Community Season Premiere: A Bajillion Thumbs Up

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, we have a winner here folks! Community was, in a word, fucking fantastic. It is funny and irreverent and smart. Finally, finally, Joel McHale will get the broader audience he deserves. Now, if you're a frequent reader of this space, you may know that I think Joel McHale and The Soup, his show on E!, are two of the funniest things in creation. The awesome, awesome, awesomely awesome thing here is that he brings his rapid fire, joke-a-minute, lots-of-pop-culture-references style to this show with very promising results.

Here, McHale plays Jeff, a lawyer who must return to community college to get the degree he lied about so that he won't get disbarred. Early on, Jeff sets his sights on Britta (a woman, not the water pitcher), but she's not interested in anything but the Spanish test tomorrow they have the next day. He, of course, tells her that he is a certified Spanish tutor, even though he can barely string together a coherent sentence in Spanish. (He does know lots of Spanish words though). He offers to tutor her one-on-one, but eventually winds up with a large study group comprised of the most motley crew I've seen in a while: Chevy Chase playing a creepy hippy (I think), a sassy black lady, a token Indian/Middle Eastern guy with Asperger's (I think), a former high school jock, and Trudy Campbell from Mad Men. Not gonna lie, I practically JIMPed when I realized it was her. I love when my pop culture loves cross paths. It's like fireworks! (I sound crazy. Yeah.)

Moving along, Jeff decides to derail the study session in the interests of taking Britta to dinner and getting in her pants (her words, not mine), so he gets everyone to fight with each other, which is pretty amazing. Britta forces him to make everyone make up, which he does, before she kicks him out of the study group, only to allow him back in at the end of the episode when these fools all realize that they need each other. There were also a ton of references to them being like The Breakfast Club, which is kind of true and kind of not (and I know that caused others out there to JIMP as well).

I haven't even addressed the hilarious British fellow who plays Jeff's professor friend, but there will be many, many more weeks for that, because I'm hoping this show will be around for a while and I'm planning on doing everything in my power to make it happen. I will leave you with some of my favorite quotes from the episode:

"Are you familiar with the adage 'Cheaters never prosper?" "No and if I wanted to learn something, I wouldn't have come to community college." --Professor Duncan and Jeff. Oh snap.

"I'm sorry, I was raised on TV and I've been conditioned to believe that every black woman over 50 is a cosmic mentor."--Joel McHale to the black lady. Not only is this a universal truth, but this is also the EXACT MOMENT I FELL IN LOVE WITH THIS SHOW.

"Being younger doesn't make me any stupider. Given your age, you must have made bad life decisions."--Trudy Campbell, I mean Annie, to Shirley

"You are all better than you think you are, you are just aren't designed to believe it."--Jeff, in an uplifitng speech full of other jokes that I didn't catch.

"Asperger's, hehe." "It's a serious disorder." "If it's so serious, why didn't they call it meningitis."--Troy, Trudy Campell, and Chevy Chase. I will not refer to Chevy Chase's character's name, because I doubt I will be able to remember it, and it's just so much easier to call him Chevy Chase.

So, what did you all think? Mind you, answers other than "THAT WAS FUCKING AWESOME" will not be accepted. I'm kind of hoping that McHale can find some way to incorporate his greatest Soup moments into the show somehow. I'd love him to randomly pull out the Whitney Houston "Kiss My Ass!" clip or the one of Tyra's fat ass. Yeah, that would be great.

Check back tomorrow for my overview of the Lead Actress - Drama category (Glenn Close is watching you, so you better pick her or else.)