After years of fan outcry, the beloved cult NBC sitcom Community is finally getting its #sixseasonsandamovie. The show’s feature film, starring most of the original cast, will debut on Peacock in 2023. Until then, all six seasons of the show will remain available to watch on Netflix for fans to rewatch and new fans to experience for the first time.
Communitywas the first show by Rick & Morty co-creator Dan Harmon, and features a lot of similar jokes to his more popular animated series. These ten jokes from throughout the show’s several seasons are not only surprising and clever in and out of context, but define each character’s senses of humor perfectly.
10/10 Elroy Encourages White People
Keith David becomes a new member of the Save Greendale Committee in the show’s sixth season as Elroy Patashnik. Formerly a VR game developer, he is convinced by Dean Pelton to begin taking classes at Greendale. The penultimate episode of the show, “Wedding Videography,” is Elroy’s best chance to shine.
While attending the wedding of Garrett and his girlfriend Stacy, Elroy picks up the habit of encouraging white people throughout the day. However, when it’s revealed that Garrett and Stacy are cousins, Elroy perhaps takes it too far:
Now this is a man who knows how to marry his cousin!
9/10 Shirley Gives Birth In Class
Episode 22 of Season 2 is a climactic moment for the sophomore season of Community. After Shirley is pregnant for most of the season (with dubious answers to the father), she goes into labor during the study group’s anthropology class. Worried that she won’t make it to the hospital on time, Shirley exclaims:
I don’t want my child’s first memory to be Starburns!
This is of course in reference to Starburns (a.k.a Alex), a classmate of the study group’s who has star-shaped sideburns. Starburns, a recurring character throughout Community, is played by Dino Stamatopoulos, a writer and producer on Community.
8/10 Jeff’s Worldview In The Pilot
Joel McHale makes a strong debut in the first episode of Community as Jeff Winger, a disbarred lawyer heading to community college for a quick bachelor’s degree. However, he doesn’t plan to put much work into his education, convincing his former client Ian Duncan, a professor, to get him the answers to every test in his curriculum.
While Duncan is morally opposed to helping Jeff cheat, McHale busts out Winger’s classic charm and persuasion skills to convince Duncan to bend the rules for him:
I discovered at a very early age that if I talk long enough, I can make anything right or wrong. So either I’m God, or truth is relative, in either case, booyah!
7/10 Pierce’s Last Regrets
During the season 2 episode, “Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking,” Pierce pretends to be on his deathbed, so he can emotionally manipulate the rest of the study group. The episode is a highlight for most Community fans, featuring fan-favorite scenes featuring Troy meeting LeVar Burton, but the episode’s funniest moment certainly belongs to Pierce.
After meeting with Jeff, Pierce reveals that he’s contacted Jeff’s estranged father to visit the former lawyer. Discussing his own regrets, Pierce says:
I was never one to hold a grudge, Jeffrey. My father held grudges. I’ll always hate him for that.
6/10 Abed Finds The True Meaning Of Christmas
Another special episode in season 2 finds Abed imagining the world as a stop-motion Christmas special. In reality, Abed’s having a delusional episode due to his mother’s abandonment of him, but in his fantasy he’s searching for the true meaning of Christmas. With the help of the study group, he eventually finds it, but it’s not what he wanted.
Opening an endless Russian nesting doll of Christmas presents, Abed finds a DVD of the first season of LOST. Realizing what it means, Abed sadly sighs:
It’s the first season of LOST on DVD. It’s a metaphor, it represents a lack of pay-off.
5/10 Annie Won’t Fail A Class
Season 3, Episode 17, “Basic Lupine Urology,” takes on the Law & Order formula. After a group project in their Biology class in sabotaged, Annie and Jeff become detectives trying to find the culprit. However, it’s early in the episode where Annie says this line in response to their teacher offering to give them a passing grade for their failed assignment:
A passing grade? Like a C? Why don’t I just get pregnant at a bus station?
What makes this such a quintessential Annie line is how it reflects her type-A personality, unwilling to let her grades drop even as low as a C. At the same time, it embodies the darker side of Annie’s personality, the one that got addicted to pills in high school.
4/10 Dean Pelton’s Newest Fetish
An early episode in season 1 sets off a recurring joke that lasts the rest of Community‘s freshman season. During a private moment in his office, Dean Pelton is watching a video on the Internet of an adult man dressed as a Dalmatian dancing. His reaction, which is now an iconic moment in the show, is:
This better not awaken anything in me.
In subsequent episodes of the show, it’s clear that this video has, in fact, awakened something in the Dean. One episode finds him opening up a box with a Dalmatian costume inside before hiding it as someone enters. The finale memorably has him inviting several individuals in Dalmatian costumes to come to Greendale’s end-of-year prom.
3/10 Chang Becomes A Detective
In season 3, Chang accepts a job as a security guard at Greendale after spending the summer living in the school’s vents. Quickly, Chang begins to treat the job like he’s a detective, with his voiceover narrating his inner monologue. However, this quickly becomes a series of nonsensical and absurd deductions made with no real reasoning behind it.
At one point, Chang begins to have suspicions about a matchbook he finds from Arizona Matchbook Company. Holding the matchbook up the mirror, he amazes himself with his very stupid discovery:
Arizona backwards is still Arizona!
It’s not.
2/10 Britta Loses Her Underwear
In season 5, episode 4, “Cooperative Polygraphy,” the study group undergoes a lie detector test arranged by Pierce as part of his will. It quickly devolves into Pierce using the test to, again, emotionally manipulate the group by revealing each other’s secrets. At one point, he reveals that Jeff has kept a box of underwear of women he’s slept with, including Britta.
Britta, stunned by the revelation, exclaims to Jeff:
You told me a hawk stole them! You exploited me and made me believe in a slightly more magical world!
Nevertheless, Jeff is not ashamed of his secret, though he does gross out the women of the study group in another great line by claiming the underwear has to be “won in battle.”
1/10 Troy’s Takedown Of Britta
Well before the two characters become a romantic item in seasons 3 and 4, Britta was simply the buzzkill of the group. In the season 1 episode “The Science of Illusion,” Britta is determined to prove that she can be fun after Troy says this line to her:
You’re more of a fun vampire, because you don’t suck blood, you just suck.
The only thing worse than Britta’s expression after Troy says this is what she does to prove she’s not a buzzkill. Trying to enact a prank on Chang, Britta accidentally causes a cadaver to fall out of a Greendale window, causing disarray on the campus and banning pranks. At least her buzzkill nature led to one of many fantastic quotes by Donald Glover.
