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