The Hurry Up: Community

I love this show. It took four episodes for it to happen, but that's really not a bad thing. WAY better than loving the first two episodes of FlashForward and then slowly realizing we weren't meant for each other. In fact, I might go out on a limb and say that Community is my favorite comedy right now. Apologies to 30 Rock and The Office, but it's the one I find myself re-watching the most these days.

Funny enough, the reason I love it so much is for its uniqueness, but I had trouble warming to it at first because it seemed so formulaic. In the pilot Jeff forms the study group in an attempt to hook up with Britta, and I groaned. "Alternative" Britta will spurn "Cool" Jeff, "Innocent" Annie will pine for "Hunky" Troy, "Awkward" Abed will be weird, "Old" Pierce will be out of touch, and "Nice" Shirley will be the heart. Gag!

The fact that I want to punch myself right now should tell you how ashamed I am of all those assumptions. It's now clear that the pilot suckered us into building those expectations so the show could go ahead and smash them into tiny pieces. The creator, Dan Harmon, is a veteran of Channel 101 where an ability to deconstruct pop culture convention is the norm rather than a unique edge. So it's no wonder the show is so good at it, because you have to be VERY good to stand out from that crowd.

It has a "little show that could" feel to it, but I like that its hook is deeper than usual for a show living on originality. Do you like to see yourself as super quirky and artsy? You'll love Pushing Daises! Nothing to do on Fridays and don't know you can see boobs anytime on the internet? Go watch Ghost Whisperer! Have a terribly over-analytical brain that ravenously devours every morsel of pop culture and processes it in such a way that every time you try to have a simple conversation about it you end up sounding like a senior thesis at Emerson? Then you need to watch Community so your brain can be happy for 30 minutes a week and will have something to chew on the rest of the time.

• Best Episode So Far: "Introduction to Statistics" (Not that I'd wait until Halloween to watch it again, but I can't wait for Halloween so I can watch it again)

• Worst Episode So Far: "Pilot" (although I feel like I should watch it again)

• MVP Candidate: Danny Pudi as Abed (close race with Ken Jeong as Senor Chang)

• Favorite Scene So Far: Troy and Abed singing "Somewhere Out There" (I was really bummed out that week, watching that scene repeatedly got me through it)

• Remaining Episodes: 3

• Finale: May 20th