Community - Season 01 [DVD]

I love Community. I love it like something I feel belongs solely to me, but it's so great I want to share it with everyone. It's probably the most intelligent, self-aware sitcom on TV at the time of writing. It's incredibly quick-witted, so you'll need to be wide awake to catch all the gags, and it's especially rewarding on second and third viewings - the jokes either grow on you, or you'll catch things you missed the first time round. The story: Jeff's just been disbarred as a lawyer, and so he's forced to go back to community college to earn a proper degree. Quickly becoming attracted to Britta, the surprisingly formidable, stereotype-breaking blonde girl from Spanish, he forms a fake study group in an effort to win her affections. Before you know it, Jeff's learning life lessons, and this loveable, roguish band of misfits come together as a sort of surrogate family. Comparisons abound to John Hughes' 'The Breakfast Club', but Community is clever enough to have Abed, the group's resident pop-culture expert and all-round guru, point these parallels out. That's the kind of show this is. It's so refreshingly sharp, and very postmodern, with most of the jokes seeming to almost reach out of the screen and interact with the audience on an intellectual level. It makes for some great television. Everything about Community just works; the cast, the writing, the direction. It's destined to be a cult classic, which is a shame, as it means it'll never get the recognition it deserves. I know it's up against Parks & Recreation (currently one of the biggest and most successful American sitcoms, with good reason), but P&R will never have the same appeal to me as Community. I care far more about the study group than I'll ever care about the members of the Parks department. A couple of things that continue to puzzle me: 1) why are we only getting Season 1 over here now, when the US is nearly halfway through the (hilarious and mind-bendingly fun) third season? and 2) why is this brilliant show in danger of cancellation?! NBC, this is golden, and the fans are trying to tell you as much. See the number of signatures on the 'Save Community' online petition if you don't believe me. In ending, Dan Harmon has brought something truly unique, truly heartwarming, truly hilarious to our television screens, and I'll never be able to thank him enough. I love Community. I'm sure you will too.

This show is just fantastic. I had never even heard of it until I stumbled across it by accident on tv on demand. The day I discovered it I not only instantly fell in love with the genius characters and writing, but also watched the whole 25 episode season in one day. The show is about a group of seven very different people who have wound up at a community college somehow and are all just trying to get through the year. I wont go too much into the characters but let's just say each one of them has a rather eccentric yet lovable personality, the way they bond with each other so well just makes you feel even more connected with them, they have become some of my favourite characters ever to grace television. The show is hilarious. Not only does every single joke just fit so well into the dialogue, but all of them are hilarious and feel so natural and unforced. Part of the comedy is all the ridiculous circumstances that the gang gets into. A lot of the episodes are parodies or spins on different genres, when most other shows do parody episodes it just feels like the writers are running out of fresh ideas, but in community, these episodes are some of the best. For example the paintball episode 'Modern Warfare' is a parody on the war genre (obviously), where the Dean - who is basically the headmaster of the college to anyone who doesnt know - announces that the whole school is now in a paintball tournament with itself and the last man standing wins a very special prize (I won't spoil it). Needless to say this turns into utter chaos and the place turns into a battlefield. In later seasons there are more parodies, like another paintball episode but with a western theme and a very cool zombie episode. Not one episode made me ever want to stop watching, the same can be said for all 67 episodes of community that have so far been released spanning across three seasons. I have become an enormous fan of this show but I think it would appeal to almost anyone (maybe not young children) and I think deserves a much bigger fan base than it has, hardly any of my friends have ever heard of it. If you watch just one show this year, I HIGHLY urge you to make it community.

Community is a sitcom following 7 misfits and their studies as Greendale Community College - possibly the most dysfunctional college you have ever seen. The group come together to form a study group for their Spanish class which is taught by Senor Chang, the strangest and creepiest teacher you have seen. This first season spans the first year of their time at college and has 25 episodes. The comedy here is somewhere between Arrested Development and the more mainstream comedy you will find on American TV. It takes a couple of episodes to get used to the style of comedy (the pilot is not the strongest episode). However, the characters are very good. Abed and Troy are a great double act in particular and their credit sequence antics are usually very funny - particularly the rap. Some episodes are absolute genius (the paintball episode is very good, Jack Blacks cameo episode is also a highlight as are the episodes that have set pieces running through them). The extras are good, in particular the study breaks on disk two. I have rushed through this series in double quick time. It riffs on political correctness very well and has great characters and actors and isn't totally predictable. If you loved Arrested Development then you will enjoy this. However, this is one of the best comedy exports from the US for some time and should be watched.

