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On Milwaukee choose Community as one of the best TV shows of 2009:

1. NBC’s Thursday night comedies. Just as it was in the days of “Seinfeld” and “Cheers,” and “The Cosby Show” before that, NBC’s Thursday night is again must-see TV.

It starts at 7 p.m. with the newest entry, “Community,” created by ComedySportz alum Dan Harmon and featuring Marquette gradDanny Pudi. That’s followed by the most improved show of 2009, Amy Poehler’s “Parks and Recreation,” which has moved beyond its roots as a clone of the documentary style of “The Office.”

This year’s “The Office” is dealing with the uncertainties of the economic mess we’re all in and “30 Rock” remains the daffiest show on television.

The best way to digest the night is to DVR the lineup and watch each episode twice, just so you don’t miss all the hidden gems.

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What seemed in early fall a rare outbreak of inspired television writing has in recent months become something rarer—not an epidemic, exactly, but a season impressively stocked with creations drenched in wit and enterprise, all unmistakably reflective of a drive toward formula busting. These things are, of course, always relative. In television these days, one quality hit a season—especially in the impossibly snare-infested comedy genre—seems a lot; two is like breaking the bank.

Yet we’re now finishing a television year that has seen both the emergence of ABC’s uproarious“Modern Family” and its less dazzling but wonderfully mordant lead-in, “The Middle,” about another kind of modern family—a brew of consistent charm and character with a bracing hint of nightmarish reality underlying its sitcom fun. Add to these the most unexpected gem of all—NBC’s “Community,” a satire set in the unlikely precincts of a community college. Its creator, Dan Harmon, was, by his own account, inspired by the semester he once spent at one in pursuit of an effort to strengthen ties with his girlfriend. That relationship didn’t work out in the end, but, happily, the same can’t be said of this whip-smart series about an improbably compelling band of adults taking classes at a sunny academic hell called Greendale Community College.

…

The same can be said for “Community,” which stars Joel McHale (“The Soup”) in top form as Jeff—a glib but undeniably attractive former lawyer who has gone back to school because his license to practice was revoked (he’d apparently skipped going to law school). The difference here is that the laughs derive entirely from the show’s flinty heart. There are lapses, to be sure, when its creators can’t resist the old siren call—the sitcom impulse to dump a little treacle into the brine. That way lies ruin, as most writers of satire ultimately learn. And “Community” is, despite its doses of warmth and fellowship, nothing but satire in its look at the adults in the study group Jeff runs. They’re all strivers, most of them bent on getting close to Jeff because this disbarred lawyer seems a person of stature. These characters are the product of cold-eyed observation, exquisite at its meanest, particularly when it focuses on an older student—the insufferably pompous Pierce, a character to which Chevy Chase brings considerable authority, and not surprisingly. None of this is to say the series doesn’t offer more varied targets of amusement. Its picture of the sorry lot of obsessives and other deranged types in charge of delivering learning at the college, and of the assorted weasels and buffoons serving as deans and other high officials, is priceless.

Read the full story on the WSJ

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Tim Goodman from the SF Gate choose the best comedies fo the year and #13 is Community:

13. “Community,” NBC. Sometimes superb, sometimes creatively erratic, this freshman series about a group of diverse students and a strange faculty at a community college is now hitting more than missing. It, too, has a lot of potential and has rewarded those sticking with it as the writers hone the characters.

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DVR Play Ground gave NBC a “D” in their Mid-Season report card. One of the bright points– Community:
The Good: The Biggest Loser. Three words that not only sum up NBC’s only bright-spot ratings wise this fall, but also the fact that the downward losing spiral that the Peacock Network currently finds itself in has not just one, but two benefits for us TV Addicts. (1) It has set the network’s bar for renewal far lower, allowing little-watched laughers such as PARKS AND RECREATION, 30 ROCK (and hopefully COMMUNITY) to flourish, and (2) Forced NBC to try harder, as evidence by recent deals that has the network paying top dollar for big name talent such as J.J. Abrams and David Tennant.

