Every Episode of Community, Ranked From Worst to Best (Part 1)

When it was announced in September of 2022 that a Community movie was really happening, the news felt both improbable and inevitable. Improbable because what was NBC-Universal doing pumping more money into a comedy that was ratings-challenged from the moment it premiered during the fall semester TV season of 2009? And inevitable because said comedy had managed to survive for six whole seasons and weather seismic changes behind the scenes, persevering on the strength of great reviews, a loyal if hardly huge fanbase, and the self-fulfilling prophecy of a hashtag. Community was never a big hit. But somehow, it cheated Nielsen destiny and became a great show not canceled before its time. It willed #SixSeasonsAndAMovie into a reality.

Created by Dan Harmon, the TV veteran who would go on to score a much bigger sensation for Adult Swim, Community cast Joel McHale as Jeff Winger, a shady and charismatic lawyer knocked down a peg after the bar discovers he has no degree. Forced to enroll in local Colorado community college Greendale, Jeff is slowly softened by a study group of lovable misfits: obstinate former activist Britta Perry (Gillian Jacobs); obsessive pop-culture enthusiast Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi); jocular teenage jock Troy Barnes (Donald Glover); preachy divorced mother Shirley Bennett (Yvette Nicole Brown); type-A academic overachiever Annie Edison (Alison Brie); and clueless, offensive millionaire Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase). Meanwhile, the college setting opened up a whole Springfieldian supporting cast of colorful oddballs played by semi-regulars and guest stars.

Slotted into an especially robust Must See TV lineup that also included Parks and Recreation, The Office, and 30 Rock, the show established itself as an uncommonly postmodern single-camera sitcom, interested in commenting upon (and subverting) the network rules. Community crept up to the fourth wall constantly, while also taking left turns into episode-length pastiche and parody, Greendale becoming a kind of Hollywood backlot that could be dressed for multiple genres. At the same time, Harmon and his creative team – including the Russo brothers, before they moved on to make Avengers movies — invested in the characters, so that even the wildest flights of fancy took off from our attachment to Jeff and his classmates.

Critics were supportive almost immediately. But that acclaim never really translated to a big viewership. And Community's six seasons were a rollercoaster ride of conflict, as Harmon very publicly sparred with Chase, used the series to wink at his creative disputes with the network, and behaved unprofessionally with one of his writers. The creator was eventually fired from his own show — which returned for a shortened, poorly received fourth season without him — and then unexpectedly brought back for one more low-rated year on NBC.

After finally being canceled, Community was revived for a sixth and final run of episodes on Yahoo!'s short-lived streaming service. Over the years, budgets fluctuated and plummeted while cast members came and went. By the end, the study group was a hodgepodge of old and new faces, some promoted to lead, others brought in to fill the void opened up by the absence of original stars.

All of which is to say, Community was a stubbornly persistent anomaly of 2010s television: a cult favorite that fought tooth and nail to stay alive for most of its lifespan and wore its internal strife on its sleeve via in jokes and self-referential asides. Despite the amount of change it endured, behind and in front of the camera, the show remained funny and innovative throughout, exploding the possibilities of what a sitcom could be.

Of course, not every episode hits its target like an expertly aimed paintball. There were highs and lows during that long trek to #SixSeasonsAndAMovie. With the last part of the hashtag reportedly coming together (McHale recently said filming will begin this year), it feels like a good time to re-enroll with a worst-to-best rundown of Community's complete 110-episode run, split across two days of numbered appreciation and analysis. Today, we count down the first half from the bottom. Tomorrow, the rest to the top. Not happy with the order? Well, tell your disappointment to suck it. We're doing a full-series ranking.

***

110. "Conventions of Space and Time" (Season 4, Episode 3)

A total Minerva. At its worst, the fourth season of Community plays like mediocre fan fiction, so it's fitting that its nadir — and the show's overall rock bottom — unfolds at an actual fan convention. All four plots are duds, though there's some good irony in Pierce helping focus group a crappier version of Inspector Spacetime; you can always count on Community to be self-reflexive, if only accidentally in this case.

