Community fans are the most ride or die groupies a TV show can ever wish for. They resurrected the show after it was canceled twice, and now seven years, a billion fan podcasts and thousands of “six seasons and a movie” hashtags later, Peacock has announced official plans for a Community movie coming in 2023.
I finally watched Community during Covid lockdown on Netflix. I had already watched The Office, 30 Rock, Parks and Rec and New Girl to death and needed new terrible fictional people to revolve my boring life around. I was also desperate for something emotionally undemanding, where no one gets murdered, sex trafficked, or has visions of an upside-down chess board at bedtime.
I was desperate for something emotionally undemanding, where no one gets murdered, sex trafficked, or has visions of an upside-down chess board at bedtime.
I liked the show in all its weird, flawed glory. I can’t explain it, but it has a hold over you, like a hot, toxic ex-boyfriend who’s fun but makes little to no sense. And even though your relationship has run its course, you like to check in once in a while, revisit old times.
I was hooked, but I was a hundred years late to the Community watch party, so no one wanted to hear my very profound thoughts and observations. I occasionally listened to podcasts to feel like I had like-minded friends. I learned a lot, mainly that “shipping” (from the word relationship) means to root for a favorite couple and that the Community fandom does not fuck around. I have never committed to anything the way Community fans have rallied around this show. The movie’s existence is all due to their relentless loyalty and hashtagging.
They may have actually done too good of a job. We really didn’t need seasons five and six. They were almost unwatchable. And it’s not only because Troy Barnes (Donald Glover) and Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase) left in season five, followed by Shirley Bennett’s very quiet Irish goodbye. It is all of those things but also season five is when Dan Harmon returned as showrunner. He was definitely going through something, because life got bleak for the study group.
Seasons five and six were a cry for help.
The only reason I pushed through was because Joel McHale, who played handsome cult leader Jeff Winger, kept getting hotter. It was a gradual, seamless rise until season 4, with some really bad hair and wardrobe choices sprinkled in between, to an acceleration of hotness in the following two seasons of despair and confusion. In fact, the hotter Joel McHale got, the more manic the show got. This is a scientific fact indicated by this definitely peer reviewed graph I made up.
I don’t understand why we haven’t see more of McHale as a heartthrob seducing rich women on a sinking ship or falling in love with his sassy, go-getter high school sweetheart after she returns to her hometown in Alabama. It’s finally time for Hollywood to give tall, handsome white men with abs of steel the roles and representation they deserve in film and television. The injustice has gone on long enough.
There’s talk about who’s returning and who’s not. I believe at this point Yvette Nicole Brown and Donald Glover are not officially returning, though according to Joel McHale in this clip below, they are. The movie will be absolutely disappointing if all the main, original characters including Deal Pelton (Jim Rash) and Chang (Kim Jeong) don’t return.
I hope that includes Pierce (Chevy Chase). I know we’re supposed to dislike both him and his character for being problematic on and off screen but he had some of the best, most masterfully delivered lines. The group constantly put his racism, misogyny and homophobia on blast which serves an effective purpose. (You know what was actually racist? Shirley’s friends not recognizing those Black kids are not hers when Chang kidnaps them from school. That’s racist). I hope the show finds a way to bring him back from the dead. They’ve made weirder turns on that show so I’m optimistic.
I also hope for some justice for Shirley. How did she not get a love interest ever besides her cheating on again/off again ex-husband? Cast Idris Elba as her new boyfriend who worships the ground she walks on and encourages her sandwich shop. Sometimes I really wondered whether they had any women of color or mothers on that writing staff because it seemed they either had no idea what to do with Shirley or just didn’t care. The movie is your chance to redeem yourselves, writers.
I also hope to see some of the recurring characters make a comeback, like Professor Duncan (John Oliver), Magnitude, Small Nipples Vaughn, Todd “non taken” Jacobson, Vicki, Garett, basically the Better Call Saul cast, and of course, Annie’s Boobs. (RIP to the legends, Leonard and Dr. Marshall Kane).
I don’t know what to expect from this movie, but if Joel McHale’s current level of handsomeness is any indication, it’s going to be a mess from the darkest timeline.
I can’t wait.
