Aired 2009 to 2015 (6 seasons
Created by Dan Harmon
Currently streaming on Hulu
For a brief introduction to this countdown, click here.
Last December, things-explaining website Vox published a piece on the extremely nebulous concept of "hopepunk." This was pilloried on the internet because 1) that's what the internet does, and 2) the piece tries to turn like four sentences from a Tumblr post into a whole thing. While I don't disagree that the article is a reach, one thing did briefly catch my eye - the definition of hopepunk itself:
"Hopepunk says that genuinely and sincerely caring about something, anything, requires bravery and strength. Hopepunk isn’t ever about submission or acceptance: It’s about standing up and fighting for what you believe in. It’s about standing up for other people. It’s about DEMANDING a better, kinder world, and truly believing that we can get there if we care about each other as hard as we possibly can, with every drop of power in our little hearts."
The piece later goes on to list various media that align with this idea, and to be clear it's a fine compendium. But for me, someone busy thinking about his favorite TV shows of the decade, this whole thing screamed Community.
For those unaware, Community is the story of a study group that forms at fictional Greendale Community College. Over the seasons, the group changes in composition and interpersonal relationships, but it always provides the backbone of Greendale's...well, community. And while the group is never a monolith, its ethos of earnestness can best be summed up by Abed's declaration "I guess I just like liking things." The group often fights for what it believes in - whether it be each other or the very existence of the only school that will accept them for who they are. And above all, they always end up committing to the bit wholeheartedly, whether it be winning a paintball fight or constructing the world's largest pillow fort.
If the show were just an advertisement for the virtue of this brand of earnestness combined with a bunch of parody episodes and meta commentary on making a TV show, it would still be fantastic. But what truly makes it worthy of greatness is something more. That something more is an entire treatise on the nature of cynicism in the form of the show's ostensible main character, Jeff Winger. Indeed, the character's journey from the pilot to the finale is made to show 1) how cynicism can become toxic, 2) how it can morph into earnestness, 3) and almost paradoxically, how earnest use of one's inherent cynicism can actually be useful.
Community very clearly has this in mind from day one, as the pilot establishes the whole template up front. Jeff is introduced as a recently disbarred lawyer who had faked his college degree and now needs to earn one in order to be reinstated. He sees everyone at Greendale as beneath him and tries to use his friendship with a professor to cheat on his first test. Even the formation of the study group itself was a function of Jeff's cynicism, as he only invented it as a scheme to attract Britta. But by the end of the episode his grand plans fail on all fronts, leading him to come clean to the group and deliver his first "Winger Speech" - the narrative device that reappears throughout the series in which Jeff regularly uses some combination of cynicism and actual feelings to rally the group and advance the story.
Lest you think that's all there is to Community, the pilot merely lays the groundwork. The rest of the series would go on to expand each of these thematic aspects and deepen the journey as a whole. The nature of Jeff's toxicity to himself and others is covered routinely, but never more incisively than in the series' finest episode, "Remedial Chaos Theory." The setting is a housewarming party at Troy and Abed's apartment and the central conceit is that Jeff rolls a die to determine who will go downstairs to meet the pizza delivery guy. Because this is Community, that means we experience the events of the episode based on each possible outcome. But this all comes crashing down at the end, when Abed reveals that Jeff just came up with the scheme to avoid being the one to have to get the pizza. And when that actual timeline plays out, we see that the rest of the group is better off in Jeff's absence (Annie gets to move out of her terrible apartment, Pierce doesn't burn bridges with Troy, etc). In a show that regularly uses high-concept premises to make a point, this is both the most intricate and revealing instance.
But of course, this show is fundamentally about moving away from this toxicity. We are given many, many examples of Jeff's journey from cynicism to earnestness. The sheer number of times Community does this is almost itself comical, and this motif often pops up even in episodes where Jeff is not the primary character. Some instances of this include:
- In the second episode, Jeff reluctantly teams up with Pierce for a skit for Spanish class. He ends up embracing the opportunity and bonds with Pierce while earning an "F-"
- In the two-parter concerning Troy and Abed's blanket/pillow fort rift, Jeff goes from a completely uninterested observer to someone who retreives their "imaginary friend hats" to help them reconcile
- Similarly, in season four's "Basic Human Anatomy," Jeff ends up playing along with Troy and Abed's Freaky Friday tribute to help them process their conflict and re-connect
- In "Documentary Filmmaking: Redux," Jeff initially participates in the Dean's new ad for Greendale to waste time but ends up committing fully and going mad in the process
These iterations of Jeff's transformation are clearly all over the map, ranging from absurdly comical to legitimately affecting (and sometimes both). But nonetheless, the clear takeaway is that the journey towards living a genuine life is constant and all-encompassing, and it's through the journey itself that one is transformed.
So what actually drives this transformation? Much like how the pilot provides the blueprint for this journey, the finale of Community brings us to the natural conclusion. With Abed and Annie moving toward the next chapters of their lives, the study group as we know it (which had since morphed into a committee to save Greendale) comes to an end. This leaves Jeff, originally the character with the strongest sense of purpose, directionless and at a crossroads. This being Community, the show deals with this by having everyone imagine their conception of a "seventh season." Because Jeff has come the furthest from where he originally was, he has the most difficulty settling on his ideal future and imagines several different scenarios. These hypotheticals present the whole spectrum of Jeff Winger, from the old cynic we know (the committee becomes Jeff and a bunch of sexy coeds) to someone who acknowledges that he will miss his friends and would do anything to keep them in his life. The inescapable conclusion is that Jeff's ideas of his future are based on every aspect of his past.
But overcoming this limitation doesn't require him to ignore all of this, which makes this final step of the journey the richest in the show. The Jeff Winger of the finale is not some perfectly earnest and kind person. He has not fully shed his cynicism or who he was before Greendale. The path to self-actualization in Community isn't erasure of one's self but instead acceptance and a desire to do better. Jeff becoming a teacher at Greendale doesn't mean he needs to become a completely different person nor would it be ideal for him to do so. Rather this timeline presents a path forward for him that wasn't available to the Jeff we met at the beginning of the show. And the reason for this is the literal community that Greendale opened his eyes to. After all, that's what this show's version of "hopepunk" is - the ability of a community to create a self-sustaining hope that tomorrow will be better.
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