On March 17, the gang from Greendale will move from the small screen to the even-smaller screen when Community’s preordained sixth season makes its digital-first debut on Yahoo. Perhaps someday, new episodes of the beloved-yet-battle-scarred situation comedy will air exclusively on the Apple Watch or those video screens they have in the backs of cabs now. Meanwhile, fans of the series, which has been AWOL since April 2014, can remind themselves exactly what it was they enjoyed about Community by watching Eric Stevens’ meticulously rendered Lego tribute. Stevens, of course, is the auteur behind previous toy-block-based parodies of Seinfeld and Downton Abbey. Community, however, presented the artist with special challenges, such as conveying the proper ethnicity of the characters. “Unlike Downton and Seinfeld,” he told Popculturology, “the Community cast has some diversity.” While some repurposed superhero minifigs allowed the filmmaker to complete his cast, he admits that the stern, grouchy-looking Abed avatar is still not to his liking.
Stevens’ three-minute film, which has been in the works for over a year, mainly serves as a handy refresher course on Community’s main characters, basic setting, running jokes, and major plot points, including the departures of the characters portrayed by Chevy Chase and Donald Glover. While Jim Rash’s ever-enthusiastic Dean Pelton explains what community college is all about and models some of his many costumes, Ken Jeong’s near-rabid Señor Chang loudly describes his masturbation habits. So, Community in a nutshell, basically. Fans of the show will likely delight in seeing a meticulously-realized miniature mock-up of the iconic “study room” set and may even get a twinge of nostalgia upon seeing the entire main cast reunited once more. But there’s only so much one can fit into a three-minute video, so expectations should be tempered accordingly. (i.e. No Lego Starburns.)