Community

Underneath its dense layers of wink-wink sitcom parody and rapidfire dialogue, Community reveals a surprisingly heartfelt story of what happens when you realize you're not exactly the kind of person you thought you were, and far from the person you'd like to be. A freewheeling kindergarten of a school, Greendale Community College is a purgatory of lost and sidetracked students who come together to form a study group because their Asian-American Spanish teacher (Ken Jeong) doesn't actually know the language. While Community, which features Joel McHale and Chevy Chase, gleefully skewers everything from hyper-PC politics to overblown 1980s action movies, its greatest strength is the easygoing comedic rapport between the study group members, as revealed in closing library scenes between former high-school jock Troy (Donald Glover) and socially awkward film savant Abed (Danny Pudi) and the girls-first friendship between pathological overachiever Annie (Alison Brie) and divorced mother-of-two Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown). Whether they're accidentally turning Annie's extra-credit Dia de los Muertos party into a drug-fueled rager or helping Troy maintain his tough-guy image by covering up his affinity for modern dance, the group's comforting, yet dysfunctional, support for one another helps them realize that while they might not be family, having each other as friends is the next best thing.