Special stop-motion animation episode of Community airs tomorrow!

NBC's "Community" is a fresh sit-com about a varied group of students at a community college in Colorado. It has a history of great writing backed by an excellent cast, including the legendary Chevy Chase. This week's episode is a Christmas special filmed in stop-motion animation. Thanks to One2One Network I was able to preview the episode before it airs tomorrow, this Thursday December 9th @ 8pm EST/7pm CST on NBC. The episode is full of laughs whether you celebrate Christmas or not!

As is usual for the series, this episode skillfully delivers a solid plot with plenty of humorous one-liners, witty remarks, and silly moments. The cast all perform wonderfully, and I especially enjoyed John Oliver’s depiction of the skeptical, manipulative, professor of psychology. There were a few oddball moments which I found very amusing such as the random “remote control Christmas pterodactyl”. I also laughed pretty hard at the jab they took at the show "Lost". Like any good Christmas special, there are a number of songs featured in the episode. The songs are a nice addition and help to further the plot in an interesting way. The music itself is simple and works well as it doesn’t detract from the message of the song. The lyrics of each song are well written, and are often just as funny as the regular lines.

The choice of stop-motion animation was a great idea in my opinion. It brings both a refreshing ‘edge’ to the show and it also evoked a small sense of nostalgia as I grew up watching the many stop motion Christmas specials such as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”. As someone who watches Community regularly, the lack of actually seeing the actors’ real body language was a bit disconcerting at first but in no way impacted my enjoyment of the episode. Using stop-motion allowed for a greater ability to show things that would be very hard to pull off live and overall was very visually entertaining.

Watch the episode yourself tomorrow night,
Thursday December 9th @ 8pm EST/7pm CST on NBC.

~John

Disclosure: I was not compensated for this post but was given an advanced streaming episode of the show to watch. All opinions are that of the Author and 100% honest.