EJ’s Top 10 Series of 2010

4.  Community – I am constantly in awe of how innovative this show is.  I mean, they actually devoted an episode to a zombie plague, and it was hilarious!  Considering that I still haven’t made it all the way through the Walking Dead pilot, I am not the target audience for zombies, either played straight or for comedy.  That’s how good their Halloween episode was.  And really, every episode brings something that you haven’t seen done on network comedy before.  Whether it was the classic paintball episode, the KFC space simulator, the episode with the trampoline and Abed as a brutally accurate Mean Girl, or Jeff chasing Professor Professorson through a blanket fort, Community aims high every time.  It’s a show that just barely remains on this side of ‘completely bonkers’ but stays grounded with wonderful performances and fully-realized characters.  I’ve written a lot about why I love Community recently, so instead of repeating myself, I just want to point to the holiday episode, “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas”.  The entire episode was done with stop-motion animation, but it wasn’t just a gimmick.  It all had to do with Abed processing his depression, by visualizing the world as a Rankin-Bass special.  I spent the entire episode with a big goofy grin because it’s so gratifying to see a show that takes big risks and pays off so consistently.