Remote show reunions have never been more popular these days, as casts of various shows have gotten together virtually in recent months to fundraise or just keep busy and give fans something to occupy their time with while social distancing. The cast of Community, for example, held a fundraiser for World Central Kitchen and Frontline Foods by doing a virtual table read of an episode from the show’s fifth season earlier in the year. But Friday brought a different kind of reunion for most of the cast, an unofficial one that served as encouragement to vote, particularly for Joe Biden.
Several members of the Community cast, including Allison Brie, shared the video on Friday that showed actors like Jim Rash, Joel McHale, Danny Pudi and Ken Jong in what was not officially a Community reunion, but a video where the actors talked about voting. The video was shared with the #HumansForBiden hashtag, which is a gentle nod to the humans mascot of Greendale Community College from the show.
The video was careful not to officially call it a Community reunion, and Pudi at one point employed a fourth wall-breaking habit of his Abed character to talk about what was going on, well, while it was going on.
“We’re all kind of dressed like our characters but nobody’s called anybody by name yet,” Pudi said, later spelling it out for us all directly. “We’re in a commercial for a presidential campaign! That’s why nobody has a name, we had to skirt the studio’s permission!”
As far as Zoom-based sketch concepts go, which are all the rage these days, this one was actually pretty well done. There are some “command W” jokes in there that cause unassuming people (Britta, the Dean) to leave the call and the video actually does play out a bit like an episode of Community: each person is being ridiculous in their own unique way, all finding reasons not to vote.
And then, of course, Jeff brain-warps them all into voting with an oddly selfish message that somehow is convincing enough to wrap things up nicely. For fans of Community, it was nice to see (unofficial) flashes of their characters and the show’s dynamic that made it such a fun watch in the first place. We may have gotten six seasons after all but despite still waiting for a movie, a Zoom call was a nice substitute in the interim.