Community

This show just gets better and better every week. From the ridiculous visual of Chevy Chase dressed in a sailing suit from the 70's to the racial humor that should be incredibly offensive but instead is somehow hilarious, this show keeps delivering funny lines and well crafted jokes.

Probably what resonates strongest with me are the racial stereotypes thrown out constantly. I was the youth pastor at a church that was ethnically diverse and am now the pastor of a church that has a mix of skin colors and our Wednesday night Bible studies often sound like some of the stuff said at the "Community" table. Take tonight's episode for instance. Pierce is going to take a one week sailing course for an easy credit and talks Shirley (a black woman) into joining him, Troy (A black man) says "A black on the water? This I gotta see" and joins the class. Then Pierce asks Abed to join by saying "Wanna join us? We got black people!" This is the kind of stuff that would get you killed if said around strangers or in public, but around friends it's acceptable because you know the hearts of the people speaking. It's real easy to do racial humor wrong and have the whole world against you but Community manages to find the balance between pushing the envelope and just being funny.

Tonight's episode was also funny for the movie references. Jeff, Abed and Annie take a pottery class that has one rule, no re-enactments of the famous pottery scene in "Ghost" and no singing of the Righteous Brothers song associated with it. Then he points at a poster of Patrick Swayze with a big red X over it. Sensing the class is a little taken aback by that the teacher says, "Oh it's OK. I had that made before he died." Again, using someone's death, especially if they have recently died, shouldn't be funny but it just is. Of course, because this is the only rule given in the class it is the first rule broken by Jeff who works on a guy's pot ala "Ghost" and when the teacher tries to throw him out he leaves singing Unchained Melody.

Meanwhile, over in the sailing class, Pierce can't do anything right and is in danger of making the entire class fail. The rule is that anything that falls off the boat is lost at sea and is gone forever even though the boat is in the middle of a parking lot because the nearest water in 2 and a half hours away. While trying to fix the sails, Pierce is knocked off the boat and the crew has to throw a life preserver to rescue him but a storm is coming and the crew has to decide whether to try and save him or sail out of reach of the (purely hypothetical) storm. In one of the funniest scenes I've seen in a long time, the crew decides to leave Pierce out at sea and not reel in the rope attached to the life preserver that Pierce is clutching. What makes this so funny is they aren't at sea and Pierce is on the ground four feet from the boat but this decision is made with all the gravitas of consigning someone to the icy waters of Davy Jones locker.

If you don't watch this show, do yourself a favor and start. It's smart, funny, well-written and well-acted. I haven't liked Chevy Chase in anything since the National Lampoon movies and he knocks it out of the park every week. Joel McHale is hilarious and every member of the cast is very smart and very good at their jobs. Abed alone is usually worth the price of admission every week, his comments and meta-commentary are always very funny. I have yet to watch a bad episode of this show and hope the cast and crew can keep up the good work.