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Welcome to How to Spend $20, BOP’s look at the latest Blu-ray discs and DVDs to hit stores nationwide. This week: Comedy TV! Modern Family, Community, 30 Rock and more all get released on home media this week.

Pick of the Week

For people who don’t conform: Community: The Complete First Season

When I look back on the first season of Community, I think about the big risks. The episode with the paintball war, the one where they parody Goodfellas with cafeteria chicken lunches, the one where Abed literally becomes Batman.

And now, for the upcoming season’s Christmas episode, there’s been chatter that they’ll be doing an animated stop-motion episode a la Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Yet it won’t be a dream, and characters will refer to the episode’s events later in the season.

Community may have the most ballsy writers’ room on television.

I wouldn’t have said this after those first few episodes, though. There were clever moments – Jeff and Pierce’s Spanish presentation – but the comedy didn’t sustain. Some stuff stuck, lots didn’t. I thought the show was a decent start to NBC’s Thursday and not much else.

But then that Halloween episode hit, with Annie’s Dia de los Muertos party, and everything seemed to change. The comedy was funnier (“Before AIDS, sex was like shaking hands”), more self-referential (“It’s December 10th!”) and entire episodes – not just scenes or even moments – felt like they’d be remembered for some time.

By the end of the season, Community had transformed itself from a quirky comedy to something I really hadn’t seen before. And that’ll continue into the second season with that Christmas episode, a reportedly “extravagant and insane” Halloween episode and even a space-themed episode.

For those who haven’t seen Community, don’t read these special episodes as gimmicks, because they’re not. Instead, they’re challenges. Challenges, actually, that Community’s writers are literally knocking out of the park every time.

Disc includes: Extended episodes, outtakes, never-before-seen footage, audio commentary





For people who thought their family was weird enough: Modern Family: The Complete First Season

Having believed going into its premiere that Modern Family was like The Office in the suburbs, I remember my hopes being nothing short of high. Then that wonderful pilot aired, and I laughed my ass off. And I knew Modern Family was destined for greatness once they queued the theme to The Lion King.

Like most family comedies, Modern Family mines a lot of its funny from the dysfunction of its core cast, which is split into three family units: An older father married to a much younger Colombian woman, and his two children. One (Julie Bowen) is married and has three kids, while the other (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) lives with his boyfriend and adopted Vietnamese daughter, Lily.

Even the name Lily is the butt of a joke. I believe that, too, was in the pilot.

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