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Awwww, Community <3
This show mashes down my friendship/found-family/island-of-misfit-toys buttons so hard. ♥ ♥ ♥
My squee for this show is not 100% because some of the humor makes me cringe, and I wish they'd play the characters against type more often than they do - for the most part, the characters started out as stereotypes and haven't really moved beyond that. (In some ways the show reminds me of Scrubs, but Scrubs, I think, did a better job of developing its characters and making them three-dimensional rather than caricatures of whatever they're making fun of. I like the characters, and all the actors do a marvelous job, but the show doesn't work terribly hard at fleshing them out.)
But it hits my found-family kink haaaard, man. And I think one reason why it does is that the characters are all SO massively flawed and neurotic and really not very likable people a lot of the time, and completely awful to each other at least half the time, but they really do love each other a lot. I am plenty fine with canons in which the characters are really good people who are mostly nice to each other even when they're at odds (see: White Collar), but I think this show really gets to the heart of what makes family family: that you might not even like these people half the time, and sometimes can't figure out why on earth you're spending time with them (or justify to an outsider why in the world you haven't kicked them out of your life), but you really do love them and every so often they do something to remind you why. Basically, they all deserve each other ... in every sense of the phrase.
The Valentine's episode, say ... where they're all trying their hardest to spend time with other people, for hooking up or other purposes, and it falls through disastrously as always, and then closes with all of them hanging out together amidst the trampled remnants of their social lives and ends on Jeff's "I love you guys" text - d'awww, everybody. They're all such an absolute mess, socially, psychologically, and otherwise. And yet they have this weird, hard to quantify, affection/family/being-in-each-other's-corner thing going on.
Also, it makes me laugh. A lot. (The anti-drug episode! Oh my god!) I love comedy elements in dramatic shows, but I don't find straight-out comedy that appeals to me all that often. Like I said, there are times when I find the show's brand of humor offensive and mean rather than funny, but when they hit it, they really do hit it. :D
My squee for this show is not 100% because some of the humor makes me cringe, and I wish they'd play the characters against type more often than they do - for the most part, the characters started out as stereotypes and haven't really moved beyond that. (In some ways the show reminds me of Scrubs, but Scrubs, I think, did a better job of developing its characters and making them three-dimensional rather than caricatures of whatever they're making fun of. I like the characters, and all the actors do a marvelous job, but the show doesn't work terribly hard at fleshing them out.)
But it hits my found-family kink haaaard, man. And I think one reason why it does is that the characters are all SO massively flawed and neurotic and really not very likable people a lot of the time, and completely awful to each other at least half the time, but they really do love each other a lot. I am plenty fine with canons in which the characters are really good people who are mostly nice to each other even when they're at odds (see: White Collar), but I think this show really gets to the heart of what makes family family: that you might not even like these people half the time, and sometimes can't figure out why on earth you're spending time with them (or justify to an outsider why in the world you haven't kicked them out of your life), but you really do love them and every so often they do something to remind you why. Basically, they all deserve each other ... in every sense of the phrase.
The Valentine's episode, say ... where they're all trying their hardest to spend time with other people, for hooking up or other purposes, and it falls through disastrously as always, and then closes with all of them hanging out together amidst the trampled remnants of their social lives and ends on Jeff's "I love you guys" text - d'awww, everybody. They're all such an absolute mess, socially, psychologically, and otherwise. And yet they have this weird, hard to quantify, affection/family/being-in-each-other's-corner thing going on.
Also, it makes me laugh. A lot. (The anti-drug episode! Oh my god!) I love comedy elements in dramatic shows, but I don't find straight-out comedy that appeals to me all that often. Like I said, there are times when I find the show's brand of humor offensive and mean rather than funny, but when they hit it, they really do hit it. :D