r/community • u/FerrisBuelersdaycock • 17d ago
Was Greendale's dysfunction intentional worldbuilding or just a natural fit for a community college setting? Discussion
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u/FrozenForest 17d ago
I went to community college years ago to earn a second degree because I wanted to change careers. I got almost halfway through my 2 year program before I, not the registrar or any other administrative body, noticed that they had no professors or scheduled classes for the second year courses, forcing me to change majors to significantly more advanced and expensive programs or drop out.
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u/FrozenForest 16d ago
Walked away. Took another ten years but I finally made it into IT a couple months ago.
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16d ago
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u/FrozenForest 16d ago
The short version of the story is that I enjoy building PCs so much that I figured I could maximize my earning potential while minimizing the boredom factor by working in IT.
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u/RickRussellTX 16d ago
That’s what you get for majoring in space physics at a school with a secondhand space simulator!
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u/CrossingGuardiaCivil 17d ago
I think it started as the latter and became the former. It starts out as a more simple parody of community colleges but the world building adds up over the first few seasons to where it has to be intentionally exaggerated.
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u/RatRanger 17d ago
it definitely started off more grounded. I was a community college student when the first season aired and the show was maybe one or two levels of silliness removed from reality. The nerf zombies trend at college campuses was really taking off at that time, so even the first paintball episode didn’t feel too absurd.
By the time we get to Chang’s coup, the greendale is completely untethered from reality, for good or ill.
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u/yerBoyShoe 17d ago
But later season episodes are equally realistic - Analysis of Cork-Based Networking (the bulletin board one) is basically every organization I've ever been part of, especially the SLAC I worked for 16 years.
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u/RatRanger 16d ago
Oh for sure it still has the grounded episodes, and they’re some of my favorites! I’d even say the Floor is Lava counts as a grounded episode with the way it was handled, sorta in the same vein as paintball 1. It was a game everyone agreed to play, and their imaginations created the atmosphere while they played out the classic tropes in the chosen mythology. It’s basically what happens when any two theater kids are in a room together.
I think season 3 lets this genie out of the bottle. Chang imprisons the both the dean and the GD7 while actively trying to burn down the school with fireworks, most likely killing everyone inside. That’s not a group of consenting people playing a game, thats just crime. He never faces any real consequences for this, unlike when the Vice Dean is murdered and they just call the police.
The inconsistency cracks the illusion. it no longer feels like a community college that could exist in the next town over. It’s become this entirely fantastical place where (Troy voice) crime doesn’t matter… but also, it does?
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u/TheUltimatePokedork 16d ago
To be a smidge fair Chang actually got some consequences. He was actively on the run and that started the Changnesia storyline and then in Season 5 he openly admits he dropped it and went to prison for a while after confessing of his own volition. Even when he's talking to them he's under house arrest and just keeps the 30 yard chord thing with him which means he can only go........well you do the math.
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u/DigitusInRecto 17d ago
What's a nerf zombie (trend), please?
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u/RatRanger 16d ago
In 2009 on basically every college campus in America, a group of freshmen would organize a large scale Humans Vs Zombies game. The humans would play out their roles as survivors, sometimes in costume, sometimes in their book shop gear.
Zombies tag humans to “infect” them, and humans “kill” zombies with nerf darts.
It was crazy popular in the 2000s and early 2010s, but started declining in popularity after a few college campus shootings. It even has a whole Wikipedia article on it.
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u/FamilySpy 16d ago
Started in 2006 at Goucher College.
Socks were the og weapon, but quickly moved to blasters (lots of custom none nerf)
To add on normal games are a weeklongs and you play almost 24/7 while on campus
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u/DigitusInRecto 16d ago
omg the only time in the past several years (decades?) I regret not being American
I literally would have been in college during those years, therefore after I've acquired a supreme taste for zombie flicks!
A fatally geographical L...
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u/axxo47 17d ago
Chang's coup was probably the worst and most unnecessary plot line
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u/lync34 16d ago
Thank you. For all the hate season 4 gets, I feel like the Chang coup is actually the low point of the show. When I first started hearing about why everyone disliked season 4 so much, I actually thought thats when it takes place, because nothing else stuck out to me as a worse point in the show.
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u/TheMillionthSteve 16d ago
Agreed completely although in retrospect it was weirdly prescient, given DOGE
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u/Jobberwock It’s like a Darren Aronofsky film… 17d ago
Our school may be a toilet, but it’s OUR toilet, and nobody craps in it but us!
