Greendale Forever: Ranking ALL The Episodes of Community

Last week, Community aired the finale of its sixth—and increasingly likely, final—season. For a number of reasons (the airing on Yahoo Screen, the kind of "shrug" enthusiasm that comes with a tumultuous sitcom in its sixth season), people simply didn't talk about Community much this year. That's unfortunate because the sixth season ended up being one of the show's best—behind Seasons 1 and 2, and slightly ahead Season 3—and the final episode was absolutely one of the strongest individual offerings in the long, bumpy road Community has now traveled. You should go read Tim's review of the finale and check out our discussion about it on the latest episode of Totally Tubular as soon as possible.

To celebrate a strong Season 6, and the potential end of Community as a weekly television series, I've spent the last week re-watching chunks of the series and thinking about those big concepts like "legacy." I have such an intense personal relationship with Community that I could write 5,000 words for you right now, but I figured there was a better—and more enjoyable—way to express my adoration for the series: ranking every single episode. That's right, below you'll find my rankings, from 110 to 1, including everything from paintball and blanket forts to gas leak years and cast departures.

As always, a couple caveats are necessary here. First, it's important to know that while I adore many of the show's parody episodes (for the lack of a better term), I'm an even bigger fan of some of the straightforward "college stuff" episodes. The episodes that feel like a riff for the sake of a riff don't hold up to additional scrutiny. Second, I've broken up the 110 episodes into five tiers of 22 because A.) it produced a nice TV-esque round number, B.) there are truly only five 'real' seasons of the show, and C.) it made it much easier to build the list. Is there a big difference between the top episode in one tier and the bottom episode in the next? Of course there is. There's a cavern of space between them. This is serious business.

Got all that? Great. Without further ado, here are all the episodes of Community, from absolute worst to all-time best.

TIER 5: The Gas Leak Year, and Some Other Stuff

Look, I was the sad sack who had to review Season 4 week-to-week (thanks again for that, Tim). My reviews ended being more positive than not, simply because I was grading on a kind of a curve and I just wanted the show I loved to be okay. It was not okay.

110. "Advanced Introduction to Finality" (S04E13) and 109. "Conventions of Space and Time" (S04E03)

It's like everything you loved about Community, only broken apart into a million pieces, and reconstructed without a soul! David Guarascio and Moses Port did their best in a terrible situation, but I've never hated episodes of something I actually loved more than these two. Just, no.

108. "Alternative History of the German Invasion" (S04E04)

107. "Advanced Documentary Filmmaking" (S04E06)

106. "Economics of Marine Biology" (S04E07)

105. "Heroic Origins" (S04E12)

104. "History 101" (S04E01)

103. "App Development and Condiments" (S05E08)

Guess what? Season 4 doesn't have exclusive rights on bad episodes of the show. I know that this is one that has its supporters, Tim included. But it's one of those high-concept episodes that rings so false that I can start to understand why the show never grew into a real hit for NBC. A couple good Britta (Gillian Jacobs) moments though.

102. "Intro to Felt Surrogacy" (S04E09)

Puppets.

101. "Intro to Recycled Cinema" (S06E08)

By the back half of Season 6, I think we'd all seen enough of the show's attempts to explore Jeff's (Joel McHale) vanity. I'm a sucker for Jeff and Abed (Danny Pudi) stories, but this one was so lightweight that even the presence of Steve Guttenberg couldn't salvage it entirely.

100. "Intro to Knots" (S04E10)

99. "Origins of Vampire Mythology" (S03E15)

Season 3 has more "wait, what was that?" episodes than you remember. None more so than this one.

