First of many blurbs I will be writing about NBC's "Community"

I like that the writers don't overdo it with Abed. I think Abed is two things: a TV character with Asperger's and great metacommentary on how everyone wishes their life was more like a TV show and will go to distant ends to make that a reality. (Actually, those two things are pretty much facts.) It would have been really easy to: have the entire character (and maybe even entire show) revolve around the fact of Abed's Asperger's... the entire show would devolve into jokes about his "social awkwardness" (in most college lecture halls and conversations, being "socially awkward" is considered a disease unto its own) and Abed's storylines would be centered around trying to get him to assimilate into, like, normal society or whatever, and the lessons it would teach would be "it's OK to be different!" (Which it is, and I don't have a problem with that being "a lesson that is often taught," but it would get tired.) Also it would be really easy to have each episode be some amalgam of sitcom tropes and Abed would sort of ground the whole thing by calling everyone out on it. This is something the show does do a lot but not to excess. Abed isn't a crutch the show leans on... he really is like some kind of commentator keeping each character in check. In that way he works to the show's total advantage. Just as the audience is catching on, saying to each other "Hey this is just a riff on _________," Abed steps in and calls everyone out on it.


[Paragraph about the new, hilarious weirdness the show has stumbled upon, using each actor's ability to do physical comedy and tempering it with their great dialogue/chemistry, creating some kind of "synergy" unseen in any other sitcom of late (or at least the ones on NBC Thursday nights.)]

WATCH COMMUNITY.