Community Did One Thing Better Than Any Other TV Comedy

Image courtesy of NBCCommunity stands out from other sitcoms in just about every way — for better and worse — but its product placement is definitely one of its best qualities. For most TV shows and movies, the integrated advertisements range from jokes you begrudgingly chuckle at to truly nauseating distractions. Community managed to turn its ads into some of its best storylines, all while poking fun at the brands it was appeasing.

There aren’t a lot of shows that could have pulled this off, though some have tried in the years since. In some ways, today’s self-aware social media ads and tongue-in-cheek commercials owe a lot to Community, and to the man named Subway.Community was always a bit of underdog during its run on NBC, competing against the network’s more popular shows like 30 Rock and The Office as well those on other channels.



That made it a bit surprising that advertisers were willing to shell out for product placement on the show, but Community took a big swing in Season 3 with its integrated ads for Subway.NBCAt the time, Subway had been steadily escalating its product placement on NBC’s Chuck, so the company already had a relationship with NBC. Series creator Dan Harmon talked about how the partnership came to be during a panel at San Diego Comic-Con at 2012.

“I’ve done a lot of successful integrated marketing and stuff before, so I’m not one of those writers that’s afraid of it, like, ruining everything,” he said. “But I have to have 100% control over that stuff.”[RELATED: 7 Best Shows on Tubi You Didn’t Know Were Streaming]“So we just kept saying no to Subway, and then somebody finally said, ‘Well, what if we just gave you this amount of money, and we didn’t care what you did?’ And I was like, ‘Okay, that we can do,'” Harmon recalled.

“We can tell a story that way. It’s not like we want to vilify our product placement, but we do need to tell a story with it in order for it to feel good. They were cool with it, and we were excited about that.

”Subway/RickNBCThe result is the storyline starting in Season 3, Episode 13, where a Subway restaurant is opened inside of the Greendale cafeteria — or, “cafetorium,” according to Dean Pelton. However, the school bylaws required that a student own at least 51% of any business operating on campus, so Subway found a loophole. It enrolled a student in the school who assumed the name “Subway,” becoming a “corpohumanoid” by forfeiting his own identity and representing the company at all times.

It was a hilarious, hyperbolic premise, but it was also pretty subversive for network TV in its time. The idea that corporations have rights similar to those of individuals was a hot topic at the time as it pertained to political campaign donations and the potential for quid pro quo corruption. At the same time, it mocked the well-meaning reactionary Britta, who inevitably fell in love with the corpohumanoid and began a secret, torrid affair with him.

Community brought this corpohumanoid character back in Season 5 to represent the car manufacturer Honda. This time, the show examined this premise from different angles, taking a much harder look at the burgeoning world of influencers and their paid promotions. In both cases, it forces the audience to acknowledge that they’re being advertised to in order to laugh at the joke, though the Honda ads are a little more critical of the viewer, in addition to the company.

KFCOf course, we can’t forget an even earlier case of product placement on Community — Season 2, Episode 4, “Basic Rocket Science,” where the study group becomes trapped in an outdated space flight simulator donated to Greendale by KFC. In this case, the overt nods to the fast food brand blend into the story better simply because they feel like a sign of the school’s poor funding and the equipment’s advanced age. The “biscuit thrusters and gravy throttles” don’t seem that helpful in studying rocketry, while ascribing the “seven herbs and spices” to different celestial bodies doesn’t seem that applicable to astronomy or even cooking.

To some extent, all three of these ad campaigns were just fun ways for the team behind Community to increase their budget and keep things fun at the same time, but they are also emblematic about what makes this show great. It never missed an opportunity to delve deeper and make its own world stranger, and it never compromised its commitment to making every moment fun and funny for the audience. Community is streaming now on Peacock, and a reunion film is expected to debut there sometime next year.

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