Community (TV series)

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For local television, see Community television.
Community
Community title.jpg
Community title card
Genre Comedy
Created by Dan Harmon
Starring Joel McHale
Gillian Jacobs
Danny Pudi
Yvette Nicole Brown
Alison Brie
Donald Glover
with Ken Jeong
and Chevy Chase
Theme music composer The 88
Opening theme "At Least It Was Here"
Country of origin United States
No. of seasons 1
No. of episodes 15 (List of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s) Gary Foster
Russ Krasnoff
Dan Harmon
Anthony Russo
Joe Russo
Neil Goldman
Garrett Donovan
Location(s) Los Angeles City College, California
(location shoots) [1]
Camera setup Film, Single camera
Running time approx. 22 minutes
Production company(s) Krasnoff Foster Entertainment,
Russo Brothers,
Harmonious Claptrap
Distributor Sony Pictures Television
Universal Media Studios
Broadcast
Original channel NBC
Original run September 17, 2009 (2009-09-17) – present
External links
Official website

Community is an American comedy series currently airing on NBC about students at a community college in Denver, Colorado. The series premiered on September 17, 2009, and currently airs in the 8:00 pm ET time slot.[2] It was previously in the 9:30 pm ET time slot, beginning with its debut, but later relocated as of the fourth episode. The show is a joint-venture production between Universal Media Studios and Sony Pictures Television. The series pilot premiered on Facebook where it was viewable for a limited time. It has since been available on Amazon Video on Demand, the video-on-demand service for PlayStation 3, and Hulu.

Contents

[edit] Premise

Community centers on Jeff Winger (Joel McHale), a suspended lawyer who is back in school after his college degree is deemed invalid by the State Bar. The show focuses on Jeff's experiences attending fictional Greendale Community College in Greendale, Colorado, and the people he meets there. He has an obvious crush on Britta (Gillian Jacobs), a female student trying to get her life back on track, and receives perplexing life lessons from Pierce (Chevy Chase), an aged moist-towelette tycoon who has been married seven times.

Supporting characters and study group members include Abed (Danny Pudi), a film student, Shirley Bennett (Yvette Nicole Brown), a recently divorced mother attending college for the first time, ex-high school quarterback Troy (Donald Glover), and straight-laced nerd Annie (Alison Brie), who has had an unrequited crush on Troy since high school. Also recurring is unbalanced Spanish instructor Señor Ben Chang (Ken Jeong), psychology professor Ian Duncan (John Oliver), whom Jeff represented for a DUI, and the overwhelmed Dean Pelton (Jim Rash), who desperately wants his school to be more like a real university as well as extremely politically correct.

[edit] Cast and characters

The show revolves around the on-campus exploits of seven students who are connected through their Spanish study group at Greendale Community College. The series also features several recurring characters who are students and teachers at Greendale.

[edit] Main characters

Jeff is a snarky, glib lawyer attending Greendale Community College.[3] He was a lawyer until the Colorado Bar Association found out that he did not get a bachelor's degree from Columbia University but, in fact, got one that was "less than legitimate" from the country of Colombia. Jeff returns to college by attending Greendale Community College as a "deal" with the bar in order to prevent him from being disbarred. He was born in Denver, Colorado, and favorite kind of pizza is four cheese.[4] Jeff is attracted to fellow student Britta and constantly hits on her, despite her shooting him down constantly.[4]

Britta is a twenty-something woman attending Greendale after a somewhat aimless, varied career life. She dropped out of high school and joined the Peace Corps, trying to make a difference until she realized she was flat broke. [5] She then got her G.E.D and enrolled in Greendale.[5] She is often the voice of reason within the group. Although has unceasingly displayed a lack of romantic interest in Jeff, one episode shows she may have recently discovered secret feelings for him.[6]

The cast of Community (from left to right): Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi), Señor Chang (Ken Jeong), Shirley Bennett (Yvette Nicole Brown), Troy Barnes (Donald Glover), Britta Perry (Gillian Jacobs), Jeff Winger (Joel McHale), Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase), and Annie Edison (Alison Brie).

Pierce is an elderly moist towelette tycoon attending Greendale Community College. He created Hawthorne Wipes, the award-winning moist towelette company.[5] He is a world traveler, a toastmaster, magician, keyboardist and self-styled hypnotherapist, and considers himself a "quality of life person".[5] He enrolled in Greendale looking for companionship and popularity, but is held back by his clumsiness and his lack of tact. He is sometimes disoriented by youth culture while still trying to embrace it.

