Last night, Community made the potentially explosive move of using Canadian alt-rockers The Barenaked Ladies as the basis of a joke. (I wrote about the episode itself here.) I say “potentially” because the only way that the joke would have exploded if a large portion of American cared about either BNL or Community. But of course no such demographic exists, for either the band or the show.
But that's not why I bring this up. Nor do I bring this up because I am a huge fan of BNL (I am) or because I found it offensive or unfunny (I laughed pretty hard at the scene, mostly due to the deadpan support the members of the study group offered up to the band).
Nor am I in any way shocked that the show decided to poke fun/take down (depending on how extreme you found the above ribbing to be) a (formerly) well-known entity. Last season, Community took some pot-shots at Glee, to hilarious effect.
Of course some people might wonder why, as the above scene doesn't give us much sense as to the exact reason why Dan Harmon and Co. would pick on the show. It's possibly that Harmon doesn't like the show (and that would make him part of a rather large crowd) or that, since both their shows launched in the same season, is he understandably upset at their huge popularity while his show toils away in obscurity. (Since both shows, it their own way, are highly original, it makes sense that Harmon might be a little hurt and confused that his didn't take off as well as Glee.) Some think that it's because the two shows are filmed on adjacent lots, which would make they joke out to be some form og neighborly ribbing.
Yet none of that would seem to apply to BNL. They're not popular anymore, and for Harmon to express hatred for a band most people don't even think about just seems overly bitter, as if he held onto to this opinion for too long, and with no reason.
Well, certain sectors of the Internet have an answer for that, theorizing that in the context of the scene “Barenaked Ladies” is a stand-in for “The Big Bang Theory.” For those that aren't aware, BBT airs in the same time slot as Community, where it is far more successful, and BNL wrote the show's theme song.
This type of stand-in joke also has a precedent:
The phrase “streets ahead” came from an angry Tweet sent to Harmon from a Glee fan, proclaiming “Glee is streets ahead of your meta bullshit.” (Or something close to that. It's been a long time since I saw the tweet itself, so I might be paraphrasing here.) So Harmon, in his typical fashion, turned it into a joke on the show, mocking not only the Tweeter in question but also, by extension, the show itself. (He would do this again in the second season by name-dropping Gweniffer, a Twitter user who has thrown many personal, unwarranted attacks against Harmon).
All of this fits in with Harmon's rule on reference humor, as he has stated that any reference humor has to work beyond the reference (i.e. people half to laugh, even if they don't catch the reference itself) and how often he has succeeded in this goal (see “Contemporary American Poultry” and “Modern Warfare”). The phrase “streets ahead” and the name “Gweniffer” just sound funny, and the BNL jokes work because of the way in which the group reacts, so all of those jokes also follow Harmon's rule. In fact, Jeff could have railed against any band in the scene, and as long as the formula was kept the same, it still would have been funny,
Sure, the reference here may be too abstract by half (it takes a bit more thought process than any joke on a show that moves this quickly should), and maybe it seems unfair to drag BNL's name through the mud, but it was still funny, so all is good, right?
Because that's what good comedy does. It makes you laugh at those things that you hold dear. Good job, Community. Good job.
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