Six Seasons and a Movie

by Chris Barsanti, Jeff Massey, Brian Cogan

Audacious, weird, and icily ironic, Community was a kind of geek alt-comedy portal, packed with science fiction references, in-jokes that quickly metastasized into their own alternate universe, dark conspiracy-tinged humor, and a sharp yet loving deconstructions of the sitcom genre. At the same time, it also turned into a thoughtful and heartfelt rumination on loneliness, identity, and purpose. The story of Community is the story of the evolution of American comedy. Its creator, Dan Harmon, was an improv comic with a hyperbolically rapid-fire and angrily geeky style. After getting his shot with Community, Harmon poured everything he had into a visionary series about a group of mismatched friends finding solace in their community-college study group. Six Seasons and a How Community Broke Television is an episode-by-episode deep-dive that excavates a central cultural a six-season show that rewrote the rules for TV sitcoms and presaged the self-aware, metafictional sensibility so common now in the streaming universe. Pop culture experts Chris Barsanti, Jeff Massey, and Brian Cogan explore its influences and the long tail left by its creators and stars, including Donald Glover’s experiments in music (as rapper Childish Gambino) and TV drama (Atlanta); producers-directors Anthony and Joseph Russo’s emergence as pillars of the Marvel universe (Captain Civil War and Infinity War); and Harmon’s subsequent success with the anarchic sci-fi cartoon Rick and Morty. Covering everything from the corporate politics that Harmon and his team endured at NBC to the Easter eggs they embedded in countless episodes, The Show that Broke Television is a rich and heartfelt look at a series that broke the mold of TV sitcoms.

330 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2023

About the author

Chris Barsanti grew up in the Midwest, where he spent far too much time with his nose buried in a book. These days he continues that bad habit as an author and freelance critic.

Currently a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the Online Film Critics Society, Chris covers books, movies, and other cultural ephemera for Publishers Weekly, Film Journal International , The Playlist , PopMatters , and The Millions .

His writing has also been published everywhere from The Chicago Tribune to The Virginia Quarterly Review and The Barnes & Noble Review.

Reviews

[Muffin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book bothered the heck out of me! I think there’s so much to be said about the show Community and its place in television (or how it “broke” television) - this book does basically none of it. It summarizes literally every single episode of the show in a few paragraphs, which certainly eats up plenty of book but doesn’t count as analysis. It also includes further paragraphs about Dan Harmon’s short-lived History Channel show and his TTRPG podcast. If the book intended to explore Dan Harmon’s work (other than Rick and Morty, which the book seems to realize would be its own book), the title is deceiving; even then, there’s almost no analysis of Harmon’s work. This is more of a list of his work.
The authors are all experienced writers and scholars on pop culture but this book’s discussion of television outside of Dan Harmon’s work seems to extend no further than explicating some of the Gen X latchkey kid references sprinkled throughout Community. The early 2000’s really were an interesting moment in experimental sitcom storytelling, but you wouldn’t know it to read this book. There’s also a way that Community represented an Adult Swim sensibility creeping into network television; this also goes unaddressed.
Nearly nothing is said about the toxic work environment Harmon fostered on his show, or the genuinely interesting/depressing detail that NBC forced him to hire women writers in the first season, which he declared actually was good for the show, then went on to sexually harass these same women he was celebrated for being forced to include. His famous apology to Megan Ganz for his treatment of her gets about a quarter of a page in this book. If this book isn’t going to spend time on the behind the scenes work that created the show Community, what exactly is it for?
This book is ultimately a borderline reference text on episodes of a few Dan Harmon projects, like a summarized handful of Wikipedia articles.
One interesting thing: reading through these episode summaries allows the reader to better follow the way the show Community changed over time. But don’t expect analysis on these changes from the authors.

[Morgan]

Six seasons and a movie.