98. "The Art of Discourse" (S01E22)

97. "Advanced Criminal Law" (S01E05)

96. "Celebrity Pharmacology" (S02E13), 95. "Advanced Gay" (S03E06), and 94. "Basic Genealogy" (S01E18)

Three episodes that were ostensibly about the show's most difficult character, Pierce. They all worked to a degree because Chevy Chase was better than people now give him credit for in the role, but "Celebrity Pharmacology" and "Advanced Gay" didn't work quite as well in retrospect given how the show never quite figured out what to do with Pierce after the long arc in Season 2. "Basic Genealogy" gets bonus points for Katharine McPhee and Abed hanging out with Shirley's (Yvette Nicole Brown) kids.

93. "Herstory of Dance" (S04E08)

92. "Contemporary Impressionists" (S03E11)

91. "Paranormal Parentage" (S04E02)

Another Pierce-heavy episode, but one that I found to be pretty enjoyable given the Season 4 of it all. This is one of the few Season 4 episodes that could have fallen into other seasons without that much alteration, and it was also the one that gave me (false) hope that the show could be OK without Dan Harmon. I was wrong.

90. "Laws of Robotics and Party Rights" (S06E05)

89. "Grifting 101" (S06E09)

Next: Messy season-enders, OK season premieres, and more

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TIER 4: Bold Misses and Great Moments

As the title suggests, this tier is full of episodes that are conceptually ambitious but ultimately flawed or are just okay with a great scene or two. None of these episodes are close to bad, but we're also not quite to Absolutely Great territory either.

88. "Football, Feminism, and You" (S01E06)

Remember when Troy (Donald Glover) was a football player? It's funny how shows evolve after the pilot. This was a relatively forgettable, repetitive episode that remains memorable for me thanks to the back-and-forth between Jeff and Troy out on the football field. That was one of those moments where I knew that once the show figured out the characters, we'd have something very special.

87. "Competitive Wine Tasting" (S02E20)

86. "Custody Law and European Diplomacy" (S02E18)

85. "Environmental Science" (S01E10)

84. "G.I. Jeff" (S05E11)

This is likely to be another controversial positioning, but this was a relatively inaccessible episode for those of us who have no interest/history with the G.I. Joe cartoon universe. You can't help but admire the ambition, however. Bonus points for the commitment to recreating the Saturday morning cartoon experience with the commercials; those weird segments were a sign of things to come with the extended, and increasingly depressing, tags from Season 6.

83. "Basic Email Security" (S06E06)

82. "Applied Anthropology and Culinary Arts" (S02E21)

81. "Basic Story" (S05E13) and 80. "Basic Sandwich" (S05E12)

I tend to believe that the "meh" response to Season 6 is connected to the significant decline in the second half of Season 5. This two-parter of sorts was quite the way for Dan Harmon and Chris McKenna to end the NBC run of the show, and while I again appreciated the defiant tone here, I'm also very, very happy that this was not how Community ended.

79. "Repilot" (S05E01) and 78. "Ladders" (S06E01)

Community season premieres were never among its best offerings and to the credit of these two episodes, they had a lot of work to do. "Repilot" was fairly weighed down by exposition and everything it took to get Jeff and the study group back together, and "Ladders" was a slightly better but very similar version of the same story beats.

77. "The First Chang Dynasty" (S03E21)

76. "Course Listing Unavailable" (S03E18)

75. "Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism" (S03E09) and 74. "Studies in Modern Movement" (S03E07)

Two early Season 3 episodes that were clearly part of Harmon's attempts to re-normalize the show and serve some corporate masters. They're both fine, with fantastic individual sequences: In "Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism," it's the electric and colorful animated segment of Jeff and Shirley playing foosball, while in "Studies in Modern Movement," it's Jeff and the Dean (Jim Rash) performing a karaoke duet of Seal's "Kiss From a Rose."

73. "Cooperative Escapism and Familial Relations" (S04E05)

I know, we all wanted the show to follow through with Harmon's dream casting for Jeff's dad (Bill Murray), but I stand by my comments that the Season 4 crew did a very good job of making due with that big moment for the show, and for Jeff. Though James Brolin isn't Bill Murray, he was rock solid in the role and this is one of Joel McHale's best performances in the entire run of the show, gas leak year or not.

