Community Season 2

Though it features a deceptively simple made-for-TV-comedy premise - a bunch of six seemingly mismatched Community College student form a study group, though precious little actual studying is depicted - Community always stretches its settings and scenarios to breaking point, a trend which has continued unabated, to say the least, in its current season. 

Complimented by typically fine acting and direction, Season 2 sees a few early changes rock the sextet, which is comprised of the debonair Jeff (Joel McHale), his feisty sometimes lover Britta (Gillian Jacobs), pop-culture junkie Abed (Danny Pudi), his best friend Troy (Donald Glover), studious, beautiful Annie (Alison Brie, Mad Men), recently divorced mother of three Shirley (Yvette Brown) and nefarious sexagenarian Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase).  There’s a surprise pregnancy, an off-the-wall and extremely entertaining Halloween episode, a two-part paintball-themed finale and, shock horror! by the season’s closing someone even leaves the group.  There’s also the usual bickering, banter and sexual tension, no shortage of loopy plot twists and plenty of screen time for the groups demented, endlessly amusing cohorts like Señor Chang (Ken Jeong) and Dean Pelton (Jim Rash, who in spite of his buffoonery on the show is an accomplished screenwriter, having penned the upcoming George Clooney vehicle The Descendants). 

Season 2 overplays its hand on one or two occasions, becoming a little too enamoured of its own newly rampant intertextuality in the process.  In addition to being an eyesore the animated episode “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas” is one of the least funny of the entire run thus far, and whereas previously every last comedic drop was wrung from a character’s foibles, this time around a real undercurrent of ugliness is displayed in a way that would have been unthinkable in Season 1.  Instead of playing at being the group’s bumbling patriarch, this time around Pierce comes across as a manipulative, amoral old fool, as when he takes advantage of Annie’s precarious financial situation (“Celebrity Pharmacology”) tactlessly and publicly blurts out a secret he had sworn to keep (“Asian Population Studies”) or willingly ruins a new source of enjoyment for Jeff and Troy out of his own jealousy (“Aerodynamics of Gender”).  Meanwhile Shelly’s sanctimonious hypocrisy reaches a fever pitch, and Abed’s continual references to ‘a show within a show’ and the like come across less as subversively meta than as merely grating. 

Still, one or two weak moments aside Community is one of the cleverest, hippest and most self-aware shows of the past several years, and when it fires it’s pert near unbeatable.  Fans of season one certainly won’t be disappointed, and with 24 episodes spread over four discs and some first rate extras viewers will be getting plenty of bang for their buck. 

Extras

Audio Commentaries

Deleted Scenes

Creating Wonderland featurette

Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas Original Storyboard Animatic

Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas In-Process Animatic

Season Two Cast Evaluations

DJ Steve Porter Remixes Season One

The Paintball Finale: From Script to Screen

Outtakes