Over the past few weeks, I’ve become obsessed with “Community”.  By which I mean both the critically acclaimed show Community, and the idea of what a lower case community means.

As far as the show goes,  in the span of two weeks I watched the entirety of the show so far - 2 1/2 seasons on Hulu Plus (a service I would not recommend past the 1 week free trial, although despite their shitty service I’m tempted to subscribe for the Criterion Collection - but that’s a topic for another day).  I know I’m late to the party, but hopefully I did my tiny part to keep the show on the air.

My rationalization for watching over 24 hours of TV is that I’ve been asked by my managers to write a spec of an existing show.  I’m going in another direction, one that probably syncs up better with works of mine like Unthinkable and Graveyard.

But I found myself sucked into the world of Community.  I know the show is mostly praised for it’s “meta” qualities - and no doubt I loved the fact it’s in part, a sitcom about the conventions of sitcom.  But I was surprised by the show’s heart, by it’s ability to make me care about the characters without resorting to will Sam-and-Diane-or-won’t-they-fuck-Jim-and-Pam-are-on-their-second-baby-already saccharine melodrama.

(That…and how can anyone NOT fall in love with Alison Brie and Gillian Jacobs).

LA can be an isolating place.  As a writer, I rarely actually have to leave my apartment.  Driving, urban sprawl and most of all traffic make it a pain in the ass to get anywhere.  These things make it very hard to form a human connection, let alone a community here in LA.

You’d think that because nearly everyone here is in the entertainment industry, it would be easy to form a community.  But that makes everything harder - it’s hard not to feel jealousy or resentment - either at people who you perceive as more successful than you, or from people who perceive you to be more successful than they are. 

More often than not, my interactions with new people out, whether it’s it’s in business, friendship or romance, involve being sized up by someone for how I can help them.  It’s either that, or I’m worried the other person thinks I’m sizing them up for they can help me.

So, the fictional “Community” appeals to me, in part, because a real community often eludes me out here.

With that in mind, last week I went to Harmontown, a monthly comedy show performed by Dan Harmon, creator of “Community” at Meltdown Comics.  Here’s a shitty picture I took of flag instead of the performance or the sold-out crowd.

Essentially, Dan gets up on stage and with a bottle of vodka in one hand and a couple of prepared bits in another, just goes on a free-form comedy rant about everything from stories about network executives wearing #savecommunity t-shirts to table reads in order to appeal hip, to Dan constructing an artificial vagina out of a toiled paper tube, cotton balls and (ouch) staples as a young boy.

I’m not going to blog about any of the former, the inside baseball stuff about what goes on behind the scenes at NBC.  In part because there wasn’t much said, and in part because there seems to be an understanding that Dan can be candid because he trusts his audience to keep what he says off the internet. 

And trying to recap the prepared bits that Dan performed with Harmontown’s “acting comptroller”, the disgustingly young Megan Ganz, would not do the comedy justice.  Suffice to say the guy is just bursting with creativity and that his MySpace blogs from three years ago are funnier than most comedians entire acts.

It’s the audience is really what fascinates me.  I’m late to the Meltdown-Comics-as-a-premiere-comedy-destination party as well.  When comedy first started there years ago, I avoided it, fearing it would be the kind of comedy that pandered to nerds with shitty Aquaman jokes.  But as someone who was there for the heyday of Luna Lounge on the Lower East Side back in the day, I can say it’s become my favorite comedy showcase in LA.  The comedy is not particularly nerd-focused…although as a creator it’s nice to know that a non-comics reading audience gets to see such a well-run shop before every show.

(Side note - Harmon got his start co-writing Rob Schrab’s Scud The Disposable Assassin comic).

Anyway, even by Meltdown’s standards the Harmontown audience was different.  There’s a bond, a sense of community that you rarely see.  I think it’s in part engendered by the “Community” fanbase.

It’s also helped by Channel 101. 

Also founded by Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab, it’s a digital film festival held at the Downtown Independent in LA where every month, 10 five-minute tv pilots are shown, with the top five audience favorites making it for another episode the following month.  The Channel 101 shorts are almost universally of surpassingly high quality, and it’s become something of a hunting ground for talent. 

But again, what’s most impressive about Channel 101 is that the, well, community of creators, cast and crew of each short.  Dan mentioned that NBC has put “Community” in a terrible place where, in order for the show to be renewed, something else has to fail…pitting creative people against one another like gladiators.  Channel 101 is by it’s nature competitive, but you don’t get that sense from the participants or the audience.  You often see the same cast and crew helping each other out on competing shorts.

You can sample some of Channel 101’s shorts here.  My favorite so far is “Initimate Indiscretions”…I’ll try to post some videos soon.

I highly recommend checking out “Community”, Harmontown and Channel 101.  And I’d like to say they all restored my faith that it’s possible to have some kind of community in Hollywood.  And to some extent, they have.  But it’s also hard not to watch any of these things and feel a bit of envious.