and Donald Glover's Troy get a lot more screen time, and are naturally just very funny together. They also give the show its genuine geek appeal, making its frequent pop-culture spoofs hit their target much more often than they miss. It all comes together perfectly in season one when the two of them are serenading their rogue lab mouse, naturally named Fievel, to the strains of "Somewhere, Out There," as Senor Chang (the riotously funny Ken Jeong) is trying to salsa dance his way back into his ex-wife's heart to the Celtic sounds of Greene Day. This close to episode 10, "Environmental Science," is pretty much comic perfection.

And the women of Community more than hold their own in all this madness. Brie's Annie plays up her young eagerness, and finds a natural counterpart in Gillian Jacobs' prematurely jaded Britta, while Yvette Nicole Brown's Shirley turns what could have been a stock character - the overly religious black woman - into one who gives as good as she gets when the barbs really start to fly.

As the show progressed, creator Dan Harmon kept injecting it with more and more genuine political incorrectness, giving it an edge sorely missing from so much of what passes now for situational comedy. That reaches its height in the "Basic Genealogy" episode, in which Abed's darkly veiled Muslim sister gets called, in short order, a black ghost and then Phantom Menace (it's OK to admit, that's very funny), and later, in a game of Pictionary, Pierce (Chase) draws about the most offensive thing you can think of for the word "windmill." It's all so incredibly wrong that it works just right.

Community hit its real season one peak, however, with the "Modern Warfare" episode, which manages to sharply skewer just about every sci-fi/action movie cliche you can think of in the space of 22 minutes or so. From the early moment when Pudi utters the line, "Come with me if you don't want paint on your clothes," you know (or at least I did) this will be the funniest prime time moment of the 2009-10 TV season. If you've never seen this show, which has risen to the top of NBC's Thursday lineup in my book, this one episode would make the perfect introduction.

Chief among the extras in this set are the commentaries featuring cast members for every single episode, only a few of which I've had the time to get through so far. Another feature that works very well is the outtakes featured on each disc. Rather than the usual clips of characters breaking out in giggles in the middle of their lines, they spotlight the natural give and take of some truly funny people and what most makes Community a real winner: What NBC has on its hands, for as long as it wants to keep it on the air, is a genuine comedy troupe on top of its game.

And does the mojo continue into season two? So far, solidly yes. The show bagged the quickest and perhaps biggest laugh of the new season by having Glover wake up in his Spider-Man pajamas to open the season, and last week's zombie episode "Epidemiology" was as fall-down funny as the pilot for Frank Darabont's The Walking Dead was utterly terrifying (and watching them back to back, as I did on the DVR, is a real trip.) The bottom line: Community is much more fun than I ever remember college being, and well worth tuning in for every Thursday night or on DVD.

Seth Rogen overload?

I don't think I've reached that point yet, but it certainly does seem like the "Freaks and Geeks" and "Undeclared" veteran unleashed by Judd Apatow is just about everywhere nowadays.

A look at the IMDB sheet after "Kung Fu Panda," the surprisingly satisfying summer flick that's currently kicking all kinds of box office tail (we're talking about a kids' movie after all, so let's keep it clean) reveals a very busy slate. First comes the comedy I'm most looking forward to this summer, the stoner buddy flick, "Pineapple Express"; then, if this ever really does see the light of day, a role in the geek flick "Fanboys"; the lead opposite Elizabeth Banks in Kevin Smith's "Zack and Miri Make a Porno"; voice work in Dreamworks' "Monsters Vs. Aliens"; playing a delusional mall cop for "Foot Fist Way" (why in the world isn't that playing everywhere?) director Jody Hill in "Observe and Report"; a reunion with Judd Apatow for Apatow's next directorial effort, to be about the world of standup comedians; and finally, if they can pull it off, a remake of "The Green Hornet" with writing partner Evan Goldberg.

Whew! As the last entry on that list shows, and luckily, Mr. Rogen isn't one to forget about his friends. Probably somewhere in the middle of all this, now comes news that he and Goldberg, the duo that brought us the nearly flawless "Superbad," will team up to create something called "Jay and Seth vs. the Apocalypse" (apparently the shtick of actors using their actual names trotted out for "Knocked Up" hasn't gotten old to them yet.)

The horror-comedy, set to co-star fellow "Undeclared" vet and very funny guy in his own right Jay Baruchel, apparently springs from a Web short they all concocted during the brief time Fox bothered to put that fairly great show on the air. I don't know much about it beside that, but there's actually a trailer for it that was put up on Youtube about a year ago, and I've included it here for you to enjoy (as you can probably figure, the language is more than a little NSFW, so please use headphones when you watch it!)

"Superbad," for all its very juvenile humor about things like the "Ghostbusters lunchbox dick treasure chest" (still the thing that made me laugh hardest in all of 2007) has just stuck me longer than a lot of other comedies of its ilk, and I just can't wait for "Pineapple Express." Here's hoping these guys can keep the funny coming for a long time to come.



What's next for "Pushing Daisies" and "How I Met Your Mother"?

OK, OK, I don't know the answers to the most pressing questions about easily two of my favorite shows, namely, for the latter, will adorable Sarah Chalke say yes to our hero Ted's wedding proposal and, for the former, why in the world isn't ABC reairing it's best freshman series in years this summer as a reintroduction to viewers who might have somehow missed it's nine-episode first season? I do, however, have a couple of intriguing bits about each show from Variety.

First, for "Pushing Daisies," creator Bryan Fuller promises that his habit of reintroducing the show's premise with each episode will be a thing of the past, so that in season two he can delight us with one epic story arc.

Fuller, in fact, described the writers strike that killed the first season as a kind of blessing in disguise: "We were just going to continue telling a lot of these episodic tales, and we weren't able to weave in as much of the serialized storyline as I wanted to in the first season."

And he promises he's learned a thing or two from his days working on "Heroes" (remember that show?): "Learning from my days on 'Heroes,' I'm planning to add some cliffhangers, which we'll get into starting with episode five. That's when a new character comes into the world and really shakes things up, somebody who has a link to the shared histories of both Chuck and Ned."

Sounds cool to me, and Fuller and friends have already created a world that I love returning to each week, so I can't wait to see where they go next.

The big news about "How I Met Your Mother" is that co-creator Craig Thomas promises that the showrunners have their penchant for random celebrity drop-ins under control. If bringing in Britney Spears was really necessary to lock down a fourth season than I'm certainly grateful, but enough is enough. Lucky, Thomas apparently thinks so too: "Our core audience turns in to see those five characters," he says. "We're not 'The Love Boat.' "

Amen, brother. And on that note, I unfortunately still have to go to work. Peace out.