Community Hindsight

Hello!

Upon further research into how Dan Harmon tells stories I realized that many of the inconsistent character arcs, romances, etc. in Community are, just, apart of his storytelling style.

Harmon stands out from most comedy writers in that he injects some reality into shows such as Community and Rick and Morty. Jeff, Britta, Abed (even though Abed is perfect no matter how you slice it), Troy, Shirly, Annie, and especially Pierce are all so flawed to make them all the more real. This is a storytelling technique that is consistently seen in Brandon Sanderson’s books. A character with a balance between personal strengths and weaknesses makes for an interesting character. The same could be said of the those in the Mass Effect games (the trilogy, not the flophouse that is Andromeda). Characters like Garrus, Tali, Liara, and Wrex have certain positive and negative personality traits and backstories that make for densely compelling characterization. In Community however, the people in the show are far more flawed than any of the characters seen in any Brandon Sanderson novel or Bioware video game. Now, admittedly, I haven’t read every Sanderson book or played every Bioware game, but I’m willing to guarantee that, even if I were to do so, the way they tell stories would still differ from how Harmon does it.

Harmon makes his characters flawed, not in the sense that they’re interesting people with their own individual quirks, but in the sense that they are not people you would want to meet in real-life. At all. There are a number of episodes that show just how toxic this group is. While it’s delightful in an entertainment sense, those same episodes don’t stray away from showing how negatively they’re behavior affects others. Sure, there are redemptive qualities to this otherwise dramatically dysfunctional friend-group, they honestly care about each other and there are positive aspects to their personalities, overall though, Harmon intentionally creates these hilariously flawed characters to capitalize on important, and kind of basic, themes. His plotting also plays a big part in it. He created his own story structure that I use quite a bit in my own writing.

So yeah, the storytelling in Community always felt a little janky to me, but upon learning about Harmon’s style, it started to make much more sense. As far as I know, his methods are taken to a whole new level in Rick and Morty. Community stands out among most sitcoms though because it’s not about selfish people getting better and finding something more meaningful than what they personally desired for eight seasons, it’s about people who are consistently selfish but care about each other and others enough to be the least bit good. Despite that fact, we learn a lot from them. And laugh quite a bit as a result of their frequent stupidity.

If you really want to understand more, or if what I’ve said here made no sense whatsoever, I’d recommend watching Wisecrack’s video on YouTube about how Harmon tells stories. They put it in much more perspective than I do and it serves as the foundational basis for this post.

What Makes Dan Harmon Different

Thank you if you stayed till the end of this post. The purpose of this particular post mostly serves as clarification for my, albeit, newly acquired understanding of Dan Harmon’s style in case anyone gets mad at me for goofing up in my Community review.

Thank you for reading, have a good day.