The Importance of a Single Joke in Communityâs âBasic Geneologyâ.
These two sentences sum up everything Community is. Iâve tried to break down everything this line accomplishes.
It grounds the reality of the show. Prior to this exchange, Chang and Pierce engaged in a fistfight after Pierce attempted to draw a windmill during a game of Pictionaryand ended up obliviously scribbling a swastika on the board instead, offending Changâs Jewish brother. Thereâs no denying that thatâs a ridiculous scenario, and the fact that it ends with both Change and Pierce bloodied and beaten is absurd.
But our suspension of disbelief isnât broken, in part because of the deadpan reaction of the policeman[1]. Heâs seen this before - so much so that he has an opinion about how to prevent it from happening. When we as viewers see an authority figure treat the goings-on as realistic, we further invest in the showâs overall realism.
It illustrates that the show doesnât indulge in easy caricatures. Typically, if you see an officer of the law in sitcom, he or she is either going to be dumb and incompetent or mean and unreasonable. In Community, we instead get a perfectly calm, logical cop accepts the problems he encounters and deals with them efficiently and kindly, even offering gentle -but clever- advice for the future. Although heâs in the episode for less than thirty seconds, this guy is already a fleshed-out human being. I know this dude.
It provides one of the biggest laughs of the episode, despite essentially repeating a joke weâve already seen. The seed of the joke -the recontextualization of windmill as swastika- has, by now in the episode, already been planted, watered, and allowed to bloom into a flower. Most sitcoms would have had the fight be the endpoint of the joke, and any dealings with the aftermath quickly dealt with to allow the plot to progress.
In Community, though, the joke is allowed to live on past that endpoint, and the writers are clever enough to re-word the gag in a way that not only doesnât bore us, but makes us laugh out loud. âOne character misinterprets a windmill as a swastikaâ becomes âone character explains that windmills are commonly misinterpreted as swastikasâ and it seems both entirely fresh and like a perfect button to the first iteration of the joke. Thatâs hard to do.
It gives us a glimpse of the larger world of the show, while not taking us out of the inner world weâre paying attention to. With this simple line, the writers convey that this classic comedy mis-understanding isnât unique to Greendale Community College. The fact that the cop has an opinion at all illustrates, as mentioned above, that these kind of incidents happen often in the surrounding world. We learn that the rest of the Community universe is just as crazy as the college itself, that Greendale is the rule, not the exception.
The fact that this one line is so efficient, does so much heavy-lifting, is astounding. And itâs hardly an anomaly - most Community lines are crammed with levels of humor and insights into the world of the show. Community is often called one of the smartest shows on television, and itâs not just because the dialogue is fast-paced and pop-culture laden or the high-concept episodes are so striking and original. Itâs because the people behind the show care so much about every single word that comes out of these charactersâs mouths that they make each one of those words count.
Much credit, of course, should go to Craig Cackowski, who played the officer in question, and Ken Whittingham, who directed the episode. The standard sitcom reading of ââŠuntil Pictionary bans the word âwindmillââ would be wacky and over-the-top, and these guys clearly made an active choice to go the other way.  â©
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