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We hope you enjoyed Community Episode 11 as much as we did.

Some reviews of the episode’s include:
Daemons TV , with their favorite quotes:
Troy to Abed on Abed’s basketball abilities – “It’s impossible to guard you, your eyes are too gentle and mysterious”.
Troy – “Don’t eat the crab dip Yeeah, yay!”
Shirley on the male anatomy – You’ve never seen one on the internet, or in pictures, or Harvey Keitel’s”?
The ‘Wheel of Remorse’ at the STD fair
Jeff on horses – “Can you ever real ‘own’ a horse?”
Abed when preparing to arm wrestle Troy – “I need to wait for a more inspiring song, this score isn’t right”
Pierce’s date: “she thinks that Monty Python is the evil snake from Harry Potter”.

And TV Squad:

Another solid episode; this show is really in its groove right now. The new relationship Jeff has established with Britta; the one without him trying to get into her pants every week, or her accusing him of it every week; is really working for me. I like this group more as a bunch of friends than a group of potential hook-ups. At least for awhile.

Nighty night Troy

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M. Garrett Bauman, an emeritus professor of English at Monroe Community College in New York, however, doesn’t like the characters from Community.

In an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Bauman argues that the show’s cast of quirky characters (a divorcee, a former football star and a once straight A high school student to name a few) are not representative of students at a real community college. Bauman says the show overlooks people too poor to go to an expensive four-year university, people on welfare, high school slackers etc.

Here are some highlights from his article:

Don’t expect a realistic portrayal of community-college life any more than you expect as much in other comedies about social institutions like M*A*S*H, Scrubs, or The Office. Like them,Community satirizes the institution while making the people empathetic or endearingly eccentric because of the crazy place they inhabit. Community is the usual story about us. The subtext says we are caring survivors despite our institutions’ attempts to debase and destroy us.

While Community conveys community colleges’ diversity in age, gender, and race, it conspicuously avoids students in career programs or those who are truly academically weak or unprepared. Its core seven all have personality, brains, and zest. Despite the jab at air-conditioner repair, our characters take film, astronomy, and traditional liberal arts; most have no stated career goals. I suppose students truly shattered under life’s wheel and those seeking technical jobs don’t make for perky television material…

Community does not capture the real community college—as if there were one. But neither doM*A*S*H, Scrubs, or The Office capture actual institutions. Comedy exaggerates, romanticizes, and deconstructs. Community plays off stereotypes and clichés, reinforcing and puncturing them at the same time. Another college show currently airing, Greek, about sororities and fraternities, is just as absurd, with elegant houses, formal flirting lessons, and “unhappy face” cupcakes sent to decline invitations. It enacts the same myth as Community: People muddle forward despite the institutions that are supposed to nurture them but don’t.

The reality—of strangers working closely together for 15 weeks on commuter campuses, working long hours to pay bills, poring over diagrams of air conditioners or Spanish verb forms, and then going their separate ways—is too cold for comedy. The show may miss the intellectual life of community colleges and ignore the prosaic struggles many students face, but it has created precisely what is often missing in real community colleges—community.

[Source: umdbk.com and Chronicle ]

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TV.com has both Community and Modern Family has the best new comedies of the season, but they are trying to decide which one of them is the best. Here are some of their thoughts:

