Heavy meta

NBC has some pretty lame programming, ranging from cop dramas to terrible cop dramas. The Thursday night lineup, however, is all comedy gold, and the shining, underrated beacon of goodness is “Community.”

After a brilliant freshman season in which the study group tried to learn Spanglish from Señor Chang (Ken Jeong, a threat of becoming stale loomed for the second season. I mean, how interesting can community college be, anyway?

Luckily, instead of rehashing old story lines, the writers decided to stretch the boundaries of TV comedy and let the actors break some conventions.

In this season, we have an entire Christmas claymation episode, an unexpected emotional performance from Donald Glover in “Mixology Certification” and an entire episode based on a game of Dungeons & Dragons with Fat Neil.

The season ended once again with a paintball battle, but keeping with the theme of “bigger,” it was so much better. It was a finale worth two episodes and did this wonderful season proud.