109. "Basic RV Repair and Palmistry" (Season 6, Episode 10)

Harmon's obsession with story structure completely hijacks this bickering road trip, with Abed offering a running, unfunny commentary on its in media res format via revisionist flashbacks to the start of the narrative. Too clever by half, the episode also cranks the group hostility straight past amusing to unpleasant. It's not much fun to see Jeff actually slap Abed — even if, okay, the audience might feel the urge to do the same.

108. "Intro to Recycled Cinema" (Season 6, Episode 8)

Haaaaaaam, girl! This extended run of zero-budget filmmaking gags is about as slapdash as the dumb Star Wars ripoff the group throws together over a weekend. And why does a story about Abed getting pressured into making a terrible film end up revolving around Jeff's fear of getting left behind at Greendale? The finale would better explore that conflict five weeks later.

107. "Alternative History of the German Invasion" (Season 4, Episode 4)

Even the weakest episodes of Community have at least one good joke. Here, that's the montage revealing what Greendale's other students were doing while the group selfishly bogarted the study room over the years. Otherwise, it's a misfire, using an undercooked WWII-themed dispute with the German exchange students (minus Nick Kroll, which doesn't help) to once again push our heroes to wonder, "Are we the baddies?"

106. "Advanced Introduction to Finality" (Season 4, Episode 13)

"We finally found a way to make paintball cool again," Abed quips, as if saying it makes it so. Truthfully, Jeff getting cold feet about graduating is too poignant an idea to squander on a darkest-timeline daydream (though it is a little fun to see the cast, especially Brie, play evil versions of their characters). Whatever one thinks of the final two seasons, it's a blessing that Community didn't end on this note of faulty fan service.

105.-104. "Basic Story" (Season 5, Episode 12) and “Basic Sandwich” (Season 5, Episode 13)

Not much better is the two-part Season 5 finale, a shaggy and overly self-conscious caper in which the group alternates between saying goodbye to Community (err, Greendale) and trying to save it via a goofy Hail Mary involving buried treasure and the school's Howard Hughes-like founder (Chris Elliott). Turns out a little of school-board honchos Carl and Richie, who are clearly the show's way of satirizing network execs, goes a long way.

103. "Lawnmower Maintenance and Postnatal Care" (Season 6, Episode 2)

Keith David fit perfectly on the Greendale directory, his sonorously sardonic banter a highlight of the show's final year. But there's a certain clunkiness to how Community introduced tech-industry veteran Elroy Patashnik, who's brought in to free the dean (Jim Rash, who also co-directed with Nat Faxon) from an outdated VR system. And file Britta rebelling against her ultra-supportive parents under one of those ideas funnier on paper than in loudly petulant execution. Jesus wept!

102. "Basic Crisis Room Decorum" (Season 6, Episode 3)

Speaking of ideas funnier on paper than in execution: Tipped off to an impending attack ad by crosstown rival City College, the Save Greendale Committee assembles for some late-night damage control — and to find out if, yes, their school gave a degree to a dog. More than any other Season 6 episode, this one betrays the growing pains of integrating two new principals, Frankie and Elroy, into the established ensemble. Also, threatening to transfer in protest of the group smearing a canine's reputation is one of the least convincing moral stands Annie has taken.

101. "Geography of Global Conflict" (Season 3, Episode 2)

In seminal sitcom terms, this is basically "Lisa's Rival," with Annie confronted by another Annie who may be her academic superior. Except that unlike The Simpsons, the show makes the new character, played by Irene Choi, a rather one-dimensional villain, and the showdown unfolds via a model U.N. competition that never gathers much comic steam. More amusing is the B plot, a kind of quasi-romance for Chang and Britta, fulfilling each other's fantasies of authority and rebellion.

100. "Grifting 101" (Season 6, Episode 9)

A guest-starring Matt Berry is characteristically pompous as the community-college "grift instructor" Jeff and the gang set out to beat at his own game. The Sting-style illustrations throughout are a nice touch, but a parody of elaborate con-artist movies needs to be more intricate than this ho-hum swindle.