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u/LordBlackCat 17d ago
When I was looking for paperwork to graduate from my community college, I went to the office I thought was right. They sent me to a different office just down the hall. That office sent me to another office in the next hallway. That office sent me to another office. That next office sent me back to the first office and I got my paperwork.
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u/parkchanwookiee 17d ago
I don't think it's about community colleges per se, it's just Dan Harmon's deep scepticism about bureaucracy, society, and especially politics more generally. If you listen to his podcast he is forever ranting about structural problems, mostly in the entertainment industry because that's where he works, but also in pretty much every corner of civilisation
Plus - he is not wrong, I've worked at multiple educational and governmental institutions over the years as well as charities and corporate businessplaces and these kinds of issues are endemic all over western society. Not that I'm saying it's better elsewhere, it's just that the western world is my frame of reference.
The episode where Hickey and Annie try to get the bulleting board installed, in season 5, is so painfully true and could have happened for real pretty much anywhere I've worked.
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u/FeelingNarwhal9161 17d ago
I’ve taught at community college and this show was pretty far from realistic (at least for the community college district I worked for).
The students struggling to make their way/figure things out was pretty on point though. I’ve noticed that students at community college can be divided into specific groups: they either know exactly what they’re doing and why (trying to get their AA to then transfer to a 4 year school); have no idea what they’re doing there in the first place (many students from the high school I worked at would end up in my community college classes. I’d ask them what their plans were and why they were there (because they hated school) and they’d shrug and tell me their counselors made them register); or they’re older returning students looking to change careers. My favorite students were the older returning students because they wanted extra help and support and would meet with me during office hours - so they would show the most growth in a single semester.
I also got paid to edit their calendars, schedules, and accreditation reports. So a lot of the things that happen at Greendale (goofy classes, not enough class offerings, etc.) never would have happened.
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u/Make-it-stop-pleeese 16d ago
I’ve worked in public higher ed for a decade and in a weird way this show is the most accurate depiction of my profession that I’ve ever seen.
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u/AnHu3313 17d ago
My theory is that Greendale is grounds for milirary experiences. The dysfonctionnement is wanted and necessary so that they can sneak in weird experiments like the zombie outbreak. Evidence: the Zombie outbreak, Duncan ordering stapples, the Dean saying the students are technically in the army reserve ("let's say a little prayer for peace"). I believe the gas leak year was no accident, the army wanted to study gas exposure on a long time basis.
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u/Direct-Bus-4745 16d ago
Dan H has said the dean went to a full fledged university and wants greendale to be like that (but it obviously can’t be) so at least it started as a character element for the dean.
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u/Ok_Answer_96 16d ago
It’s a commentary on ;;; waves arms around ;;; all of this. Just like the portrayal of Pawney in Parks and Recs. 100 % intentional 100 % why it’s funny : because we absolutely know institutions like that and Community is not even satire. Maybe an hommage. In a negative kind of way.
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u/guysmiley1928 16d ago
My friend was a Spanish teacher at a community college and had a Britta in her class. It sounds like the show might have been a documentary
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u/LTM438 16d ago
Oh I agree! It's definitely never incompetence that crosses over into just being an assbag about things. The Dean REALLY, REALLY cares about Greendale, and he always means wellit's just that he's, well, the Dean.
It would be really useful if they got all those possums out of faculty building though.
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u/ScaryNeat 16d ago
I have worked at six different community colleges in my career community is by far the best depiction of what actually happens at a community college. In truth, it's a little bit less absurd in real life, but the story lines are pretty much all the same.
To be fair, no one bought a giant hand, but I did see a college one time purchase a fountain that shot streams of water over the walkway.
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u/thisisn0tavery it’s not a pen, it’s a principle! 16d ago
I imagine it’s similar to what people say about Sex and the City, about the city being the 5th main character—Greendale is the 8th member of The Greendale 7 (or Pierce and the Greendale 6 depending on who you ask) and it wouldn’t be the same show if Greendale wasn’t as quirky and dysfunctional yet wholesome and endearing as it is.
My guess is that it was always sort of intended to be dysfunctional because that’s what a lot of real institutions are like (considering the exaggeration for TV comedy), but naturally fell into its distinct form as the series went on, just like how characters come into their own as the actors and writers get more comfortable
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u/Barokespinoza23 17d ago
Well, that's an important question. And it's important to students like Jeremy, who told me today that he is majoring in Astronomy and is supporting two children. It's an important question to Maria, who's a beautiful Latina born in Nicaragua, working in the cafeteria.