Community Bests and Worsts

[mstaken]

This is the place to chat about the best and worst of the series: favorite and least favorite seasons, episodes, characters, intra-group friendships, plots, etc.

For starters, how would you guys rank the seasons from favorite to least favorite? And, just to make this as difficult as possible, no ties allowed :)  

[Splash]

If I had to rank the seasons, I'd go 1, 3, 2, 5, and 4.  

Season 1 started off slow and I thought it took them awhile to find their footing, but started to ramp up around episode 9 and got better from there.  Favorite episode of the season would have to be Modern Warfare.  I got so into that episode that I cheered at the end.

Season 3 has so many of my favorite episodes and that's the season where they found the perfect mix of absurd and character development.  Favorite episode is Remedial Chaos Theory.  I loved seeing a glimpse of how the group dynamics would have been different if you had taken out any of the characters.  And the darkest timeline made me laugh so hard that I had to pause it, because I was missing too much of what was going on.  

Season 2 is such a close third, but I didn't like the second paintball episode as much as the first and there were a couple of episodes that weren't very notable to me.  Favorite episode is Epidemiology, hands down.  Easily one of my top three Halloween episodes of any show.

I'm liking season 5 so far, but it's a bit uneven and I think it's lost some of its quirky charm.  I think that might be because we're not seeing much of the secondary characters like Leonard, Neil, and Garrett and it feels less like it's set on a college campus and could be anywhere.  Favorite episode would probably be Cooperative Polygraphy.  Making them take polygraphs is such classic Pierce and I loved Walton Goggins.  "And here's your sperm."  

I think that season 4 was just a mess, but not because Harmon wasn't around.  It's like they tried to capture the spirit of the earlier seasons, but didn't understand that what makes the show great isn't what the characters do, it's how layered the characters reactions are to what happens to them.  For example, in "Beginner Pottery" Jeff initially didn't care at all about the class and was just happy to coast to an easy A, but when he tried and failed, he started Goldbluming and had a meltdown.  I felt like season 4 would have allowed Jeff to have one of those emotions in an episode, but not both.  It was if they said, this week you are going to be uptight Anne or rebel Britta and that's how you're going to react to everything that happens in that episode, regardless whether or not you'd actually act that way.  Favorite episode would probably be Intro to Felt Surrogacy.  I liked the creative use of puppets.

[JanetMacklin]

Favorite episodes: Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design, Epidemiology, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Home Economics and Mixology Certification. Some tough calls were made in the determination of the above list. And you can probably infer that my season order would be two, one, three and four. Three had some really weak episodes for me - emphasis on Chang's wackiness, Jeff projecting his dad angst and so on.

Least favorite episodes- 21st Century Romanticism, most of season 4 but particularly the episode where Dean Pelton desperately wanted a rich, spoiled student to enroll. Jeff spent the majority of the episode in a barber shop with Pierce. Not one laugh the whole time. Not even Magnitude could save it.

[mstaken]

S2 is my favorite by a surprisingly wide margin. Then comes S1, S3 and, honestly, S4-S5 are tied for the dishonor of being in the cellar. It feels like somewhere along the line the show became less about developing its characters and storytelling in creative ways and more about just being obnoxiously weird for the sake of being weird. 

If I could keep just three episodes, they'd probably be The Psychology of Letting Go, Accounting for Lawyers and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons...and, yeah, I have slightly odd taste :)  

[Madness]

My rankings of the seasons

Season 1

Season 2

Season 3

Season 5

Season 4

[JanetMacklin]

 

honestly, S4-S5 are tied for the dishonor of being in the cellar. It feels like somewhere along the line the show became less about developing its characters and storytelling in creative ways and more about just being obnoxiously weird for the sake of being weird.

Same here. I skipped G.I. Jeff last night because I had no interest in it at all. In season 3 I would have defended the concept episodes but they don't surprise me anymore or mean anything concrete for the characters involved. That and, whether it's fair or not, so many of the hiatuses make me forget what it is I love about the show. And the fact that the show fails to deliver is worse.

[mstaken]

Now that we've had the finale, I can safely say that I thought this season was every bit as disappointing and delete-worthy as S4---even more so, as the expectations of a Harmon-helmed season were so much higher. 

And this show's tiresome teasing and wasted screentime re.  the Britta-Jeff-Annie not-even-really'ships'ships is easily a "worst" for me about this show. Just because they smugly wink at us while being obnoxiously trope-y and repetitive about it doesn't mean it's not still annoying to watch. In fact, it's even worse. 

[godonlyknows]

Ranking the seasons I'd go: 2, 1, 3 (and if I have to include them 5 then 4). Several episodes in season 3 are amazing and much better than all of season 1 but there are also several clunkers (especially Contemporary Impressionists) which bring it down to third. Season four never happened and I'm starting to think season 5 didn't either.

Best episodes: Mixology Certification and Psychology of Letting Go with about half of the rest of season 2 coming in a close second.

Best moments: the viewing each other as sexual prospects looks around the table, Annie hugging Pierce in Celebrity Pharmacology, Shirley's Halloween story, Greendale asylum, Shirley & Annie killing the blacksmith, this photo

Worst episodes (from first 3 seasons): Contemporary Impressionists, Custody Law and Eastern European Diplomacy & Messianic Myths

Worst moments (from first 3 seasons): The duh-off with the Schmitty kids, season 3 Chang, Annie not getting a storyline in the season 3 finale so I can't pretend it was a series finale.

[mstaken]

Psychology of Letting Go

Awww, it makes me so happy that I'm not alone in adoring this episode. Whenever I get so disillusioned with Community that I start to forget why I ever fell in love with it in the first place, I rewatch Psychology of Letting Go, Accounting for Lawyers and even Beginner Pottery (don't ask!) as an antidote.  

There are definitely clunkers in those first couple of seasons for me, but, honestly, even the comparatively subpar S1 and especially S2 episodes are more enjoyable for me than pretty much all of S4 and S5. S3 is weird for me; as godonlyknows noted, it's got high highs and low lows. I have a weird bitterness towards s3 in retrospect, because while I liked it much more than the two seasons that have followed, S3 feels like the ominous start of a lot of what's started to turn me off to the show. 

Edited April 18, 2014 by mstaken

[amensisterfriend]

Do you guys agree with this list of best episodes?

 

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/03/17/top-10-community-episodes

 

Whenever I see these lists I think about how Season 3 is such an odd season for me. It has some episodes that I would probably never again watch and at times a certain self-conscious, over the top weird-for-the-sake-of-being-weird feel that annoys me, but it also contains a few of my all-time favorite episodes---not just of Community, but of any sitcom ever. 

 

I think I'd rank the seasons 2, 3, 1, 4 and 5 (the jury's still out on 6), but it's a tough call! 

[amensisterfriend]

...Anyone want to name best/worst episodes from each season? Best/worst overall, regardless of season?! I'm really missing this show lately :) 

 

And best intra-group relationships...? Mine include Troy/Abed, Jeff/Abed, Annie/Shirley, Annie/Troy (mostly in the first few seasons), Troy/Pierce and Britta/Abed (if there had to be an intra-group romance, this one would actually have been my pick---I liked Britta more around Abed than pretty much any other character, and it could have been both amusing and sweet!)