99. "The First Chang Dynasty" (Season 3, Episode 21)

By contrast, the show's take on impossible heists is much more on-target, immaculately nailing the little details (like the perfect way Glover says "I'm in" after he blasts a hole in a wall). But this is still the rare Community episode that might actually be too silly — it's arguably more of a cartoon than the actual cartoon episodes. In general, Chang's transformation into a bona fide supervillain was a perhaps overly broad direction for the series to take.

98. "Economics of Marine Biology" (Season 4, Episode 7)

Chevy Chase wouldn't leave Community until the end of Season 4, but you can feel an increasing uncertainty about what to do with him before that — a behind-the-scenes challenge literalized by this so-so installment, which whisks Pierce and Jeff off for a barbershop bonding session that's the definition of inessential. Abed forming a frat and Troy nearly flunking out of Physical Education Education (the class listing is not a typo) are similarly half-baked subplots. Only the dean sucking up to a prospective rich-kid student (Zack Pearlman), in part by promising him Magnitude's cherished catchphrase, really lands.

97. "Cooperative Escapism in Familial Relations" (Season 4, Episode 5)

"You're gonna need me when things get messy and emotional," Britta says to Jeff before Thanksgiving with his estranged father, played by James Brolin. But there's actually something a little too neatly cathartic about this long-teased reunion — a plotline further burdened by Adam Devine's profoundly annoying presence as Jeff's jealous, wimpy half-brother. Still, McHale sells the complicated feelings better than the episode sells its other plotline, a half-assed prison break scenario at Shirley's house.

96. "Wedding Videography" (Season 6, Episode 12)

The group always makes everything about themselves — even the wedding of perpetual background player Garrett (Erik Charles Nielsen), who steps into the spotlight to claim some overdue happiness, until Jeff nearly spoils it with an accidentally revealing toast. The big twist (and post-credits gag) is a smartly transgressive payoff for this improvisational-feeling addition to Abed's documentary reel — a very tonally unusual episode to drop right before the very end of the whole series.

95. "Pascal’s Triangle Revisited" (Season 1, Episode 25)

Season 1 ends on a classic cliffhanger, as Jeff is forced to choose between mature, dependable Professor Slater (Lauren Stamile) and Britta, who he's been chasing since the pilot. Or does his heart actually belong to someone else entirely? Given how Harmon would resolve this love triangle-that's-actually-a-square, the real question hanging over the show's first season finale is whether he always planned to mess with the shippers or if he just grew tired of the Sam and Diane stuff. Either way, it's a retrograde drag to watch multiple women fight over Jeff, even if you know how quickly Community will walk that back in Season 2.

94. "Modern Espionage" (Season 6, Episode 11)

One last round of paintball — better than Season 4's, but still a little "forced," as Abed put it in an earlier episode. Still, the spy-games angle allows for a slightly different genre-movie pastiche, and this might be the smartest use of Frankie as a kind of voice of creative reason, ushering everyone towards something a little more grounded and grown up in the final stretch.

93. "Advanced Documentary Filmmaking" (Season 4, Episode 6)

Ken Jeong got some mileage out of his Season 4 arc, a soap-operatic subplot in which Chang shows back up claiming to have no memory of his past life, including that whole "tried to kill everyone at the end of the previous season" thing. His naifish alter ego, Kevin, is a good foil for born bullshitter Jeff, who attempts to expose "Changnesia" as a scam through another Abed documentary. No huge laughs, but some interesting thoughts on forgiveness — who deserves it and who it’s really for.

92. "History 101" (Season 4, Episode 1)

When NBC fired Dan Harmon at the end of Season 3, many fans worried that Community wouldn’t be the same. And they were right: The Season 4 premiere, a cafeteria goof on The Hunger Games, exemplifies the general… offness of what a rehired Harmon would later dub the “gas-leak year.” Still, his temporary replacements, Moses Port and David Guarascio, deserve some credit for acknowledging those fears upfront with Abed’s fantasy of a hacky three-camera version of the show — the kind you might expect from the sitcom veterans who took over. It’s smart and cutely meta in a classic Community way, down to teasing Chase's exit by subbing in Fred Willard for him.