Abed is a Palestinian pop culture junkie who aspires to become a director and is currently taking film directing classes at Greendale Community College.[5] His original plan was to take business classes at Greendale to eventually help run his father's falafel restaurant, but this became his backup plan when Britta inspired him to switch professions.[5] He has emotion and sympathy for his new friends, but speaks almost monotonous, and in small doses. Despite his odd social behavior, Abed seems to glean certain insights on life by comparing his life to various television shows and movies. He even openly references the fourth wall, by referencing the dynamic of the characters in relation to the show, and can sometimes even predict what each of them will do that day. He also possesses many hidden talents that usually go overlooked. Abed and Troy usually close the show during the final credits, usually hanging out on the library couch.

Shirley is a recently divorced mother of two who attends Greendale Community College.[7] Shirley is a devoted Christian and is very sweet but also has thinly-veiled rage issues and gossips compulsively. She is proud to be an African American and a woman but appreciates not being defined by those characteristics.[7] She is taking classes which will allow her to market her baked goods, specifically her famous brownies.[7] She is very friendly to everyone, but sometimes has problems minding her own business or keeping secrets.

Annie is a repressed, straight-laced, Jewish eighteen-year-old who is in her first year at Greendale Community College.[8] She lost her college scholarship and dropped out of high school due to an addiction to Adderall. She likes to think of herself as an "old soul."[8] She used to study obsessively and pine after Troy, on whom she had a crush since high school. She's the most cheerful one of the group and tries to arrange activities. She is enthusiastic when it comes to helping out the school.

Troy is a former high school football star who now attends Greendale Community College.[9] Born and raised in Greendale, Colorado, Troy made a name for himself as the varsity quarterback of his high school football team, and was also prom king.[9] He rides his bike to class and now plays quarterback for the unathletic Greendale Human Beings.[9]

Señor Chang is the group's unhinged Spanish teacher.[10] He is the only main character who is not a member of the Spanish study group. He can be quite theatrical at times (once even faking his own death to get a rise out of his students), and also has a ton of ego and anger-management issues.

[edit] Recurring characters

  • Richard Erdman as Leonard Briggs, a married 67-year-old who is studying business at Greendale Community College.[11] In his free time he enjoys swimming.[11]
  • John Michael Higgins as Prof. Eustice Whitman, who is the accounting professor at Greendale Community College, the college's debate coach, and a strong believer in carpe diem.[12]
  • Erik Charles Nielsen as Garrett Lambert, a second year science student at Greendale Community College, who likes action and sci-fi movies.[13] He is an eagle scout, a former cub scout, a former pretend X-men, and a member of the psych club.[13]
  • John Oliver as Dr. Ian Duncan, a Britain-born professor of psychology at Greendale Community College. He acts as though he cares about everyone, mocks a lot of them behind their backs, and loses his temper when his ego is bruised.
  • Eric Christian Olsen as Vaughn Miller, an earth-friendly mellow student and lead singer of a rock band taking political-science and woodworking classes at Greendale Community College.[14] He enjoys hacky-sack, ultimate frisbee, hiking, mountain biking, sandals, and green tea. He's usually laid back and peaceful, but later started writing hate songs about Britta and Pierce after relationships with them turned sour. However, he and Annie began a relationship, much to the bemusement of Jeff and Britta. [14]
  • Bill Parks as Eric Wisniewski, student and member of the Greendale Human Beings football team.[15]
  • DC Pierson as Mark Miliot, a member of the student newspaper as well as one of the founders of the college sketch group the Greendale Goofaws. [16]
  • Jim Rash as Dean Craig Pelton, an educator for 10 years and a dean of Greendale Community college for four years, who strives to better the school, often asking favors of the students and trying to earn popularity.[17] He is also responsible for changing the school's team name from "The Greendale Grizzlies" to the "Greendale Human Beings."[17]
  • Dino Stamatopoulos as Alex "Star-Burns" Osbourne, a student at Greendale known for his sideburns shaped like stars. He is a member of the campus' "cool study group", and a true music lover. [18]
  • Lauren Stamile as Prof. Michelle Slater, a statistics professor at Greendale, who likes numbers, charts, and graphs.[19] She had a strict policy against dating students, but later became romantically involved with Jeff, her former student.

