Time and time again this season, we’ve seen that the best way to bring the Greendale study group together is to pit them against each other. It’s essentially Sitcom Writing 101, but the ways the show would continue to generate conflict without alienating its characters or making them unlikeable is its secret weapon. This is at the heart of Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking, and it’s no coincidence that it’s a great episode of the show. Community’s legacy may be tied to its ability to deftly break from the traditional sitcom format – and it certainly deserves that distinction – but the magic trick of this episode is in how it breaks down its characters.

First, a note: one of these spots would go to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons but, because of a plot point involving blackface, Netflix and Hulu removed the episode in 2020, and I had no other way to view it.

Unlike previous entries in this series, I’m going to kick things off with the second chronological episode this time, Asian Population Studies. Not because I believe it’s superior to Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas, but more close to the contrary. Whereas Christmas is one of the show’s best episodes ever, Asian Population Studies doesn’t leave much of a lasting impression. It’s a perfectly fine (and funny!) episode that comes at the midpoint of the season; it just so happens to be amongst a sea of knockout episodes that would go on to be much more memorable.

Memory is a funny thing sometimes. In some cases, it can conflate how you remember a certain moment – or, in this case, an episode of television – and sometimes, you can still pinpoint an emotion and flash back to how you reacted to something 12 years ago. Both come into play with how I remembered this week’s installments. In the former, we have Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design, and in the latter, Mixology Certification. Both are excellent episodes of Community, and both stand in the upper echelon of the show at large, for vastly different reasons. 

Maybe it’s by absolute coincidence, but I’ve enjoyed how each of these entries has given us a little of everything that Community did so well. First, you have the completely original offerings in Aerodynamics of Gender, followed by the goofball earnestness of the conspiracy thriller spoof in Cooperative Calligraphy. Both episodes really bring into focus that season two won’t exactly have an overarching plot to speak of. Sure, the characters grow and change from the premiere to the finale, but Dan Harmon wasn’t really interested in crafting a season-long narrative beyond “the school year.” Watch any episode in any order and, outside of a few callbacks and character details, you’ll probably have the same experience.

In my mind, Community is a show that has had a lasting footprint across the pop culture landscape, and feels a bit like an afterthought at the same time. The show essentially launched the careers of many big names still working steadily today, both in front and behind the camera. And yet, I don’t know how many people outside of my age group point to the show as one of the sterling examples of the Golden Age of TV that kicked off in the late 2000’s. So this season should prove to be an interesting experiment to determine where I land on the show’s lasting legacy. After the success of the back half of season one of the show, Dan Harmon had the wind at his back with season two, in spite of the show’s poor performance in ratings and the general lack of support from the NBC brass.