Thursday, January 31, 2013

#7DaysofCommunity - Day 1



Well, folks. It’s ALMOST here.

That’s right – October 19th is just a mere week away and that means that Community is almost back in its 8PM timeslot on NBC. Really and truly, we’re coming back home. In celebration of the little-show-that-could’s return, I decided to spend the week leading up to the premiere doing something special for you all each day. After all, YOU are the real reason I am even writing this blog. And this show is what brought us all together. It’s only fitting that I should celebrate somehow!

I asked last week for you all to tweet, DM, or comment on a post and give me some Community superlatives you’d like to see answered each day. I got a lot of great suggestions and narrowed them down to seven – one per day – to answer!

Ready to kick off the week? Click below the cut to find the answer to my first question!



Anonymous asked: Favorite line.


Answer: “Greendale is where I belong.” (Annie Edison)

You know, I got this question in my e-mail yesterday, just after I had wrapped up my plan for the rest of the week as far as questions and answers go. But when I saw it, I immediately was struck with Annie’s line from “Pascal’s Triangle Revisited.” And so I knew I had to answer this question.

I could choose a lot of lines (“Accidents just don’t happen over and over and over again. This isn’t budget daycare.” “It’s a thought with another thought’s hat on.”) that have made me laugh throughout the course of Community’s three years. There have been so many great jokes, amazing one-liners, and oft-gif’ed phrases (“I don’t know what to do! My whole brain is crying!”). And I’m sure that you all would have accepted any one of those lines as valid for the title of “favorite.”

But when I paused to think about it, I really questioned WHY the first line that popped into my head was this one. And I think that the simplest answer is this: it sums up the entire series. At the point Annie says this line in the series one finale, she’s just told Jeff she couldn’t leave to go to Delaware with Vaughn. As they were driving away, she explains, she finally began to live in the moment. And then she utters these words: “And I realized, in the moment… Greendale is where I belong.”

Those words are the title of the song that accompanies this scene and many more scenes throughout the span of the show. Really, this is the epitome of Community, summed up in a single line – Greendale is where these seven people belong. Sure, it is not where they wanted to end up. None of them actually HOPED they would land in community college. But they did.

And for Annie to utter this line, to accept the fact that Greendale is the place where she most fits in, is most accepted, and feels an utter sense of belonging? Well, that’s beautiful. And the theme of this line and scene and score – acceptance and belonging and finding your place in the world – carry the rest of the series. Because Jeff learns that Greendale, this place he called a prison and tried to cheat his way through at the beginning of the series, is actually the ONE place in the world that accepts him just the way that he is. It’s the one place in the world that accepts them all – this wacky, weird, insane study group – the way they are and teaches them more than they could have ever imagined a community college would.

Because the bottom line is that Annie could have gone to an Ivy League school and Jeff could have never gotten caught, and Shirley could have stayed a housewife, and Britta could have backpacked through Europe or joined Greenpeace and Troy could have never gotten injured and gone on to play football for some major college and Pierce could have decided to retire and stay in his mansion and Abed could have never become a filmmaker and gone into the falafel business…

But the point is that none of these people DID any of those things. And that’s why they’re at Greendale – because, as they state later on in the series, their lives weren’t so great “out there [in the real world].”

Annie says that Greendale is where she belongs – it’s where she’s needed, where she feels at home. And you know what? I can’t think of any other line in the series that is as perfectly poignant and all-encompassing as that.

Remember to stay tuned to the blog throughout the remainder of the week! I will be continuing my #7DaysofCommunity celebration by posting a question you’ve asked and my answer every day! Until then, folks! :)

1 comment:

  1. Chills on top of chills on top of chills! Perfect post to kick us off on this week-long journey back home!!! <3

    ReplyDelete