[edit] Guest stars

[edit] Episodes

Main article: List of Community episodes

The first season premiered on September 17, 2009 in the 9:30 PM ET timeslot. After three episodes, the show was moved to the 8:00 PM ET timeslot. In October 2009, it was announced that the show had been picked up for a full twenty-two episode season.[23] In January 2010, NBC ordered an additional three episodes for the first season, extending it to a total of 25 episodes.[24]

[edit] Webisodes

In addition to the regular episodes, NBC produced a series of webisodes, the newest ones are of Abed copying his friends' lives and turning them into student films. These webisodes are featured on the front page of the Greendale Community College website on the AV Department page.[25]

[edit] Production

[edit] Casting

Dan Harmon emphasized the importance of the cast to making the premise of the comedy work. "Casting was 95 percent of putting the show together," he said in an interview.[26] He had worked with several of the cast members earlier; Joel McHale, John Oliver, and Chevy Chase all had cameo roles in episode 9 of Water and Power, the short film series produced by Harmon for Channel 101.[27] Actor Chevy Chase had long been a favorite of Harmon. Though principally not very partial to sitcoms, Chase was persuaded to take the job by the quality of the show's writing.[26] Harmon saw similarities between Chase and the character he plays on the show. Though Chase has often been ridiculed for his career choices, Harmon believed this role could be redeeming: "What makes Chevy and Pierce heroic is this refusal to stop."[28] Harmon had to warn Chase against playing a "wise-ass" the way he often does in his roles, since the character of Pierce is a rather pathetic figure who is normally the butt of the joke himself.[28]

McHale, known from the E! comedy The Soup, was also (like Chase) impressed by Harmon's writing. He commented that "after reading Dan's script it was so head and shoulders above everything else that I was reading."[29] McHale appealed to Harmon because of his likeable quality, which allowed the character to possess certain unsympathetic traits without turning the viewer against him.[28] For the role of Annie, Harmon wanted someone who would resemble Tracy Flick, Reese Witherspoon's character from the 1999 movie Election. Originally the producers were looking for a Latina or Asian Tracy Flick, for greater diversity, but could not find any. Instead they ended up casting Alison Brie, known from her role as Trudy Campbell on Mad Men.[28]

[edit] Development

The premise of Community was based on Harmon's real-life experiences. In an attempt to save his relationship with his then-girlfriend, he enrolled in Glendale Community College northeast of Los Angeles, where they would take Spanish together.[26] Harmon got involved in a study group and, somewhat against his own instincts, became closely connected to the group of people with whom he had very little in common. "...I was in this group with these knuckleheads and I started really liking them," he explains, "even though they had nothing to do with the film industry and I had nothing to gain from them and nothing to offer them."[28] With this as the background, Harmon wrote the show with a main character largely based on himself. He had, like Jeff, been self-centered and independent to the extreme before he realized the value of connecting with other people.[28]

About the creative process behind the writing, Harmon says that he had to write the show as if it were a movie, not a sitcom. Essentially, he says, the process was no different from the earlier work he had done, except for the length and the target demographic.[28]

[edit] Filming

Filming the show involved a lot of improvisation, particularly from Chevy Chase. About Chase, Harmon said that he "tends to come up with lines that you can actually end scenes with sometimes."[30] He also mentioned Joel McHale and Donald Glover, the actor who portrays Troy, as adept improvisers.[29]

[edit] Reception

The show's general reviews have been mostly positive, scoring a 69 out of 100 with critics on Metacritic and a 8.0/10 with viewers.[31] Notably, David Bushman (Curator, Television) of the Paley Center for Media called Community the best new show of the fall season.[32]

Premiering in the 9:30pm ET spot on the evening of Thursday, September 17, the pilot episode had a viewership of 7.680 million. In the 18-49 audience, it had a rating of 3.7. As such, it held 93% of this audience from The Office, which had been in the previous time slot. The show was called the "bright spot for the night" for NBC, seeing how The Office was down 18% from the previous year's premiere, while Parks and Recreation, in the preceding time slot, was down 30%.[33]

[edit] Awards and nominations

The show received a nomination for "Favorite New TV Comedy" at the 36th People's Choice Awards.[34]

[edit] Ratings

Seasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of Community.

