Last night’s Community lived up to the hype. A perfect distillation of what makes the show great, it was chock full of character jokes, callbacks and visual gags all laid on top of a solid structure and capped off with an amazing button.
And here’s the cherry on top: check out the above animated gif. It shows the pen that the episode was based around being snatched off the table in a nearly imperceptible way. But it’s in there, and the intention was confirmed in a tweet by show creator Dan Harmon.
It’s this sort of attention to detail, these little gifts to fans, that shows how much love is put into this show. You get the impression that the folks behind it see it as their baby, and they put everything they’ve got into it. And it shows! While I love 30 Rock a whole lot, this season it’s Community that I’m most excited to tuck into on Thursday nights. There are just no other shows out there that get this much fun and joy on the screen week after week. And while it doesn’t get the highest ratings, it’s heartening to see NBC order an additional two episodes for this season. The way things have been going, with the show just consistently getting better, for it to be cancelled now would be a crime.
