Did you happen to get the invite to my #top20in20 project’s Sweet Sixteen party? The one with the picture of Chris Harrison’s face on it because he is America’s treasure? It’s cool if you didn’t…I guess it’s up to me to eat the two hundred English Muffin pizzas I made. No biggie. Shut up, you’re crying.
Oh, you made it? That’s great. Would you like two half-eaten English muffin pizzas? I can pop them in the microwave if you’d like.
Yup, that happened.
#16: Community
This was one hotly contested slot on my list. I went back and forth amongst four contenders, ultimately choosing Dan Harmon’s gut-busting sitcom over The Mindy Project, iZombie, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine not because I don’t adore those shows (I do) or they couldn’t have been on this list (they absolutely could have) but because, for me, the sixth and final season of Community harkened back to the inspired lunacy of its earlier years, and that nostalgia wrapped me in a warm hug for thirteen episodes and refused to let me go.
Whether it was Chang auditioning for a stage adaptation of The Karate Kid, the gang learning how to grift, a menacing prisoner ineffectively terrorizing Greendale students via telerobot, an underground paintball game, or Dean Pelton’s obsession with virtual reality, season six consistently brought the funny. Throw in new characters played by Paget Brewster and an immediately-perfect Keith David, and the show was firing on all comedic cylinders.
But it was the finale episode “Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television” — which, due to Yahoo’s recent announcement of its intention to discontinue the Screen project, serves as a series finale — that landed this show on the list. When it was at its best, Community relied on the emotional truths of its characters. With Abed asking his friends to imagine pitching a TV show about what a seventh season of their lives would look like, the show’s meta-commentary dovetailed beautifully with the dreams and aspirations of this motley crew we’ve grown to love. We couldn’t have asked for a better send-off for Jeff, Annie, Britta, Abed, Pelton, Chang, or Shirley. And that’s canon.
I received your RSVP to #top20in20’s quinceanera tomorrow, so I hope you show up because, frankly, that would be pretty inconsiderate to back out on such short notice. But no pressure! See you then!
