Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
How do you sum up the “best” of the decade in a single list? How can you rank something as powerful, essential, and world-shaking as the #MeToo movement with that one Silicon Valley clip that never fails to make you laugh? (The only right answer is Richard saying “Kiss my piss” by the way.) How can you ever compare the awe-inspiring humanity of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story with the raunchy delight of Broad City? It’s an impossible task. And as the decade comes to a close, it’s one I refuse to attempt.
Instead of trying to figure out how BoJack Horseman stacks up against the profound joy I felt the first time I watched American Horror Story, I’m taking my best of the decade in a more personal direction. As a wise woman once told me art comes to us when we need it most. And there’s been only one show that has been there for me at my darkest and raised me up when I was most ready to hate myself. That same show has consistently questioned my complacency and challenged my motivations. It’s challenged me and delighted me all while making television history and millions laugh.
My absolute most transformative, “best” moment of the decade goes out to you, Community. Six seasons and a movie or bust.
'Community's final post-credits scene
It takes balls to end your show on a group of random actors completely unrelated to anything that’s happened over the course of six seasons. Similarly restructuring your show to possibly exist within the universe of a commercial for a family-friendly board game, thereby questioning God and existence itself, is the work of a madman. But after six seasons, two networks, one cancelation, one dramatic firing, and no movie that’s exactly how Community ended.
More than almost any other show of the 2010s, Community embodied television of this era. It emerged as pointedly weird and self-referential during a time when TV comedies were still fighting to retain their antics-of-the-week format. There was actual growth in Community. There were stakes. The Jeff (Joel McHale), Britta (Gillian Jacobs), Annie (Alison Brie), Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown), and Abed (Danny Pudi) who hugged in the final episode were markedly different from the strangers who fought their way to be a study group. All started as idealists and all ended with complicated, incomplete versions of their dreams. And yet the family they gained in the process was so much more valuable than Britta’s narcissistic activist aspirations or Jeff’s gross return to the dark side of the law. That’s what growing up is, trading in half-realized dreams for the relationships and support that actually matter. And that’s what Community did.
Even the way Community‘s finale came about reflected the 2010s. Despite the fact that Yahoo Screen is no more, Yahoo reviving Community from cancelation to give it its much discussed sixth season still stands as a streaming success story. Dan Harmon’s commercial voiceover during this two-minute clip sums up the shocking and frankly ridiculous evolution of modern television best: “Viewers may be measured by a secret, obsolete system based on selective participants keeping hand-written journals of what they watched. Show may be canceled and moved to the internet where it turns out tens of millions were watching the whole time.”
Then there’s what Community‘s finale begat. Though he was already making a name for himself through Derrick Comedy and his work on 30 Rock, Community still stands as the show that introduced mainstream viewers to award-winning rapper, comedian, and creator of the revolutionary Atlanta Donald Glover. It was the show that gave us the comedic perfection of Gillian Jacobs and Alison Brie, both of who would go on to star in their own streaming shows, Love and GLOW respectively. And Community stood as the precursor to the most shocking and gleefully irreverent success stories of the decade, Rick and Morty.
Ten years ago if you were to proclaim that one of the most popular shows of the decade would be a raunchy Adult Swim cartoon that focused on a R-rated version of Marty and Doc from Back to the Future, you would have been rightfully mocked. And yet that’s exactly what happened thanks to a show that broke all of the unwritten rules that loomed over Community for years. Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland’s Rick and Morty is meta and self-referential to the point that viewers need multiple Reddit threads to keep up with the depth of its jokes. It’s painfully, jarringly emotional, unafraid to interrupt its silly sci-fi adventures with a solemn plea for help or a nihilistic reflection about the joy in nothing mattering. Somehow one of the most popular shows of the decade is one that contains a main character almost flippantly killing himself and someone named Mr. Poopybutthole.
But as great as all of those reasons are, none of them are exactly why Community‘s final post-credits scene is my all-time favorite moment of the decade. More than any other show Community has helped me grow. Britta and Shirley slowly realizing that their selfless ambitions helped their egos more than anyone else made me question my own motivations. Annie learning to relax helped me confront my own perfectionist tendencies. Troy’s (Donald Glover) departure, where he drops everything to pursue a life of sailing with LeVar Burton, forced me to confront what I actually wanted to do with my life and why I wasn’t doing it. But more than anything else Dan Harmon’s fierce, self-depreciating, erratic showcasing of his own vulnerabilities told me that I wasn’t alone, one episode at a time.
That’s what I see when I watch Community‘s final post-credits scene. It’s not the brilliance of this meta twist or the son’s awestruck face as his father explains why existence is pointless, which always makes me laugh. It’s Harmon’s voice cracking at as he rambles about being a narcissistic creator, the horrors of mistreating those close to us, and the love he has for his fans. What I see in those final two minutes is the televised guide that taught me it’s OK to be my weird, unconventional self while relentlessly challenging me to be better. That more than anything else is what I want to take into the new decade — that painful, rewarding drive to be better.
