NBC’s “Community” Christmas episode – A review

Tonight I actually took a break from my regular juggling to watch and review NBC’s upcoming Christmas episode of  “Community”. Now, let me first admit that I’ve never watched the show before and was not sure what to expect.

The Christmas episode was done with stop-motion animation. Abed, the focal point of the show, explains to his fellow cast mates (i.e., us the audience) the difference between stop-motion animation and clay animation. Their characters are not made from clay but rather a plastic. I appreciated the clarification for what is was worth.

The episode started off at a really slow pace. I wasn’t sure if the intention was to be funny  or not. There were no laugh tracks to direct me at the funny lines. Most of the humor was a dry humor and I probably giggled consistently after about 11 minutes into the episode. One of the first funny elements of the episode was Chang the snowman. But I really started laughing when Abed imagined all his friends into Christmas characters. Once he turned his friend Shirley into a shirtless diapered babydoll Shirley and she screeched “Baby doll who? What the hell?”, that’s when the laugh switch was turned on for me.

I initially wasn’t sure how to take the multi-cultural cast. I was preparing myself for a barrage of crude ethnic jokes but thankfully, the show wasn’t created by fellow high school peer Seth McFarlane whose cartoons are infamous for being crude.

The show finally caught my full interest about two-thirds through. A couple of the themes that I identified in “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas” ring very true – that schools are unnecessarily trying to strip Christmas from the hallways and that there’s no one meaning of Christmas, it differs for us all.

I’d have to say that the best line of the episode was “It’s the crazy notion that the longest coldest darkest nights can be the warmest and brightest.” Touche.