Community Finally Gets the Crown - Best Comedy on TV.

It’s been building up to this all year.

For the past eight months, two shows have shouldered their way past the rest of the network TV comedies, in a fight to the death for top comedy. Those two shows have shown constant innovation, rapid-fire comedic sensibilities, and, above all, a firmly consistent style. These programs are ABC’s Modern Family, and NBC’s Community. This is the first season for both of these shows. I’ve watched every single episode since they have premiered, and I have yet to see a bad installment from either. And then last night’s Community happened. It wasn’t just a great episode, and it wasn’t just the best episode of the season. It was, without question, a virtuoso piece of comedy television—the strongest that I have seen in several years, perhaps since the days of Fox’s Arrested Development.

We should have known this was coming. Over the past season, Community has utterly hit its stride, creating a lovable ensemble, and week after week finding the right balance of heart, character, quips, and pop culture references. Loads and loads of pop culture references. I would have thought that the Goodfellas-inspired story they did a few weeks back would have been the pinnacle of how far they can take their game of parodying film and TV shows, but I was wrong. What’s nice about Community, however, is that this isn’t Family Guy. It’s not a barrage of bizarre callbacks to random things that don’t produce a plot—it’s always organic to the matters at hand (granted, it helps to have one character who never quits relating his life to TV and movies in cases like this). Most shows use shout-outs out of laziness, Community always does it to further a story that is about our lead characters. That’s more fun, and more rewarding.

The series also takes delight in pairing up members of the ensemble in different ways: Britta/Jeff, Pierce/Troy, Annie/Jeff, Shirley/Britta, Abed/Troy, Annie/Shirley, Britta/Pierce, etc. Approaching the end of the first season, I think it’s safe to say we’ve learned about the relationship that every member of the cast has with every other. It’s so nice to see a show that is always experimenting.

So. Last night. It all began innocently enough. There was petty bickering between series regulars Jeff (Joel McHale) and Britta (Gillian Jacobs). Banter amongst the rest of the cast, including media-savvy Abed (Danny Pudi), who delivered this gem: “To be blunt, Jeff and Britta are no Ross and Rachel. Your chemistry and sexual tension are putting us all on edge, which is ironically, and hear this on every level, keeping us from being friends.” Explanation of the school’s upcoming paintball competition, top prize TBD (Troy: “I want TBD!”). Objecting to the gang’s constant needling of his and Brita’s Unresolved Sexual Tension, Jeff goes to his car to a take a quick nap.

One hour later. Jeff wakes up to a deserted campus, papers and paint strewn everywhere. Far-off cries fill their air. Even the sky is foreboding. Before long he finds survivors, and soon begins a hilarious send-up of action movie and horror tropes, with specific references to: 28 Days Later, Mad Max, Die Hard, Predator, The Matrix, Rambo: First Blood II, Battle Royale, Scarface, The Warriors, Terminator (1 & 2), John Woo’s The Killer, and plenty more. Over the course of 20 minutes and change, the show mercilessly satirized dialogue clichés (“Come with me if you don't want paint on your clothes!”), action set-ups (the bullet-time firing of two paintball guns, or Jeff’s escape from the exploding library), suspense sequences (Abed’s shocking discovery in the men’s room), horror movie locales (the school that has now become a dilapidated battleground), and general genre conventions (like the black kid who dies first). It was exhausting, and exhilarating; the kind of comedy where you laugh once at the jokes and then again at the zeal with which it was paced. The direction, by filmmaker Justin Lin (Fast & Furious, Better Luck Tomorrow) was so nimble and expansive that I defy anyone to show me a more ambitiously filmed piece of TV comedy this year. The scoring was spot-on, the stunt work was first-rate, and they managed to sneak in some wicked potshots at a certain Fox show in the process: when the school deteriorates into tribes, the glee club taunts the study group with “Hit Me With Your Best Shot.” Sweet little Annie (Allison Brie) makes herself a target simply so she can shout at them how uninspired their selections are.

And yet what made it a great episode was not just that it was chock-a-block full of pop culture. It might sound on the surface like a piece of intentional irrelevancy, but it actually brought to a head conflicts and themes that have been boiling throughout the entire season. To see the school, and then the group itself, turn on each other over the grand prize (Priority Registration for next semester) brought into focus what much of Community season 1 has been about: the struggle between selfishness and the responsibility of being part of something larger. Several episodes have had characters teetering on the brink of throwing their friendships away in order to achieve something for themselves, and it was clever to see that idea brought to its most literal level yet.

And then there is Jeff and Britta. Their unresolved sexual tension has provided the backbone for much of this season’s narrative, as is writ in sitcom law. Last night was…well, let’s say it was a pivotal moment in their relationship. But it was more than that. It was an opportunity for two characters to come clean about themselves to each other, to provide a release for characterizations that have been building all season. The character of Britta Perry is not exactly my favorite on Community, and I used to just plain dislike her: her attempts at do-goodery (and rejection of Jeff’s selfishness) felt a lot less sweet when informed by her own shallow desire to be seen as such a nice person. I got the feeling she was being written inconsistently, accidentally exposing her hypocrisy. Only later did I start to theorize that this was intentional, and last night made that explicit. The third act of last night’s episode had only her and Jeff still standing (sort of), and their competition for who would get the prize, and what would be done (give it to the more-deserving Shirley or keep it?) brought each character into sharp relief. It’s rare to see a sitcom wiring in such characterization so subtly: to have fun with a person’s inconsistencies and yet make the character cohere.

There are still two more episodes to go in Community’s freshman season, but I think I can safely that last night’s installment will be considered the best episode of the season. I expect a season finale that ties up some loose ends, creates some more, and more importantly, has several mentions from Abed about the nature of season finales, and how it’s expected they tie up loose ends and create some more.  Of course, the joke about Abed is the fact that he is self-aware, because he knows he’s a character on a TV show. But, also, he isn’t, because he is a real person that only relates to everything like it’s a TV show, and his friends want him to open up. Study that balance, and the character who provides it, and you have a key to the multiple levels that Community operates on as a comedy. Every single week.