Community: 10 Best Season 1 Episodes, Ranked By IMDb

Despite having a tendency to get lost in the ocean of incredible television content that was produced during the decade of 2005-2015, the NBC comedy Community holds a firm spot in its fan’s hearts as it does a perfect job making audiences reminisce about their own wacky college experiences.

Despite fluttering out over the course of the final three seasons, which included multiple main-cast members leaving, Dan Harmon being fired (then rehired), and the show moving from NBC to Yahoo! Online for the sixth season, the community college sitcom started off as strong as any comedy ever had and produced some of the best episodes of the entire series.

10 Comparative Religion, Episode 12 (8.5)

The mid-season Christmas special found the Greendale Seven taking their first Spanish mid-term and celebrating the ending of the semester with a party in the study room… that is, until a jacked-up beef-head starts making trouble for Jeff and the two ultimately decide to fist-fight each other in the quad.

Shirley, a passionate Christian who is against all forms of fighting, condemns Jeff for even thinking of starting a fight on a sacred holiday, but then withdraws her criticism when the bully starts to beat Jeff up and she tells Jeff to kick his butt.

9 Communication Studies, Episode 16 (8.5)

Jeff and Britta had been fighting their feelings for each other at the beginning of the season, but things cooled down between them once Jeff started dating Professor Slater. Unfortunately, Britta gets drunk and calls Jeff in the middle of the night (with “booty call implications”) and it makes things awkward between the two of them.

To balance the scales, Jeff gets drunk (with Abed’s help) and leaves Britta a drunken voicemail… but also calls his girlfriend and hangs up when he realizes it’s not Britta. Slater immediately puts Jeff in the doghouse (assuming he still has feelings for Britta) only for Britta to show up and play the voicemail, wherein Jeff admits to Britta how much he likes Slater.

8 Beginner Pottery, Episode 19 (8.5)

Everybody who went to college met at least one ‘Rich’ during their time there, and Jeff met his during this season one episode. Jeff did his best to take as many blow-off classes as he could, so naturally, he decided to take “Beginner Pottery” since all you had to do was show up to get credit.

However, when a man named ‘Rich’ also attends the class and immediately begins showing off his pottery skills (and claiming it’s just luck), Jeff becomes envious of all the praise that he receives. Jeff tries to prove that Rich is an impostor and that he’s only taking the class to show off, causing him to have a manic breakdown and get himself thrown out of the class entirely.

7 The Science of Illusion, Episode 20 (8.5)

It was no secret that the buzzkill among the Greendale Seven was Britta (she was the worst) but everybody made sure that she knew it during this episode. In response to everyone’s accusations, Britta decides to play a lackluster prank on their Spanish teacher… which goes horribly wrong when Britta accidentally knocks a cadaver out of the school’s biology building.

Britta tries to hide that she’s the one responsible by framing Jeff for the incident, but eventually comes clean and sobs about how all she wanted to do was have fun and play a prank, which causes the group to forgive her.

6 Pascal’s Triangle Revisited, Episode 25 (8.5)

As stated, Jeff found himself in a love triangle for most of season 1 when he kept flip-flopping between going after Britta or Slater. However, it all came to a head during the season 1 finale when both girls inform Jeff that they’d like him to go with them to the Transfer Dance and Jeff has to decide which lane he’ll take.

At the dance, it seems as though Jeff might go with Slater until Britta declares into a microphone in front of everybody that she loves Jeff. Once again in a pickle (and with everybody watching), Jeff can’t decide between the two women and picks neither… only to leave the dance and start making out with Annie instead.

5 Introduction to Statistics, Episode 7 (8.8)

In the very first Halloween special that Community produced, the group finds themselves attending a Halloween party that Annie is throwing their Spanish class for extra credit – all except Jeff, who meets Professor Slater during this episode and bails on the party in order to pursue her.

The group (mostly Annie) is devastated that Jeff would ditch them, but the party takes a wacky turn when Pierce accidentally starts tripping on psychedelics and barricades himself in a chair/table fortress. Eventually, Jeff leaves Slater in order to help his friends and save Pierce from his own hallucinations.

4 Debate 109, Episode 9 (8.8)

Jeff was only at Greendale because he had been disbarred from being a lawyer due to his lack of any kind of college degree, but it had been well established that Jeff was quite the wordsmith. So, when Greendale found itself in need of a second member for their debate team, they looked no further.

Eventually agreeing to join Annie on the team, Jeff partakes in the debate and tries to woo the judges and the crowd… only to receive a horrible score for barely following the rules. Luckily he bounces right back. puts his lawyer skills to work, and he and Annie end up winning the contest.

3 Physical Education, Episode 17 (9.0)

Only a school like Greendale could have a physical education class… for billiards. Once again, Jeff made it his business to take as many blow-off classes as possible, but this class was one that he was genuinely looking forward too – that is until the professor/coach tried to make Jeff (and the entire class) wear short-shorts while they were playing.

Uncomfortable with the attire, Jeff quits the class which results in the professor heckling him for being a quitter. However, Jeff comes right back and beats the professor at his own game (completely in the nude) to prove a point that it was always about pool and never about the shorts.

2 Contemporary American Poultry, Episode 21 (9.3)

Television has yet to produce a character as meta as Abed Nadir, and Community was a show that loved doing spoofs/parodies – put those two elements together and it makes gold. During one of the series’ very first parody episodes (based on Goodfellas) the Greendale Seven becomes a “mafia family” when they start running the school cafeteria and distributing endless amounts of chicken fingers to the student population.

Jeff is the head of the ‘family’ but Abed becomes too powerful and takes over as the Father… only for students to eventually get sick of chicken fingers and have the entire group go back to normal as if nothing had ever happened.

1 Modern Warfare, Episode 23 (9.8)

Paintball! The most well-known staple for Community, and a fan-favorite for most, the very first paintball episode nearly got a perfect rating on IMDb and it genuinely earned it. The episode starts with Jeff taking a nap in his car and the Dean announcing that there will be a game of “Paintball Assassin” with a mystery grand prize. When Jeff awakes from his nap, he finds the whole school destroyed and covered in paint and then gets himself rescued by Abed and Troy, who reveal that the prize is “priority registration” (which is why everyone went insane).

The guys meet up with the girls, form an alliance, and try to make sure one of them is the last man standing. One by one the group all goes down until Jeff is declared the winner… but he decides to give the prize to Shirley so she can spend more time with her kids.

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