72. "VCR Maintenance and Educational Publishing" (S05E09)

71. "Basic RV Repair and Palmistry" (S06E10)

70. "Urban Matrimony and the Sandwich Arts" (S03E12) and 69. "Asian Population Studies" (S02E12)

The amusing thing about these episodes was that you could just picture NBC executives emailing Harmon asking for just one "normal" episode as part of the spring runs in Seasons 2 and 3. Shirley's reconciliation with Andre (Malcolm-Jamal Warner) was one of those Season 3 stories that appeared promising at the start but got lost in the shuffle, but Troy and Abed's "weird-down" was one of those Community stories that shouldn't be as strong and oddly potent as it was. "Asian Population Studies" got the nod here mostly because sad-sack Chang (Ken Jeong) was one of the better iterations of Chang, and Jeff's incredulous response to the return of Doctor Rich (Greg Cromer) was mined for good comedic action. Plus it had Kettle Corn, the funnest of all the fun time snacks!

68. "Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps" (S03E05)

67. "Regional Holiday Music" (S03E10)

Fantastic idea, some wonderful music, but needlessly mean in a way that the show usually wasn't but critics think it was. The music though!

Next: The rise of Season 6, and some underrated Season 2 offerings

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TIER 3: Streets Ahead

Here's the deal: from here on out, I love every episode. Of course they have some weak B- or C-plots here and there, and maybe in certain cases they return to well-trodden conceptual territory. But these are all good to great episodes of Community, so much so that this was the hardest individual tier to rank.

66. "Interpretive Dance" (S01E14)

65. "The Politics of Human Sexuality" (S01E11)

64. "Early 21st Century Romanticism" (S02E15)

63. "Basic Crisis Room Decorum" (S06E03)

This was one of those Season 6 episodes that felt very familiar but worked well because the new cast members injected a bit of life into the proceedings. This was the first time Frankie (Paget Brewster) and Elroy (Keith David) were truly integrated into the rhythms and pacing of the show, and it's one of many standout performances from Brewster. And frankly, I really loved the idea of Greendale giving a degree to a dog, somehow publicly acknowledging it, and coming out the other side A-OK (enough).

62. "Geography of Global Conflict" (S03E02)

61. "Anthropology 101" (S02E01) and 60. "Pascal's Triangle Revisited" (S01E25)

It's hard to separate these two episodes in my mind and while "Anthropology 101" was definitely funnier and a great premiere for a show that didn't always do great premieres, "Pascal's Triangle Revisited" did some lovely and fun things with the concept of the season finale and love triangles. I've never quite understood the hate for "Triangle," as it's clearly meant to be the kind of generic deconstruction that the show was doing on the semi-regular by the end of Season 1. Plus, Troy and the giant cookie. Come on.

59. "English as a Second Language" (S01E24)

58. "Introduction to Film" (S01E03)

57. "Social Psychology" (S01E04)

56. "The Science of Illusion" (S01E20)

55. "The Psychology of Letting Go" (S02E03) and 54. "Accounting for Lawyers" (S02E02)

Season 2 was so far and away the best season of the show, and most people (including me very shortly) will point to the unbelievable run of episodes that began a little bit after these two. However, "The Psychology of Letting Go" and "Accounting for Lawyers" should not be disregarded. The former's handling of the death of Pierce's mother was hilarious, sad, and surprisingly moving (a combination the show would hit multiple times in Season 2) and the latter gave us Study Group hijinks off-campus for the very first time, the chloroform sequence, and weird hole-in-the-hand guy played by Drew Carey.

53. "Analysis of Cork-Based Networking" (S05E06)

52. "Biology 101" (S03E01)

51. "Basic Rocket Science" (S02E04)

Almost entirely fluffy and narratively insignificant (despite the attempts to ground it in character with Annie's almost-transfer to City College), but very, very funny.