91. "Accounting for Lawyers" (Season 2, Episode 2)

The first episode not set entirely at Greendale sends Jeff to a party at his old law firm, with Rob Corddry as the backstabber who sold him out to the bar and Drew Carey as his former boss. It’s fun to see Community go off campus, even if the show barely tries to convince us that "Tango" might be seduced back to his old life and away from his friends. The laughs come from side business: Annie getting carried away with chloroform, Chang trapped in the pop-and-lock version of a Depression dance marathon.

90. "Heroic Origins" (Season 4, Episode 12)

Prequels suck — a lesson Phantom Menace hater Abed relearns after essentially creating one for the study group by discovering how they were all connected before they knew each other. Conceptually, this comic-book origin story (complete with actual comic-book images) is about as unnecessary as Midi-chlorians. But it does facilitate some goofy cosplay, the stars (minus Chase) getting to play younger, sometimes dorkier versions of their characters. And the revelation that they all found (long pause) a new hope in enrolling at Greendale is touching.

89. "Competitive Wine Tasting" (Season 2, Episode 20)

Guest stars dominate this unmemorable, slightly overstuffed installment, with Michelle Krusiec as the wine-class beauty Pierce woos (much to Jeff's jealous suspicion), Stephen Tobolowsky as a media-studies instructor Abed confounds, and the delightful return of Kevin Corrigan as drama professor Sean Garrity, coaxing a phony childhood trauma out of Troy. In wine terms, it's far from a vintage pour, but still goes down plenty smooth, like most episodes from Community's heyday.

88. "Paranormal Parentage" (Season 4, Episode 2)

Finally, a glimpse inside Hawthorne Manor! Like a lot of Season 4, this Halloween episode (the last one of the series, sadly) is a bit of a missed opportunity, squandering a strong setup. But Britta duping Jeff into at last opening up about his dad is a nice development — it's fun to see her get the upper hand for once in a war of wills. Points, too, for a surprisingly poignant ending involving the welcome return of a welcome guest star.

87. "Introduction to Statistics" (Season 1, Episode 7)

Meanwhile, the show's first Halloween episode introduces the Karen Filippelli of Community. The show never really put much effort into selling Michelle Slater (Lauren Stamile) as more than an obstacle standing in the way of Jeff and Britta consummating their hot-cold sexual tension. And in her first appearance, she mostly serves as an alluring opportunity Jeff must turn down in order to do the right thing again. Thankfully, that amounts this time to intervening on Pierce's nightmarish prescription-drug trip, outrageously performed by a physical-comedy pro.

86. "Repilot" (Season 5, Episode 1)

Every season premiere of Community plays a little like a soft reboot, but none more explicitly than "Repilot," in which Harmon returns to the show he lost and sets up a new status quo in which Jeff is a teacher and all his old studymates, minus Pierce Hawthorne, re-enroll. It’s all very functional by design — and maybe a little sad, too, to see these characters slouch back into the college bubble. But the sparkling wit that went mostly missing in Season 4 is back, too; there’s a great running joke about the final season of Scrubs that allows Donald Glover to apologetically wink at his own impending Braffian departure.

85. "The Politics of Human Sexuality" (Season 1, Episode 11)

Everyone catches a bad case of maturity at Greendale's inaugural STD awareness fair, as Jeff and Pierce reevaluate their relationship to women, Troy accepts his athletic inferiority to Abed, and Annie gets comfortable with still being uncomfortable with sex. It’s a lot of what Larry David once derisively called "hugging and learning" — emphasis on the latter, of course, given the collegiate setting of the series.

84. "Asian Population Studies" (Season 2, Episode 12)

The study group mulls welcoming a new member, with Jeff pushing for the certifiably insane Chang just to block Annie's crush, who happens to be his do-gooder archnemesis Rich (Greg Cromer). Building to another crafty prank on the show's shippers, the episode also marks the first appearance of Shirley's ex-husband, Andre; he’s warmly played by Malcolm-Jamal Warner, whose sweater game nods to his role on an earlier NBC sitcom that would soon become taboo to reference.

