30 Best Community Episodes Ranked

"Community" is a show about a group of lovable misfits getting a second shot at life through a community college. Or, at least, that's how it starts.

The truth is, "Community" does a little bit of everything. It delights in parodies of every genre imaginable, and it makes Greendale College into a place where people teach classes like "Ladders!" Here, paintball games regularly skew apocalyptic, and hijinks turn on a dime to tear our hearts to shreds.

But no matter what any given episode is doing, the core of the show is always the chemistry — loving, hectic, backbiting, and fiercely loyal — among the cast. The combo of Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Yvette Nicole Brown, Alison Brie, Donald Glover, Ken Jeong, Chevy Chase, and Jim Rash stands as one of the most charismatic TV ensembles ever, and the bond the characters have with each other is the show's real star. Thanks to their adorable energy, "Community" has produced some truly stand-out installments, and here are 30 episodes that make it one of our favorite shows.

The third season of "Community" sees Chang gradually going over the top with his campus security guard power. By the time we get to "The First Chang Dynasty," he's imprisoned the real dean and replaced him with a lookalike. As if that's not enough, Chang's also wearing a Napoleon-style uniform and sitting in a "prescription" throne.

His paranoia and extraordinarily wacky security measures won't make it easy for the study group — now expelled and dubbed the Greendale Seven — to walk into the school and rescue Dean Pelton. Which means we get an episode that compresses an "Ocean's Eleven"-style heist — complete with disguises, split-screen actions, elaborate plots, and plenty of misdirection — into a half-hour of TV. Pop some popcorn, and settle in for one of the series' most purely fun episodes.

"Community" throws a couple jabs at "Glee," but none are as funny and impressively committed as Season 3's "Regional Holiday Music," where the study group is gradually enlisted to replace the school's glee club. The episode offers a ton of weirdly catchy songs to illustrate how each member is brainwashed into joining up and becoming a smiling shell of their former self. Even better, each tune is a clever take on someone's weak spot, with bonus skewerings of tropes like airheaded, baby talk-style sexiness ("Teach Me How to Understand Christmas") or self-centered Boomer nostalgia ("Baby Boomer Santa").

"Community" does great holiday episodes, and "Regional Holiday Music" is one of its most creative — and certainly its most infectiously singable.

Pierce's simmering feelings of resentment and exclusion finally come to a head in the great "Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking." He's in the hospital after an accidental drug overdose, and the study group is camped out in the waiting room. They're worried about him, but they're quickly destracted: Pierce has manufactured an elaborate psychological game out of his "bequeathals," leaving members of the group "presents" that are designed to mess with their heads. (Our personal favorite? Arranging for Troy to meet LeVar Burton when he knows that Troy will clam up out of fear of embarrassing himself.) But he may have gone too far when he promises he's found Jeff's estranged father for him.

Pierce's head games are agonizing for the characters, but let's face it — they're entertaining for us. And the character insights that emerge are genuine.

"Mixology Certification" goes in a surprisingly serious — and seriously bittersweet — direction. The group celebrates Troy's 21st birthday with a trip to a bar, but he soon finds out maturity and responsibility mean a lot more than a single transitional moment.

"Mixology Certification" is an important episode for Troy, as he finally realizes just how flawed the "cool" and "sophisticated" members of the group are and starts crafting his own way of being an adult. His calm shepherding of his drunken, troubled, and lonely friends is sweet, and it makes for a great showcase for Donald Glover's considerable talent. The episode is quieter than most, but it's still as smart and powerful as all the top-tier episodes of "Community."

"Debate 109" introduced the long-running will-they-won't-they sexual and romantic tension between Jeff and Annie, which could be enough to make it a fan-favorite. But it's also just a great episode for the two of them in general, matching Annie's type-A personality and can-do spirit against Jeff's reluctance to exert even a molecule of unnecessary effort. Watching the two of them form a debate team to take on City College is just a delight, especially when their default personalities get them into trouble. This is an extremely funny episode that proves "Community" only needs its characters (and their considerable foibles) in order to be great.

"Documentary Filmmaking: Redux" takes a simple and already promising comedic conceit — updating Greendale's TV ad — and then gives it exactly what it needs to come unglued: Luis Guzman, the school's one notable alumnus, agrees to make an appearance. Suddenly, everything has to be perfect.

And pretty soon, Abed has all the unhinged material he needs for his making-of documentary. "Hearts of Darkness" has nothing on Dean Pelton's spiral into artistic madness, especially when it's accompanied by Jeff (who's playing the dean) losing himself in his bald-capped character or a frazzled, manic Annie devoting herself heart and soul to the dean's dubious artistic vision. It's one of the show's funniest episodes, and we have to say, Luis Guzman's impassioned speech does make Greendale seem pretty awesome.

Season 5's "Cooperative Polygraphy" starts in the aftermath of Pierce's funeral. Yes, Pierce is gone, but in classic Pierce fashion, he's left behind one last attempt to mess with his friends' heads — a mandatory group polygraph that makes them confront all their petty and not-so-petty sins against each other.

In the end, though, Pierce has (mostly) nice things to say about his friends. But then — via his proxy, the enigmatic Mr. Stone (a hilarious Walton Goggins) — he drops a huge revelation: Troy will inherit his millions ... if he agrees to go on an around-the-world sailing trip to discover himself.

That swerve is a big part of the episode's brilliance. While episodes where the characters turn on each other and release accumulated tensions are always fun, by the fifth season, the setup is familiar. But using all this to lead into Donald Glover's impending departure and forcing the group to reckon with Troy's coming absence makes it unusually wrenching and surprising.

"Paradigms of Human Memory" takes on the stale concept of a clip show and does it with a hilarious twist: All the flashbacks to past adventures are actually new material.

