By Tim Lowery, Danette Chavez, Jacob Oller, Saloni Gajjar, Jen Lennon, Drew Gillis, and Mary Kate Carr. Clockwise from bottom left: Community (Screenshot: YouTube/Community), Undeclared (Screenshot: YouTube), Shithouse (Screenshot: YouTube/IFC Films), Everybody Wants Some!! (Screenshot: YouTube/Paramount Pictures)
May might seem like a weird time to be thinking about college, what with so many university seniors throughout the country graduating and all. (Usually, roundups like the one below are saved for the fall.) But this week saw the premiere of Overcompensating, comedian Benito Skinner’s very personal sitcom about the awkwardness of starting freshman year. So with that new show in mind, we decided to ask The A.V. Club staff: What’s your favorite piece of college-set pop culture?
As always, we invite you to contribute your own responses in the comments—and send in some prompts of your own! If you have a pop culture question you’d like us and fellow readers to answer, please email it to [email protected].
Just like Freaks And Geeks got so much right about high school, Undeclared (the sitcom from Geeks EP Judd Apatow) nailed so much about starting college: There’s the girl in your dorm (Carla Gallo’s Lizzie) with the jealous older boyfriend (played by a great Jason Segel), the shitty cafeteria job, the beer pong, the lame frat guys and weird RAs (shout-out to Samm Levine, Amy Poehler, and Kevin Rankin), and, for a certain generation, the little touches like a Beck poster and conversational nod to Election that made it feel like the people behind this show actually spent time on campuses with students. The undeclared kid in question in this one-season wonder is Steven (Jay Baruchel), who along with two of his everydude roommates (portrayed by Seth Rogen, a writer for the show, and Timm Sharp) help give this very funny series a real dose of relatability. [Tim Lowery]
I first watched A Different World when I was probably too young to really appreciate what was going on, but even to my middle-school mind, it made college look like a blast while never losing sight of the whole “higher learning” thing. The Cosby Show spin-off was vibrant, funny, and, once Debbie Allen came aboard to lend greater specificity to the depiction of the HBCU experience, committed to exploring social issues in a way its predecessor mostly avoided. Other shows, like Felicity and Undeclared, would grab my attention once I was actually in college and able to experience things like all-nighters and student protests for myself. But A Different World set the bar for how a show could mine its college setting for humor and topicality—and it was super stylish, to boot. [Danette Chavez]
Everybody Wants Some!!
Richard Linklater’s good-vibes bro fest Everybody Wants Some!! served as the breakout for Glen Powell and a wholesome rebuttal to the era of nerds-vs.-jocks and slobs-vs.-snobs college comedies. Taking from Linklater’s own athlete-turned-slacker-philosopher evolution at the University of Texas (where he founded the Austin Film Society after screwing around and playing baseball at Sam Houston State University), the hangout movie is an easygoing delight that emphasizes how much of college is about getting out of your comfort zone rather than all that book learnin’. Personal, sweet, and with the meandering comic spirit that Linklater had—at the time—mostly been directing toward longform dramatic experiments, Everybody Wants Some!! finds something everybody wants in people often depicted as meatheaded punchlines. Even if you were the furthest thing from a college ballplayer, it’s hard not to be charmed by these charismatic himbos with much more to offer than tiny jorts and ’80s facial hair. [Jacob Oller]
Community
Dan Harmon’s sitcom isn’t an exact depiction of the college experience (although every university should come with a Dean Pelton). Still, the show takes its melting pot of a setting to extreme comedic heights and often pushes the boundaries of what a half-hour network comedy can accomplish. Underneath its heightened humor, many running gags, and some qualitative ups and downs, Community is at least very reflective of what college should truly be about: a group of different, quirky strangers coming together in a place that (literally) tests them only to unexpectedly find true friendship, romance, and ultimately a…sorry, what was the name of this series again? [Saloni Gajjar]
The Magicians
Okay, maybe magic doesn’t really exist, but if you’re watching The Magicians just for the magic, you’re doing it wrong. Even more compelling than the spells the undergrads of Brakebills University cast are the students themselves and the endless drama of their social lives. It’s surprisingly comparable to a real college experience: There are cliques, frats, drunken hookups, and sexual experimentations. There’s also a repulsive guy whose head is literally made of moths that keeps making life difficult for these co-eds, but who didn’t have to fend off a pushy dude who was as unwelcome as a swarm of bugs when they were in college? [Jen Lennon]
Good Will Hunting
Good Will Hunting might not be the most traditional college movie—Matt Damon’s Will Hunting only works as a janitor at MIT rather than attending—but there’s an argument to be made that it’s as much a college movie as anything else here. It’s not just that Minnie Driver’s Skylar is a student at Harvard or that Robin Williams’ Dr. Williams is a professor at Bunker Hill Community College. Good Will Hunting is also often a film about what college represents: opportunity, who is generally allowed to take advantage of it, and who usually can’t afford to. For a lot of 18-year-olds, going to college is the first real glimpse at the world beyond their own hometowns, and what they see can be really unfair. And while that can feel pretty insular, a good education is meant to inform you of the wider world and how you might fit into it. In that sense, Will has the most classic of college experiences. [Drew Gillis]
Shithouse
When I watched Cooper Raiff’s directorial debut Shithouse just a few years after my own graduation, I thought there had never been a better depiction of being a college freshman (at least in this particular middle-class American way). The movie perfectly portrays the growing pains of those early months in school struggling to establish independence but also community when you find yourself suddenly far from everyone and everything you used to know. It’s alternately funny, melancholy, and painfully realistic in its depiction of social awkwardness. Raiff and Dylan Gelula anchor the film with great performances and natural romantic chemistry, and the former really cuts to the heart of his character’s loneliness and longing. The writer-director-star manages to craft a coming-of-age story that feels fresh, specific, and true to my own experiences as an 18-year-old student balancing party-hopping with existential crises. [Mary Kate Carr]