Greendale Community College is seriously weird (its Spanish teacher Chinese, a yachting class in the car park, instant expulsion from pottery for anybody who mentions "Ghost"). In charge is the bald, rubbery limbed Dean, any scheme he masterminds guaranteed to misfire (not least his Sexually Transmitted Disease Awareness Fair). Enter Jeff Winger (Joel McHale), ex-lawyer, now seeking qualifications which require the least possible effort. Dismayed, he finds himself heading a study group of misfits. Their relationships evolve hilariously.... Fine scripts, with storylines increasingly frenetic. Great cast, Chevy Chase the most familiar name - he entertainingly obnoxious as lecherous Pierson (any secret confided instantly Twittered). The 4 disc set is crammed - 25 twenty minute episodes, all with commentaries. An Extras Bonanza includes four sets of outtakes. In a spoof documentary the creator laments cuts to his original women's rest room script, the original now shown with circumstances revealed in a completely new light. Especially enjoyed were the cast appraisals, they invited to assess their colleagues' performance (Chevy declaring it would not be a bad show once they got rid of Joel). Self-mocking and full of digs at various films and shows ("Dead Poets Society", "Good Will Hunting", "Die Hard", "Glee" - to name but a few). Not everything works, but most of it does (especially when Abed is around). Sit back, take a deep breath, and relish an exhilarating ride.

This NBC show was recently reviewed in Empire Magazine, and sounded pretty intriguing, so I thought I'd give it a go. After watching the first series over a period of a week I have to admit that my wife and I are hooked! Joel McHale, a stand-up comedian rather than an actor, is pretty natural as struck-off lawyer cum community college student, falling into a Spanish study group whilst attempting to catch the eye of Elisabeth Shue lookalike Britta. Along with Eighties comic icon Chevy Chase as ageing lothario and gullible fool Pierce, Donald Glover (no relation) as ex-High School star quarterback Troy Barnes, Alison Brie as the neurotic Annie, and the brilliant Danny Pudi as off-the-wall pop culture obsessive Abed, McHale struggles with dodgy tutors, a wildly inappropriate college dean, a manipulative head of psychology and the many idiosyncrasies of his fellow group members. The premise of the show is to see the group interact in their various dysfunctional ways, whilst littering the script with popular culture references - mainly movies and music. The bizarre humour and oddball characters are what make this show special - occasionally the ideas fall a bit flat, hence four stars rather than five, but for the most part this is a heady mix of great interplay and inspired lunacy.

There's a reason why my boyfriend and I try to avoid Community just before exams - it's so addictive and BRILLIANT that it's nearly impossible to resist the temptation to watch 'just one more episode'. It's never just one more episode! In my opinion, this is one of the best comedies I have ever seen. Let me take that back. It's literally the best comedy I've ever seen - including comparisons to Friends, Scrubs, 30 Rock and The Big Bang Theory! If you like any of those shows, you should most definitely watch this and give it a go! Don't let the pilot fool you - nothing and nobody is what they seem - except maybe Jeff Winger (and Pierce's racism, sexism and general misogyny). Give it a go until episode 6 of Community, when the quality literally shoots off! Each episode is not just better than the previous one, it's better on a log scale - like ten times better than the previous. This is the best TV my boyfriend and I have ever discovered and I would strongly recommend it to anyone and everyone. And the quality of the DVD was great. Nothing lacking in the DVD at all, which I admit to being a little worried about initially. But it's worked absolutely wonderfully, including on my broken down, dying laptop and everything is as it should be.

I can only echo the glowing reviews already submitted for this fantastic programme. Due to it's absence from any UK TV schedules I'm one of thousands who download this and who looks forward to watching new episodes on Fridays! I can see why some don't click with Community as its focus on playing with established genres, long running jokes (see the Beetlejuice reveal in the third series) and background storylines (Abed delivering a baby for one) may detract from the expected approach of set up-gag, set up - gag, that have no relevance to any story, which is common in things like Big Bang Theory. But for those that get it, it's the best 20 minutes on TV. If Amazon had any say on this I implore you to get Season 2 released on PAL as soon as possible as there's thousands of us who would pay to get the DVD set. And then do the same with Season 3 and Season 4 (if there is one #savecommunity #sixseasonsandamovie). I'd pay upfront, and I'm sure others would, just to show that there is a demand for them.

I have never commented on a product. I have never cared about a tv series all that much. Sure, there are classics, ones I've watched back to back; prison break, 24, the wire, stuff like that. But then theres community. It took me 3 episodes to get into it, I now find myself actually being able to watch episodes numerous times (ive never done this before, i hate watching stuff twice), enjoying it more and more each time. I find the story, the comedy and the honesty of the writing nothing short of amazing. It has a huge amount of charm even when you're not laughing, I can't give it enough praise and I hope its popularity continues to grow so they can make more seasons. Hooked is an understatement. If your reading these reviews and thinking you'll be blown away instantly, you wont, but the addiction will grow as you watch on and then you will understand :)

I saw this serial on TV and it was excellent- witty, funny,a little crazy and full of insights. It was a nice to watch it again at my own time.

Sólo tenía subtítulos en inglés, y pues yo quería que alguien más conociera la serie pero su inglés no es muy bueno. Aun así es un buen producto

Estaba buscando el DVD para poder ver la serie en VO puesto que en inglés es mucho más divertida que en español. Recomendadisima. Y el envío como siempre puntual.