83. "Ladders" (Season 6, Episode 1)

Community became a different show when it moved to Yahoo! for its final season: weirder, cheaper, at times more thematically ambitious. To smooth the transition, it introduced Francesca "Frankie" Dart (Paget Brewster), a type-A administrator whose conversations with Abed sound an awful lot like Harmon convincing himself that change is okay. "Ladders" is meta even by the standards of this very meta series, but some good bits bracket the self-conscious commentary, like the era-spanning "Sweet Emotion" montage of the cold open and an amusing post-credits sendoff for Yvette Nicole Brown's Shirley.

82. "Basic Genealogy" (Season 1, Episode 18)

Jeff's moral dilemma about whether to sleep with Pierce's scammer ex-step-daughter (Katharine McPhee) is pretty boilerplate. There are more laughs in the other discrete story strands of this Family Day episode, especially Britta willfully subjecting herself to a switching from Troy's cantankerous grandmother (the late Fran Bennett) just to prove she respects her elders; it's one of her funnier comeuppances, capped by Troy loudly sobbing for mercy while she takes her licks.

81. "Basic Intergluteal Numismatics" (Season 5, Episode 3)

It's so wild to see a network sitcom do an episode-length send-up of moody David Fincher procedurals that it almost doesn't matter that it's not the most precise parody of those movies. Ultimately, the unsolved Zodiac-style mystery of the Ass Crack Bandit is overshadowed by the big reveal of the closing minutes: the offscreen demise of Pierce Hawthorne, whose death decisively killed any chance of Chase returning to Community.

80. "Course Listing Unavailable" (Season 3, Episode 18)

Then again, death isn't always permanent at Greendale. Just ask Star-Burns (producer and consulting writer Dino Stamatopolous), who the show only pretended to kill off in a meth-lab explosion. "Course Listing Unavailable" is mostly just setup for the climactic events of the season, culminating as it does with the study group's temporary expulsion and Chang's authoritarian rise. But a wake devolving into a roast and then a full-on riot is anarchic good fun… not to mention a fitting tribute to Greendale's resident slimeball (or "Alex," as he preferred to be called).

79. "Laws of Robotics and Party Rights" (Season 6, Episode 5)

The rare episode to actually focus on Jeff's teaching career finds him sparring with a new student, a convict (Brian Van Holt, from Abed favorite Cougar Town) who might be dangerous… if he weren’t just a tablet on a stick, calling from prison. A hardened criminal trying to look intimidating from a (barely) mobile device — and at one point making a feeble murder attempt — is a great sight gag. Also inspired: Britta's very unwise decision to manipulate Abed into throwing a house party.

78. "Advanced Gay" (Season 3, Episode 6)

There are darker episodes and more absurd episodes, but few that walk the line between those two distinctions as much as "Advanced Gay," a.k.a. the one where Jeff accidentally kills Pierce's ancient, ivory-haired, uber-bigot father. Beyond the doubled daddy issues, there's a smart underlying point here about how social progress only happens in this country after it becomes financially advantageous. Or, as Pierce puts it, "People earning respect with money is the American way."

77. "Basic Email Security" (Season 6, Episode 6)

A hacker threatens to leak everyone's emails if a racist comic (Jay Chandrasekhar, who also directed) is allowed to perform at Greendale. The concluding chapter in what Abed christens a "trilogy of revealed secrets" takes a little too long to get to the verbal fireworks (it's less of a bottle episode than its predecessors, and suffers for it), but the showdown is worth the wait, partially for how it allows Brewster to send furious cracks down Frankie's wall of rigid professionalism. And there's some real satirical edge in resting the group's big First Amendment stand on the right of a hack comedian to lob insults at an audience of one.

76. "Anthropology 101" (Season 2, Episode 1)

Will Jeff end up with Britta, Slater, or Annie? Harmon and company go with "none of the above" in a Season 2 premiere that thumbs its nose at cliffhanger tradition and sends up the very tropes the show embraced in year one. As much as this puckish subversion may have pissed off the invested, it was exciting to see Community go its own way, announcing its intention to — per Abed, as usual — "move away from the soapy, relationship-y stuff, and into bigger, fast-paced, self-contained escapades."