50. "Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" (S05E10)

49. "Investigative Journalism" (S01E13)

Remember when Jack Black and Owen Wilson randomly showed up on Community? That felt like eons ago by now. This was one of the first episodes that made it clear that other people in Greendale actually hated the Study Group, or viewed them as far less cool than we thought, which was a familiar tactic but an effective one for comedic purposes. I'm also a sucker for stories about newspapers and investigative reporting, even if they're entirely silly.

48. "Basic Intergluteal Numismatics" (S05E03)

47. "Advanced Safety Features" (S06E07)

Winking product placement has been done to death in contemporary sitcoms and on Community itself, which is why the manner in which "Advanced Safety Features" handled it—by simply hammering it home so many times, repeatedly—was so funny and successful on a character level. The show has occasionally hinted that Britta was actually very good at things she fundamentally dislikes (wedding planning being one), and thus the revelation that she was a fantastic guerilla marketer hit all the right notes. The Dean's response to Rick's (Travis Schuldt) marketing tactics were tremendous, and Billy Zane's weirdo guest spot was even better.

46. "Digital Exploration of Interior Design" (S03E13)

45. "Geothermal Escapism" (S05E05)

The first half of this episode was kind of a mess, but it eventually turned into a fitting and moving goodbye for the show's heart and soul, Troy. The last few minutes bumped this episode up a dozen spots for me.

Next: The pilot, a surprising Season 4 appearance, and paintball

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TIER 2: Conceptual Highs and College Tries

Now we're really starting to split hairs. Tier 2 is full of some very successful conceptual episodes, but also a number of straightforward college-y or Greendale-y episodes. I tried to parse out the seasons across each tier, but there's an odd number of Season 1 episodes here and perhaps there should be; Season 1 is awesome.

44. "Lawnmower Maintenance and Postnatal Care" (S06E02)

Jim Rash's performance during the virtual-reality simulation was absolutely Emmy worthy, even though we knew that will never, ever happen. Solid introduction for Elroy and Keith David too.

43. "Pilot" (S01E01) and 42. "Spanish 101" (S01E02)

Maybe these episodes are a little too high in the grand scheme of things, but comedy pilots are typically pretty lame and the second episodes are even more likely to be repetitive and unfunny. Somehow, Community avoided both of those traps and that deserves some legitimate acclaim (as far as placement in a list of episodes on the Internet goes). Sure, the characters weren't close to who'd they be even by the mid-way point of Season 1, but Harmon's voice and Joel McHale's performance went a long way in establishing the tone of the show.

41. "Home Economics" (S01E08)

40. "Aerodynamics of Gender" (S02E07)

39. "Communication Studies" (S01E16), 38. "Beginner Pottery" (S01E19), and 37. "Physical Education" (S01E17)

This run of three episodes in the back half of Season 1 was where the show started to blend the community college hijinks with more overt conceptual and parodic nods, and to great effect. Your enjoyment of "Communication Studies" may depend on your investment in Jeff and Britta, but it already felt like the show knew that they weren't a traditional Will-They-Or-Won't-They by this point. "Beginning Pottery" gave us the introduction of Doctor Rich and the sacred rule of No Ghosting in the pottery studio, while "Physical Education" mashed a fine story about Jeff's desire to look cool with a very odd riff on sports movies.

36. "Intro to Political Science" (S02E14)

35. "Competitive Ecology" (S03E04)

This episode managed to follow "Remedial Chaos Theory," an episode I'm quite fond of as you'll see momentarily, which is a legitimate feat. That it also dove into the toxicity of the group dynamics and their impact on the rest of Greendale without feeling too worn out, and introduced creepy oddball Todd (David Neher)—still a supporting goof to this day—was even more impressive. Man, remember when Michael K. Williams was on the show? There's a surprising number of guest stars that I've just forgotten.

34. "Queer Studies and Advanced Waxing" (S06E04)

33. "Pillows and Blankets" (S03E14)

32. "Introduction to Teaching" (S05E02)

A great episode, a fantastic showcase for Jonathan Banks' Hickey, and ultimately a monument to a major lost opportunity by the show for not telling more stories about Jeff, teacher.