Community is a sitcom that ran from 2009 to 2015. It starred Joel McHale as Jeff Winger, a lawyer who was disbarred for obtaining a fraudulent law degree. He is forced to (for some reason) go back to community college to get an undergrad degree so he can restore his law degree. Of course, anyone with any knowledge of the legal profession knows that everything about that is totally preposterous, but in a goofy comedy, it works fine. Winger wants to get through school with the least amount of resistance possible, tries to find the easiest classes to take, and forms a study group with an interesting mix of students. The rest of the main cast included Allison Brie as Annie, a recent high-school graduate who was the classic over-achiever who popped Adderall, Danny Pudi as Abed, an aspiring film student who sees everything through a pop-culture movie or tv show lens, Gillian Jacobs as Britta, a mid-30s cynic trying to figure out what to do with her life, Donald Glover as Troy, an ex high-school football star who personifies the "dumb jock" persona, Yvette Nicole Brown as a middle-aged housewife going to school to put her life back together after a divorce, and Chevy Chase who plays Pierce, a rich, old racist who keeps enrolling in school for something to do. The recurring season one cast included Ken Jeong as Senor Chang, the Spanish teacher who could barely speak Spanish, Jim Rash as the very politically correct Dean of the school (who would become series regulars in subsequent seasons), and John Oliver and John Michael Higgins and professors at the school. In the first season, the focus of the show was on character development and the school storylines, basically the weird mix of people you get at community college. The show hit home for me as I was, at the time, a lawyer going back to undergrad to get an engineering degree, and I started out by taking classes at a local community college, and there was definitely a weird mix of personalities around campus. The show is basically a story-of-the-week show that has some kind of theme either involving something in the lives of one or more of the characters, or something going on at the school. Toward the end of the season, we get the first of what would become a signature for the series, the paintball episode in which the winner of a school-wide game of paintball gets priority registration the next semester. Of course, the game gets totally out of hand, and the paintball episodes get crazier and crazier as the show went on. For those who get the DVD set, the extras include audio commentary on every episode with series creator Dan Harmon and various members of the cast. There are also a couple of short mockumentary features, including cast evaluations in which Harmon evaluates the performance of each cast member. There are a few mini-episodes, deleted and alternate scenes, a season highlight reel, and an extended cut of the episode "Communication Studies". A lot of material for those who like watching the extras. Overall, the show is very good. It is very well-written and well-acted, even if the main cast was made up of mostly unknown actors (aside from Chase) and the guy who hosted "The Soup". While the main premise of the show is totally preposterous, the fact that much of the show was very tongue-in-cheek and did not take itself too seriously, it worked. While it did include some elements common to pretty much every sitcom, it was not a carbon copy of anything and had no problem making fun of pretty much any topic. So, if you have not seen the show and are trying to figure out if you should give it a chance, it is well worth watching.

I came across this fantastic show upon recommendations from friends. I decided to set the dvr to record a couple episodes. The second series was broadcasting on NBC and was halfway underway at the time so I my first experience with Community aside from Youtube clips was "Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking", season 2 episode 16. This episode spoofed the mockumentary genre adopted by its comedic peers like ABC's Modern Family or NBC's The Office. At the time I payed little attention to the parody itself as I was more engrossed in the characters of the show. Every character had his/her quirks and had some time to shine in; some more than others. The character Troy was especially hilarious in this episode. The fantastic bromance-broship between Troy and the character Ahbed (who is definitely the most quirkiest of the bunch) is one of the obvious highlights of the show. Donald Glover and Danny Pudi -are- fantastic. In a few days I had caught up with all the episodes from the show and I can say that this is some of the sharpest, current, wittiest comedy on television today. This show knows its target demographic (16-50 year olds who have some knowledge and appreciation for pop and geek culture). The show has its share of goofiness that may turn off some viewers who have less knowledge of the context. But the show continually rewards you for knowing the context or it will interest you enough to do some research of your own. The show is very easy to get into as the jokes are fast and frequent but there is a definite story arc in each episode. You will have a greater appreciation for the characters and their jokes and gags if you have watched their character progression from the beginning. Actions do have consequences and the show does reward those who pay attention to foreshadowing. Con: The one thing that irks me is that sometimes this "Community" college has elements you only find in high school like b**chy girl cliques or stereotypical jock bullies. ^^But not to get too serious. The show is fun and fast. The 22 minutes will feel like 10. You will come to love or at least appreciate each character if you stay with it from the beginning. This show takes risks that you will never see in headlining comedies like the Big Bang and Modern Family. DVD: The best thing about this dvd pack is the cast and crew commentary on every episode as well as roughly 35 minutes of outtakes spread over 4 dvds. There are a few alternate cuts of episodes - I wish there were more, as the director mentions that there were a few more that they just couldn't fit. Consensus: Buy Now.