75. "Intro to Political Science" (Season 2, Episode 17)

It's Jeff versus Annie in the race for student-body president — the most literal expression of what might be the show's central conflict, the clash between cynicism and idealism. No particularly trenchant political insights in this political satire, but the episode plays well to its base in other ways, from Abed's coded flirtation with a Secret Service agent (Happy Endings star Eliza Coupe) to the outstanding "notches" punchline of the opening scene.

74. "Intro to Felt Surrogacy" (Season 4, Episode 9)

In the grand tradition of "Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas" comes another marionette hallucination of sorts — this one an off-brand Muppet musical, told through flashbacks that envision the characters as crooning felt creations. Though the songs could be better, they're supporting a premise that would sing without them or the Jim Henson gimmick: another cleansing crucible of truth-telling for the study group.

73. "Pilot" (Season 1, Episode 1)

Has a sitcom ever offered a more legible thesis statement than the first big motivational speech Jeff delivers to his new "community"? Harmon might well have named his pilot episode "Syllabus" for how cleanly it lays out the show's philosophy, setting, and characters (though we're definitely getting 101 versions of them, especially Britta and Troy). It's a textbook model of efficient setup that only hints at the hilarity to come.

72. "Early 21st Century Romanticism" (Season 2, Episode 15)

Troy and Abed politely courting the same librarian is — to paraphrase the object of their shared, rather chaste desire — the cutest thing that’s ever happened. The rom-com sweetness of that plot offsets the expert cringe comedy of Britta performatively befriending a classmate (Brit Marling) she assumes is gay just to prove what an open-minded ally she is. But let's not bury the lede here: This Valentine's Day episode is most notable for boasting the first appearance of Greendale's resident one-man party, Magnitude (Luke Youngblood). Pop pop!

71. "Geothermal Escapism" (Season 5, Episode 5)

Community waves goodbye to Donald Glover with another round of "Modern Warfare," this one centered on a school-wide game of The Floor is Lava. As a paintball episode without paintball, it's underwhelming. But as a final note in the ballad of Troy and Abed, it's very affecting — and a fitting farewell for the most reliable joke machine in the cast, sailing off into the sunset to make his own seminal, boundary-pushing TV comedy.

70. "Advanced Criminal Law" (Season 1, Episode 5)

If "Geothermal Escapism" brought the show's central bromance to a close, here's where it really began: with a very funny B story in which Abed discovers the timeless joy of messing with your friends and makes an extremely elaborate attempt to prank Troy. (Too bad his face is bad.) The A story, which finds Jeff flexing his legal expertise in a makeshift poolside courtroom to save Britta from expulsion, is a bit more perfunctory. But the timeless tinkle of Bruce Hornsby & The Range — shamelessly plagiarized by a desperate Pierce — brings it all together nicely.

69. "Interpretive Dance" (Season 1, Episode 14)

Jeff and Slater get serious, laying the groundwork for a love triangle the show will quickly move past. The real seed planted here is the bond between Britta and Troy, strengthened by their secret and mutual love of dance, and only much later developed into a romance proper. Adorable final beat courtesy Pudi's tap moves and a well-placed Kate Nash needle drop.

68. "Studies in Modern Movement" (Season 3, Episode 7)

Annie moves in with Troy and Abed, the dean blackmails Jeff into karaoke, and Britta and Shirley find common ground in their shared contempt for a hitchhiker played by future Ted Lasso scene-stealer Brendan Hunt. By Season 3, Community was comfortable pushing beyond the boundaries of Greendale, confident that its appeal lay in simply bouncing these finely developed characters off of each other — or, in the case of Pierce's ill-fated attempt at an amateur apartment renovation, letting them lean on their individual comic strengths.

67. "Urban Matrimony and the Sandwich Arts" (Season 3, Episode 11)

Shirley struggling to balance her business goals with her rekindled marriage was an agreeably mature storyline for a sitcom drifting fast into zaniness. Of course, the show was fully aware of how far it had strayed from the relatively down-to-Earth nature of its first season, and basically addresses that via Troy and Abed's resolution to tamp down the weird for their friend’s nuptials. Pudi masquerading as an "unremarkable" is priceless.