Note: Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps.
Season Episodes Timeslot (EST) Original Airing Rank Viewers
(in millions)
Season premiere Season finale TV season
1st 25 Thursday 9:30pm/8:30c
(September 17, 2009–October 1, 2009)
Thursday 8:00pm/7:00c
(October 8, 2009–present)		 September 17, 2009 May 20, 2010 2009–10 TBA 5.53 (to date)

[edit] References

 This article uses bare URLs. Please help improve this article by turning bare URLs into proper citations containing all of the information on the referenced work's title, author, date, and web site name, so that the article remains verifiable in the future.
This page may also be able to help find problematic links. Several templates are available for formatting. (February 2010)
  1. ^ http://hijodeeho.blogspot.com/2009/08/community-comes-to-lacc.html
  2. ^ Matt Mitovich (25 June 2009). "NBC ANNOUNCES FALL SERIES PREMIERE DATES". TV Guide Online. http://www.tvguide.com/News/FallTV-NBC-premieres-1007251.aspx. Retrieved 2009-06-25. 
  3. ^ http://www.nbc.com/community/bios/joel-mchale.shtml
  4. ^ a b http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/campus-connect/jeff-winger.shtml
  5. ^ a b c d e f http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/
  6. ^ http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/campus-connect/britta-perry.shtml
  7. ^ a b c http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/campus-connect/shirley-bennett.shtml
  8. ^ a b http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/campus-connect/annie-edison.shtml
  9. ^ a b c http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/campus-connect/troy-barnes.shtml
  10. ^ http://www.nbc.com/community/bios/ken-jeong.shtml
  11. ^ a b http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/campus-connect/leonard-briggs.shtml
  12. ^ http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/faculty-admin/eustic-whitman.shtml
  13. ^ a b http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/campus-connect/garrett-lambert.shtml
  14. ^ a b http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/campus-connect/vaughn-miller.shtml
  15. ^ http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/campus-connect/eric-wizniewski.shtml
  16. ^ http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/campus-connect/mark-millot.shtml
  17. ^ a b http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/faculty-admin/craig-pelton.shtml
  18. ^ http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/campus-connect/alex-osbourne.shtml
  19. ^ http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/faculty-admin/michelle-slater.shtml
  20. ^ http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/campus-connect/sabrina-schmuckle.shtml
  21. ^ http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/campus-connect/mike-chilada.shtml
  22. ^ http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/campus-connect/buddy-austin.shtml
  23. ^ Flint, Joe (2009-10-23). "NBC picks up `Community,' `Parks and Recreation' and 'Mercy' for season". Los Angeles Times. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2009/10/nbc-picks-up-community-parks-and-recreation-and-mercy-for-season.html. Retrieved 2009-10-31. 
  24. ^ "NBC orders more 'Trauma,' 'Parks,' 'L&O,' more". The Hollywood Reporter. 2010-01-20. http://www.thrfeed.com/2010/01/nbc-orders-more-trauma-parks-lo-more.html. Retrieved 20 January 2010. 
  25. ^ "AV Department". http://www.greendalecommunitycollege.com/av_dept/. Retrieved 2009-12-28. 
  26. ^ a b c "Fine writing spurs Chevy to move to ‘Community'". Omaha World-Herald. 2009-09-22. http://www.omaha.com/article/20091022/ENTERTAINMENT/710229873. Retrieved 2009-10-25. 
  27. ^ "Water and Power Episode Nine at Channel101.com". http://www.channel101.com/shows/view.php?media_id=2621. Retrieved 2009-09-12. 
  28. ^ a b c d e f g Hyden, Steven (2009-09-19). "How Dan Harmon went from doing ComedySportz in Milwaukee to creating NBC's Community". The A.V. Club. http://www.avclub.com/milwaukee/articles/how-dan-harmon-went-from-doing-comedysportz-in-mil,34126/. Retrieved 2009-10-25. 
  29. ^ a b Loggins, Emma (2009-10-19). "Joel McHale & Dan Harmon of Community". Fanbolt. http://www.fanbolt.com/tvinterview.php?id=244. Retrieved 2009-10-25. 
  30. ^ Elkin, Michael (2009-10-01). "College Daze". The Jewish Exponent. http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19728/. Retrieved 2009-10-25. 
  31. ^ http://www.metacritic.com/tv/shows/community
  32. ^ http://www.paleycenter.org/bushman-and-the-best-new-show-of-the-season-is
  33. ^ Gorman, Bill (2009-09-18). "TV Ratings Thursday: Strong: Bones; Weak: Parks, Office, Survivor; Good Start: Community". TV by the Numbers. http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/09/18/tv-ratings-thursday-strong-bones-weak-parks-office-survivor-good-start-community/27540. Retrieved 2009-10-25. 
  34. ^ Dawidziak, Mark (2009-11-10). "Patricia Heaton's 'The Middle' and Russo brothers' 'Community' nab nominations". Cleveland.com. http://www.cleveland.com/tv/index.ssf/2009/11/patricia_heatons_the_middle_an.html. Retrieved 04 December 2009. 

[edit] External links

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