NBC. Thursdays at 930.
Starring: Joel McHale, Chevy Chase, Danny Pudi, Alison Brie, Gillian Jacobs, Yvette Nicole Brown, John Oliver, and Donald Glover
Community seems to suffer from the same problem that caused me to abandon Parks and Recreation, just not to the same degree. That problem is, well, what is enthralling enough about this group of people that I should watch it? This then gets branched into the two real problems with communities pilot: Who actually are these people and how do they (and the show) exist outside the classroom/college?
That first paragraph makes it seem like I didn’t like Community. Which is not really the case. It was enjoyable. There were definitely a few moments where I was solidly laughing. Joel McHale is actually really good, on his game and sharp as Jeff, the lead character, a suspended lawyer who ahs to go back to school. McHale has always shown a really quick wit and a knack for snarky delivery, so this isn’t really a surprise. I expected Joel McHale to be good, he was.
But, and this gets back to the earlier part of this review, he is the ONLY character to be developed beyond personality tics. We get like two lines of exposition for everyone else and then these “quirks” or, as I call them, “Chances for fun or extreme annoyance” (it’s a mixed bag, in this group). A character is more than a background summary and a tic, and pretty much no one in the pilot is a full-fledged character. As I said, some of them show promise. The show deserves another shot if only for the fact that pilots are always a little shaky on fleshing everything out; I mean, you have to intro the whole show, you can’t be expected to intro every element of it. Currently, Community is a weaker element of NBC’s comedy stable, hopefully with more time it irons out who these characters are and lets us actually experience them. For now, with the better Modern Family, I might have to say ABC has the better overall comedy lineup. But Community is good enough to get…
Rating: I’ll Give It Another Shot