66. "Advanced Safety Features" (Season 6, Episode 7)

Cheeky product placement abounds in this belated sequel to Season 3 highlight "Digital Exploration of Interior Design,” with Travis Schuldt returning as Britta's forbidden love, once the human embodiment of Subway, now a full-time shill for Honda. Jacobs finds grace notes of conflicted desire in the influencer storyline — just one highlight of an episode that also makes great use of the new characters, subjecting the dean to Frankie's withering incredulity and Jeff to the paranoid suspicion that Elroy is immune to his charm/scharm.

65. "Contemporary Impressionists" (Season 3, Episode 12)

Who knew French Stewart could be menacing? The 3rd Rock From the Sun alum guest stars as the proprietor of a celebrity impersonation service Abed compulsively patronizes, forcing his pals to play dress up to pay down his debt. Beneath the delight of Jacobs moonwalking and Brown doing her best Oprah, a tough question trips up Troy: At what point does letting a friend be themself turn into enabling their unhealthy behavior?

64. "Custody Law and Eastern European Diplomacy" (Season 2, Episode 18)

Still a season out from his full heel turn into lunacy, Chang kidnaps children(!!) in a misguided attempt to prove he can be a good dad to the baby he may have fathered with Shirley. That’s not even the darkest element of an episode that also finds Britta agonizing over how to tell Troy and Abed that their new dorm buddy (Dollhouse's Enver Gjokaj) is a war criminal. Jeong and Jacobs both shine, engendering sympathy for characters the show would sometimes reduce to punching-bag caricatures.

63. "Origins of Vampire Mythology" (Season 3, Episode 15)

Parks and Recreation bit player Kirk Fox guests as the mysteriously irresistible carnie Blade in this Harmon-penned off-campus installment, which finds an amusing point of intersection between Britta's addiction to terrible men and Jeff's pathological need to be attractive to all women. Lots of good material for the whole cast, including the silly throwaway subplot chronicling Pierce and Chang's fast friendship.

62. "Spanish 101" (Season 1, Episode 2)

In another of his scripts — the second of only a handful he'd write solo for the series — Harmon reiterates the redemption arc of his pilot, with Jeff again angling for a date with Britta, before again proving there's a heart behind his ego. It's very "season one, episode two," as Abed might say… at least until the climax, when Jeff joins Pierce for a selfless kamikaze on his grade and dignity. Rivaling Magnolia in its use of "Wise Up," the scene is a glimmer of the sublime comedy Community will become.

61. "Environmental Science" (Season 1, Episode 10)

Indeed, climactic musical montages would turn into a trusty Hail Mary for the show. See, for further example, the "Somewhere Out There" crosscutting finale of this sturdy Season 1 installment, otherwise notable for offering our first peek behind the curtain of Chang's insult-comic hostility, as Winger plays wingman for his lonely Spanish teacher to secure less homework.

60. "Analysis of Cork-Based Networking" (Season 5, Episode 6)

After consecutive farewells for Pierce and Troy, the show proved it could survive cast departures, going back to basics with classic hijinks involving preparations for a school dance (Fat Dog For Midterms!) and Abed’s latest "intense burst of compatibility with a girl we never see again." Best of the bunch is Annie and the newly introduced Professor Hickey trying to untangle the administrative red tape of Greendale, facilitating a faculty parade of guest spots from the likes of Nathan Fillion, Robert Patrick, Kumail Nanjiani, and Paget Brewster, one year before she'd return for a different, starring role on the series.

59. "Mixology Certification" (Season 2, Episode 10)

Troy turns 21, inspiring a night out at a local dive… and fewer Cheers references than you might expect. Veers dangerously close to a D.A.R.E. sermon by the end, but we'll still toast the ingredients of this cocktail, like Annie getting lost in the Southern party-girl alter ego she creates to match her fake I.D., and Abed leading on the fellow nerd (Paul F. Thomkins) hitting on him, because with whom else can he talk about Farscape?

