Time has been kind to Community, as Dan Harmon’s series has steadily earned the “ahead of its time” label that fans have handed it over the years. The cult classic sitcom launched careers and is remembered as one of the smartest comedy projects on TV in the 2000s and 2010s, reinventing what people thought TV could be. Community pushed boundaries, and one of those boundary-pushing situations resulted in one of the show’s very best episodes getting banned from streaming services. Fortunately, that episode streaming once again, available for all fans to enjoy.
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The episode in question is called “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” and it’s the 14th episode of the show’s second season. In the episode, the study group tries to cheer up a depressed student by playing Dungeons & Dragons with him. Pierce, however, wants to continue bullying the young man and decides to be the campaign’s villain. It’s a great (and often hilarious) look into the realities of bullying, both from those who are bullied and those who think they are just innocent bystanders. It’s also worth noting that the episode is the fourth-highest rated Community episode on IMDb, and was directed by Avengers: Endgame‘s Joe Russo.
When you read a description of “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” you might wonder why it was banned. Early on in the episode, when the campaign first begins, Ken Jeong’s Chang appears at the table completely covered in dark black paint, face and all. He is very into his character and claims to be “dark elf,” shocking both viewers and his fellow players.
In 2020, when the entertainment world was reckoning with racial missteps from its past, streaming services that hosted Community pulled “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” from their lineups. Those streamers included Netflix and Hulu, and Chang’s dark elf costume was seen by some as a depiction of blackface, though he wasn’t actually mocking Black or African-American people. His costume was even called-out in a joke within the episode, with Yvette Nicole Brown’s Shirley asking everyone in the room if they were going to “ignore the hate crime” that his makeup created.
Fans have and those involved in the show lamented the removal of “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons,” many arguing that not only was Chang not making fun of Black people, but that the joke was also aimed directly at people who don’t know how insensitive or ignorant they can be (similar to the Robert Downey Jr. character in Tropic Thunder). There’s also the fact that the episode itself is an incredibly meaningful look into bullying, and removing it didn’t help anyone.
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Fortunately, the beloved Community episode isn’t hidden from the world of streaming anymore. All six seasons of the series were added to Peacock’s lineup in 2024 (the same place that will host the in-development Community movie), and the show was later removed from both Netflix and Hulu.
On Peacock, the entire Community lineup is intact. Every episode is present and accounted for, including “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.” So despite the debates about whether or not it should’ve been banned years ago, the excellent episode is now available for anyone to stream.
If you haven’t seen it before, you should definitely change that in the near future. There are few sitcom episodes as funny or as poignant as Community‘s “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.”