31. "Wedding Videography" (S06E12)

I saw mixed reaction for this one on Twitter, but it's a strong addition to the documentary filmmaking episodes. Like "Competitive Ecology," it turned its attention to the negative influence of the main characters, but smartly expanded that influence to the world outside of Greendale. The wedding setting gave each of the characters their brief moment to shine—Elroy's encouraging of white people was one of my favorite jokes in the history of the show—and found that nice middle ground between uncomfortably funny and heartwarming. Only this show could do that about an incest marriage held together by a psychotic former Spanish teacher/commercial star.

30. "Basic Human Anatomy" (S04E11)

Not every episode in Season 4 was absolutely terrible. Jim Rash can write, who knew!

29. "Romantic Expressionism" (S01E15)

28. "Introduction to Finality" (S03E22), 27. "Curriculum Unavailable" (S03E19), and 26. "Basic Lupine Urology" (S03E17)

Going back over the show's run, I found myself very surprised at how little I remember of Season 3. It's a bumpy run of episodes with a lot of ambition regarding season-long storytelling, something both "Introduction to Finality" and "Curriculum Unavailable" both represented. While individual episodes like these three stood out among the pack, the entire whole didn't quite fit together as well as Harmon would have hoped, which limited the impact of episodes like #28 and #27 on my list. And "Basic Lupine Urology" was sort of separate from all that, dropped in the middle of those bumpy story arcs, but boy if it wasn't a successful Law & Order riff.

25. "Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples" (S02E05)

One of the most underrated episodes in the show's history. The Abed and Shirley combo didn't get far enough burn in the five years they were together.

24. "Documentary Filmmaking: Redux" (S03E08)

23. "For a Few Paintballs More" (S02E24)

This one was tough to omit from the top tier, and it's one heck of a fun expression of everything that made Community a joyful TV show: excellent jokes, fun riffs on generic conventions, surprisingly nimble action sequences, and overblown tension between two community colleges. And man, that ending was kind of brutal, right?

Next: The 22 best episodes in Community history, of course

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TIER 1: The Best of the Best

Congratulations, you made it to the end! These are the 22 best episodes of Community, and a group that I think is very representative of the multiplicity of tones, genres, and voices the show can work with—sometimes all at once.

22. "Debate 109" (S01E09)

The origins of the one romantic pairing the show seemed interested in for the longest time, Jeff and Annie (Alison Brie), and one of the early signs that Community would be willing to go pretty weird when necessary. Little did we know.

21. "Modern Espionage" (S06E11)

The show didn't need to return to paintball yet again, but I'm very glad it did. "Modern Espionage" has one of the better character-driven reasons for paintball-related conflict in Jeff's attempts to prove that he's mature and valuable to Frankie. The idea of an ongoing underground paintball game constantly taking over the campus was so great that I'm disappointed that Yahoo didn't produce a series of web clips building out this story.

20. "Digital Estate Planning" (S03E20)

19. "A Fistful of Paintballs" (S02E23)

18. "Introduction to Statistics" (S01E07) and 17. "Epidemiology" (S02E06)

Halloween is one of the best sitcom holidays and Community's first two attempts with the day were most certainly its best. "Epidemiology" was up here for obvious reasons—it's a fantastic generic parody, one of the most absolutely ridiculous premises that the show toyed with across 110 episodes, and a showcase for Donald Glover's Troy at a time where the character really needed it. For some people, "Introduction to Statistics" might be a surprise this high on the list, but it's a standout episode from Season 1, and one where the show and the characters started to act and talk like they would for the duration of their time at Greendale. Troy's Eddie Murphy costume is of course the Halloween highlight from all of Community.