58. "Home Economics" (Season 1, Episode 8)

Jeff Winger was pretty much a fully formed character by the end of the pilot, which meant the show could start upending his established persona very early — by, say, briefly transforming him into a slovenly dorm rat bunking with Abed in this highly likable Season 1 episode. The climactic reversion to his true, materialistic self is a good twist on stories, like the namechecked Overboard, about yuppies finding themselves by giving it all away. That said, the biggest laugh here is Vaughn's brutally rude breakup anthem, "Getting Rid of Britta," with Pierce on backup vocals.

57. "Intro to Knots" (Season 4, Episode 10)

Writer Andy Bobrow is said to have originally conceived the last of the show's Christmas episodes as a single-shot thriller, à la Rope, which would have been cool cool cool. Even without that gimmick, though, this is a tensely contained contraption, with a deliciously haughty Malcolm McDowell as a history teacher waging psychological warfare against the students holding him hostage at a holiday party over a failing grade. One of the few Season 4 entries on par with the Golden Age.

56. "Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas" (Season 2, Episode 11)

Scrooge alert! We’re not as high as most fans are on the second Christmas episode, a salty-sweet tribute to the Rankin/Bass stop-motion specials of yuletide yore. Isn't there something kind of off-puttingly pushy about Abed's holiday spirit, and the get-festive-or-else enabling of the ending? Or is that in keeping with the show's conception of loving Christmas as a kind of shared psychosis? Either way, it's all beautifully realized, and if you can stomach the pro-Santa propaganda, a perfectly fine sitcom ode to the most wonderful/sentimental time of the year.

55. "The Science Of Illusion" (Season 1, Episode 20)

The Community holiday express also stops at April Fool's Day, with buzzkill Britta plotting a "harmless" prank on Chang that spirals out of control, and Annie and Shirley becoming campus detectives to hunt down the culprit… if they can ever decide which of them deserves the "bad cop" title. The Lethal Weapon material (complete with Abed shouting clichéd reprimands as their make-believe police chief) is spirited. Greendale historians will also note the first appearance of Troy and Abed's imaginary talk show — a running post-credits gag that kept on giving.

54. "Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" (Season 5, Episode 10)

"A satisfying sequel is difficult to pull off," lampshades Abed, but this attempt to recapture the glory of Season 2's famous/infamous D&D episode is pretty good, thanks to some similarly robust emotional stakes: the playing-for-keeps family feud between Hickey and his estranged son, a terrific David Cross. Jonathan Banks interrogating two goblins, Mike Ehrmantraut-style, is justification enough for rolling the 12-sided die again.

53. "Digital Exploration of Interior Design" (Season 3, Episode 13)

Romances are not built to last on Community, which ended with none of its main characters in relationships, much to the presumed chagrin of executives and some fans alike. Is it any surprise that the show's most passionate love story was a doomed affair between Britta and the human surrogate for a fast food company? Said story is a great riff on Orwellian dystopias, sandwiched by scenes of Jeff trying to make amends to a dead classmate he ignored — a storyline elevated by its twist resolution and Harmon's admission that the writers named the jilted after a Sony honcho whose notes they ignored.

52. "English as a Second Language" (Season 1, Episode 24)

Were it not for the need to pay off the Jeff and Britta stuff, Season 1 could have easily ended an episode early with this last-class-of-the-semester story, in which Annie betrays the study group to assure that it stays together. Beyond the closure of the final-exam plot, there’s so much wonderful side business here: a straight-woman guest spot by Marlene Forte as Chang's stricter Spanish 101 replacement; an extended roast of Good Will Hunting with a great payoff; and Pierce saving the day for once.

51. "The Psychology of Letting Go" (Season 2, Episode 3)

Even the comparatively low-concept episodes of this show were often philosophically curious, tackling weighty topics with breezy grace. "The Psychology of Letting Go" explores mortality and how we cope with it, with Jeff neurotically hellbent on piercing Pierce's cult delusions and forcing him to confront his mother's death — a crusade that has more to do with own insecurities about getting older. It would land even higher on this list with a better B plot. Isn’t Britta gatekeeping activism so last season?

Tune in tomorrow for Part 2, as we count down the 50 best episodes of Community. 

A.A. Dowd is a writer and editor who lives in Chicago.