A new show has arrived on Netflix. No, not Tiger King. The show I am talking about is called Community, and I believe that it is one of the best shows of all time. Community originally aired on NBC from 2009 to 2014 with a total of five seasons. A sixth season was picked up by the famous streaming service Yahoo! Screen in 2015. Wait, you’ve never heard of Yahoo! Screen? Don’t worry, no one else has either. There’s a reason there was no season seven.

Community was created by Dan Harmon. Harmon is also known for his podcast Harmontown, and for co-creating a little show called Rick and Morty with Justin Roiland. Harmon based the show on his time in community college, imbuing the main character, Jeff Winger (Joel McHale), with a good amount of his own personality. 

The show centers around a band of misfits who form a Spanish study group. The de facto leader, Jeff Winger, is of course played by Joel McHale. Gillian Jacobs is Britta Perry, the hypocritical activist. Abed Nadir, the quirky movie buff, is played by Danny Pudi. Donald Glover (also known as Childish Gambino) plays Troy Barnes, the ex-high school quarterback. Allison Brie (also appearing on Netflix’s Glow) plays Annie Edison, the most studious of the group. Shirley Bennett, the good-natured mother, is played by Yvette Nicole Brown. Finally, rounding out the “Greendale Seven,” Pierce Hawthorne, the oldest of the group with a very abrasive personality, played by none other than Chevy Chase. In the beginning of the show all of these characters are presented in standard stereotypes, but like any other sitcom, over the course of the series we see them develop and grow into wildly interesting and entertaining personalities.

Jeff Winger changes the most over the course of the entire series. Winger begins as a disgraced lawyer, having faked his college degree. Hoping to make it up quick and easy, he enrolls in Greendale Community College. There he finds Britta Perry, and in an effort to impress her, he makes up a fake study group. Britta invites Abed Nadir and he invites the rest of what becomes known as “The Study Group.”

Community is one of the most inventive shows in the history of television. It is also one of the most meta. The show begins as your average sitcom about a group of misfits trying to find their place. However, it quickly turns into something else entirely. The show revels in the classic tropes attributed to television and film. It chooses to poke fun at and pay homage to many staples of pop culture including action films, westerns, Dungeons and Dragons, Star Wars, and even the film My Dinner With Andre. Not heard of it? No matter; Dan Harmon uses it among other great films to create some of the most amazing episodes of television to ever grace the small screen.

Not only was Community one of the most meta shows on television at the time, it was also the silliest. Episodes ranged from an entirely stop-motion Christmas special to a month long pillow fight told in the style of a Ken Burns documentary. It was crazy stuff. The best episode of the series by far, in my opinion, is the third episode of the third season, entitled “Remedial Chaos Theory.” This episode is Community at its storytelling finest. The episode revolves around the seven alternate timelines created after Jeff rolls a dice to decide who goes to get a pizza. That’s all I’ll say about the plot for fear of spoilers; this episode is something to experience with fresh eyes. “Remedial Chaos Theory” not only includes subtle character moments, sight gags, and structural twists, it demonstrates the show’s potential to tell intricate interwoven storylines mixed with every kind comedy imaginable. 

While the first three seasons are regarded as the best (there was some behind the scenes drama and nothing was the same after), the entire series deserves a view. If not for it’s meta humor, compelling characters, and interesting stories, watch it for Ken Jeong, who plays Ben Chang in basically a different role every season. Seriously, over the course of the series Chang is a Spanish teacher, a security guard, an actor, a tyrannical dictator, and even comes down with a case of Changnesia (you can probably guess). I stand firm on my statement that Community is one of the best television shows in history, and it definitely deserves a watch. I mean, what are you gonna do, watch Tiger King a fourth time? Three is enough.