Cast: This critical category is a tight one. Community boasts Chevy Chase, the man who once played Fletch, and Joel McHale, the man who could play him today. Add fall’s freshest faces—Danny Pudi and Donald Glover—and you’re looking at TV’s most surprising new motley crew of a cast. But Modern Family has Ed O’Neill, who is looking like an Emmy candidate right now, and adding Ty Burrell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Eric Stonestreet, Sofia Vergara, and a bushel of funny child actors only seals the deal. Point: Modern Family.
Guests/Recurring Actors: Like sexually frustrated couples, comedies need to throw others into the mix to spice things up. Shelley Long in ModFam’s “The Incident” was hilarious. It was nice to see Diane Chambers get absolutely lubed on booze and destroy a wedding. Unfortunately, Ed Norton’s appearance as Spandau Ballet’s bass player was a disaster, despite the “Fandau” gag. Elizabeth Banks was so-so, but just reminded us how much we’d rather watch Cam and Mitchell instead. On Community, John Oliver’s portrayal as Jeff’s nemesis/friend (frienemesis?) is hysterical, and I don’t care what anyone says, Ken Jeong as Senor Chang is muy awesomo. Fred Willard’s upcoming role as Phil’s dad in Modern Family could change our minds, but for now, it’s Point: Community.

The Winner: Just a second as I count the votes… it’s Modern Family by the official score of three to two! But let’s face it, we’re all winners here! Except for Community, which is slightly less of a winner. But in this race, there’s no shame in second place. Let’s just be happy we actually have “best new comedy” candidates this season. Modern Family, stop by the TV.com offices anytime to pick up your trophy.

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Maureen Ryan has her mid-season review of the TV shows, and this is what she has to say about ‘Community’:
“Community,” 7 p.m. Central Thursday, NBC: Tonally, “Community” can’t quite decide what it wants to be — a parody of network comedies, a broad, loud sitcom full of stock characters or a subtle, “Office”-style mockumentary featuring real-seeming people. But at this point, most of the “Community” characters are still too one-dimensional and there’s a swaggering smugness to Jeff (Joel McHale) that remains off-putting, despite the half-hearted attempts to humanize him. The most reliable source of comedy is the breakout character Abed (Danny Pudi), whose deadpan line readings are consistently hilarious. (My original review of “Community” is here.)

Will I stick with it? Not sure. I may check it out intermittently, mostly for Abed.

Grade: B-

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The LA Times commented that ‘Community’ loses out to ‘Modern Family’, here are some of their reasonings:

“Community,” though, feels like a fourth wheel. Buried amid NBC’s Comedy of the Awkward, this show, about thrown-together students at a community college, is forced to lean on tricks native to those other shows but that are worse suited to this one’s premise. There’s no Michael Scott or Leslie Knope here. And it’s not that Jeff Winger would make for a great traditional hero, or even antihero: He’s generically slick, moderately intelligent and smarmy without cause. He’s not oblivious; he knows too much. Even though other characters — ascendant social outcast Annie (Alison Brie) and self-assured oddball Abed (Danny Pudi) — aspire to the “Office” mold, they’re actually remarkably normal and evenly drawn. (And in the case of Ken Jeong, as the Spanish professor Señor Chang, hilarious.)

Just because a character is unusual for prime time doesn’t mean he or she has to engage in odd behavior — that’s a tenet understood perfectly well by another new ensemble comedy with quirky characters, “Modern Family” (ABC, 9 p.m. Wednesdays). The characters here are just as unfamiliar to prime time — a gay couple with an adopted baby, a May-December romance. All together, “Modern Family” ends up riskier and stranger than “Community” but never feels forced.

Consider the shows’ use of music in its plot lines. Earlier this month, a “Community” secondary story revolved around a character writing a bitter breakup song about his ex, Britta (Gillian Jacobs), called, imaginatively, “Britta Is a B.” That resulted in an intervention by Pierce (Chevy Chase), who joined the band, then quit it, resulting in a second song: “Pierce Is a B.” Neither was memorable beyond the punch line.

By comparison, last month on “Modern Family,” Dylan (Reid Ewing) wrote a song for his girlfriend, Haley (Sarah Hyland). The result, “In the Moonlight (Do Me),” was sharply written, funny and memorable (boosted by a closing sequence when several other characters find themselves humming the song and an online companion video).

What do you think?

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Peoples Choice has their annual award, and “Community” is nominated for “favorite new TV comedy”.
Show your Community support and vote now for Community!