The episode also proves that as much as we love the study group's rapport, the show is sometimes funniest when they're at each other's throats. (No need to worry. It's all healed by patching together a lot of Jeff's signature inspirational speeches into a disconnected but somehow heartwarming whole.) This is also the episode that gave "Community" fans their rallying cry of, "Six seasons and a movie!"

Really, the only problem with "Paradigms of Human Memory" is that some of these flashback-only snippets are things we wish we could've seen for real.

"Community" plunges into claymation with "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas." While the show's parodies are always fun, they're at their best when they're grounded in the characters' own reality. The Season 2 holiday special captures that perfectly. Abed has peeled off from the real world and started seeing things in the claymation of an old TV Christmas special — and that means something is seriously wrong.

Duncan selfishly sees the perfect opportunity to write a groundbreaking paper in walking all of them through an imaginary Christmas wonderland to unravel the mystery. But with a perfect blend of holiday songs, incredible imagination, loving friendship, and, of course, the obligatory Christmas pterodactyl, the episode manages to be sweet while still dealing with some real darkness and bitterness.

"Pillows and Blankets" takes a fight between Troy and Abed — go for a record-breaking pillow fort or a record-breaking blanket fort? — and escalates it into a Ken Burns-style war documentary. The inherent gravity of its format highlights the sheer ridiculousness of the battle between "Pillowtown" and "Blanketsburg," but it also reminds viewers that the emotional stakes here are very, very real. The pillows vs. blankets conflict is just an excuse to vent some deeper, unspoken conflicts Troy and Abed have been handling, and now, their friendship itself is on the line.

Troy and Abed have differed before, but this is the first episode that actually brings them into direct, bitter conflict with each other, and it winds up being pretty wrenching to watch ... like a real war that does in fact deserve its own documentary.

Never buy military surplus taco meat in bulk. Honestly, accidentally turning most of your students into zombies is almost a best-case scenario at that point.

"Epidemiology" is set at Greendale Halloween party, where the dean's attempt to get cheap snacks has resulted in a zombie outbreak ... and his attempt to get help has resulted in the Army locking down the school, trapping the uninfected inside with their slavering former classmates. Add in costumes, an endless ABBA playlist, Troy's fear of turning as geeky as his best friend, an unexpected Shirley-Chang hookup, and clever horror movie jokes, and you have one of the series' most memorable episodes. It even manages some genuine tension and creepiness, as well as real cheers when Troy wades through zombies to save the day.

One of the most formally and stylistically risky episodes "Community" ever produced, "Digital Estate Planning" could've been an abysmal flop. But instead, this episode — which sees 8-bit video game versions of our characters battling their way through a retro video game designed by a dead bigot, all so Pierce can claim his inheritance — is simply fantastic. It also features one of the show's best guest stars, Giancarlo Esposito, as Pierce's secret half-brother, Gilbert.

Old-school video game fans will get a huge kick out of the brilliant sense of gameplay and design. And the episode gets bonus mileage out of the contrast between the cheerful graphics and the "Grand Theft Auto"-like freedom the characters have to commit robbery, murder, and arson.

The episode also works because of the depth it succeeds in getting out of Pierce and Gilbert's troubled relationship with their father. For once, they may literally play his game, but in the most important ways, they're able to step away from it.

It all had to end sometime.

The finale of "Community" is unabashedly wistful, dealing with not only a major transition for the cast — Annie is off to an FBI internship and Abed to Hollywood — but also with how audiences feel when a long-running and well-loved show needs to come to an end. Part of the comfort of TV is the sense of a status quo, but sometimes you know the characters have to move on in order to really be happy. So what makes for a good ending? And how does Jeff feel as more and more of his friends reinvent their lives and he stays behind, still tied to Greendale? What if these people lose touch with each other?

"Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television" accepts that there will always be plenty of unknowns. As an elegiac look at getting older and moving on, it's the perfect, emotionally complex coda to a show where the characters sometimes felt stuck. And it reassures us that the connection between these people will always matter, even when they're far apart.

"Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" is a high-concept episode that proves how great "Community" can be even with all the spectacle stripped down. Here, we just watch the study group sit around a table and play an unusually high-stakes game of D&D. And it's unbelievably riveting.

Part of that is due to Neil (Charley Koontz), who's the reason they're all there. All the routine awfulness he endures as "Fat Neil" has led to him getting so depressed that the study group is concerned he might hurt himself. They hope that playing his beloved D&D with him will help him get his joy back. But they organized it without asking Pierce to participate, and now he's decided to crash the game and make them all pay.

The high emotions of the episode somehow blend seamlessly with the in-game details of trying to seduce an elf maiden to get a good deal on some pegasi. This episode is as clever as it is heartfelt, and its resolution is genuinely touching.

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

"Remedial Chaos Theory" starts off as a housewarming party for Troy and Abed's apartment. Then someone has to go down to retrieve the pizza they've ordered, and Jeff suggests rolling a die to see who gets up. The rest is history.

We see the alternate possibilities created by this random variable, as the show splinters off to show different versions of how the night could play out depending on who leaves to get the pizza. The best is an over-the-top explosion of perfectly timed chaos, where Troy — in a sequence that became an iconic GIF — returns with the pizzas to find Pierce shot and the apartment on fire.

It's a fascinating episode full of character insights, and the comedic pile-up of disasters in the "darkest timeline" segment is just uproariously funny. But what really seals the deal is the bittersweetness of the final outcome. Jeff goes to get the pizza ... and everything, at least for now, is better off without him and his obsession with keeping things cool and normal. When he comes back and smiles at them all dancing to "Roxanne," we see this is in fact the universe he wants — he just keeps making choices that keep it from happening. That surprising shot of darkness at the end completes the tonal variety of this episode, making this the best "Community" episode ever.