November 2009

HippoJuice News Archives from November 2009:

11/17/09: The Comedy Matrix

Article by
Marie "Could I be a bigger dork?" Sarkisian

So the HippoJuice crew have been in a bit of a debate the past few weeks as to which is the best comedy show currently out there. The three contenders are The Office, Community, or Modern Family.

I figured the only way to settle this fairly and officially is to do a comparison analysis chart of the three. Take a look and you decide for yourself.

Category	The Office	Community	Modern Family
Station	NBC	NBC	ABC
Release Date	Marc 24, 2005	Sept. 17, 2009	Sept. 23, 2009
Original Concept	No, based off UK version	Yes	Yes, except it's just another quirky family show.
Season	6	1	1
Style	Mocumentary	Comedy Fiction	Mocumentary
Creators	Greg Daniels Ricky Gervais	Dan Harmon	Steven Levitan Christopher Lloyd
Location	Scranton, PA	Denver, CO	Los Angeles, CA
Famous Actor	Steve Carell	Chevy Chase	Ed O'Neill
Hot Girl	Jenna Fischer	Gillian Jacobs	Sofía Vergara
Funny comedians or sidekicks	Rainn Wilson John Krasinski Ed Helms	Joel McHale Ken Jeong Donald Glover	Ty Burrell Jesse Ferguson Eric Stonestreet
Awards	Won Golden Globe. Another 21 wins & 70 nominations	None	None

Obviously The Office is the big dog in this pond, but after 6 seasons I think the quality is waning. I'm not really interested in the plot now that Jim and Pam are married and Jim got his promotion.

Community has a great comedic cast, but I feel like sometimes the jokes are dead on and other times I don't find myself laughing. It's a great start though, and I hope NBC gives it time to come into it's own.

I have to say the winner has to go to Modern Family. It has Lloyd as a creator (he was Doc Brown...), it definitely has the hottest female, and the two gay guys ALWAYS make me laugh. It has the same filming style as The Office, but since it's still in it's first season, it's still fresh and full of promise. Also, even though dysfunctional families have been done over and over again, this is an original concept of putting all sorts of people into one family. Also, the show has Ed O'Neill, who was the king of the dysfunctional family as Al Bundy in Married With Children.

As the winner, let me play for you my favorite clip from the show, and what made me fall in love with it.