16. "Virtual Systems Analysis" (S03E16)

15. "Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality" (S05E07)

Community seemed to find something special the few times that it dedicated time to stories in a bar. "Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality" focuses on the weird trio of Jeff, Britta, and Duncan (John Oliver), but built to a series of bittersweet conversations about personal crises, sex, and friendship. It's an "adult" story that the show didn't approach too often and was better for it. Even the secondary story here, with another odd pairing of Abed and Hickey, had some oddly moving moments between characters who didn't typically interact and certainly didn't really understand one another.

14. "Cooperative Polygraphy" (S05E05)

13. "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" (S02E11) and 12. "Comparative Religion" (S01E12)

Here's another holiday doubleshot that I couldn't help but put together. "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" was of course one of the show's most stylistically ambitious episodes that worked because it completely tracked with the Abed character and how everyone else handled his (mis)handling of reality. "Comparative Religion" was much more of a traditional episode, but it engaged with religion and the burgeoning group dynamics in comedically and emotionally effective ways. It's also the first great episode in the show's run, which felt important.

11. "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" (S02E14)

10. "Critical Film Studies" (S02E19)

9. "Contemporary American Poultry" (S01E21)

8. "Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking" (S02E16), 7. "Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design" (S02E09), and 6. "Paradigms of Human Memory" (S02E21)

Season 2 dominates this top tier, and for good reason. These three episodes approached their respective generic conventions with such zeal and sharp storytelling that they felt entirely true to the conventions but inherently Community as well. "Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking" was my favorite episode in the Pierce Sucks arc and the mockumentary style really allowed the show to illustrate how Pierce put the screws to his fellow Study Group members. "Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design" did the conspiracy thriller genre justice and somehow featured multiple characters trying to shoot one another with handguns and it's not the weirdest thing of the half-hour (night school for the win, y'all). And "Paradigms of Human Memory" was a masterful send-up of the clip show that managed to further emphasize the toxic and co-dependent relationships among the main characters.

5. "Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television" (S06E13)

As I said way back at the introduction of this piece, the Season 6 finale was one of the show's best offerings, and frankly, the only season finale that felt like an appropriate send-off for the characters. The group's pitches for a theoretical Season 7 were the show at its meta best, and the final few minutes were the show at its character-driven best as well. Everything, from Jeff and Annie's goodbye kiss, to the dialogue-less drop-off at the airport, to Harmon's increasingly manic and self-referential voiceover in the tag, gelled together to make a nearly perfect conclusion to this story. After this one, we no longer need more episodes of Community.

4. "Cooperative Calligraphy" (S02E08)

3. "Modern Warfare" (S01E23)

It's hard to imagine anyone loving Community and not loving this episode. It's a symbol for everything the show became in its first season and everything that it grew into after that. It's also one of the purest expressions of genre appreciation and compact sitcom storytelling that we've seen on broadcast TV in the 21st century. Everything about "Modern Warfare" worked, even the Jeff and Britta stuff. In fact, I'd argue that those moments were just as important as the paintball set pieces.

2. "Mixology Certification" (S02E10)

My absolute favorite episode, and another wonderful example of the bittersweet emotional beats the show could hit when it wanted to (and when it took the characters off-campus and out to a bar). Troy's birthday excursion to the bar provided ample opportunities to show us the character's pasts and potential futures: Shirley couldn't escape her hard-drinking days, Pierce found himself stuck on the outside looking in, Annie pretended to be someone else at the moment she's having an identity crisis, Abed struggled to communicate with someone outside the group, and Troy watched the "cool" people of the group (Jeff and Britta) act like complete idiots. There's no parody, no high-concept riff, no paintball. It's just a basic sitcom premise, imbued with a slew of great little moments.

1. "Remedial Chaos Theory" (S03E03)

Was there really any question? "Remedial Chaos Theory" was full of everything that made Community great in one 22-minute package. It's smart, narratively inventive, constantly funny, and somehow still couched in character relationships. This is the gold standard of Community episodes, and of contemporary sitcom storytelling.

Which shows make your Top 5? Which placements on my list do you agree or disagree with?