WOWWWEEEE, season 3 of Community is quite the treat. This is a show that, up to this point, has gotten better and better each season. Season 1 was really fun, but definitely had some growing pains and generic plots. Season 2 found its groove more, and had a lot of fun with the characters. But now here season 3 is just plain fun. Each and every episode feels like some special event or wild idea, and it’s amazing how much creativity went into this.

Funnily enough, when I’m thinking back on the overall plot of season 3, not much is coming to mind. This isn’t really that much of a plot-centered shows, even if characters do have definite arcs. Instead, what makes season 3 so special to me is the individual episodes, since a lot of them play around with really fun and clever ideas. I’ll just give a few examples, although there’s 22 total episodes, so there’s a lot of fun to be had. Perhaps the most famous episode is “Remedial Chaos Theory,” which explores the idea of alternate timelines. We have the core group of seven characters at Troy and Abed’s apartment one night, and we see six different possible outcomes for how the night could go. Very clever. One of the other biggest standouts for me was “Digital Estate Planning,” which features the characters inside of a video game. I have no idea how they managed to pull that one off, since almost the entire thing looks like an 8-bit video game. Aside from these, there are also just a lot of other random fun episodes, including one that plays out like a Law & Order crime drama, and one that sees the characters pulling off a heist at Greendale.

Like I said, there’s just a lot of fun stuff going on here, and so I found it to be one of the most creative seasons of the show. It’s definitely firing on all cylinders here. I’ll also say that I just love how the characters have settled into their roles, because season 3 does a lot of fun things with them. This made it interesting to see characters like Jeff and Abed still being used in fun ways, but we also get a bit more fleshing out of someone like Dean Pelton here. Also, I’ll say that I really haven’t been a fan of Pierce or Shirley in the past, but I really didn’t mind them as much in this season. Don’t get me wrong, they still have their problems, and they’re far from my favorite characters, but I didn’t find them so profoundly unlikeable in this season, so they’re used a lot better.

In the end, I just consider season 3 of Community to be a great season of television. I heard that the show kind of goes downhill from here, so I’m not expecting the remaining seasons to surpass it, but we’ll see. Regardless, as of right now, this has been the pinnacle of the show for me. I’m so fully into it and love all of the fun directions it took. Season 3 has helped cement Community as one of my favorite TV comedies that I’ve ever seen.

5/5