Can a TV show combine goofy workplace comedy with lots of violence? The Argentinian series Community Squad tried to do just that, but its first season in 2023 only gave mixed results. It’s back for a second go-around, with the violence still there but relatively in check.
Opening Shot: Two thugs go into a karaoke bar and talk to the Korean mafiosos that hired them to find a bag of money they want back.
The Gist: Someone working for the Kermann family comes into the bar looking to give info, but gives that info before asking about what it’s worth. She sees a backlit pic of Felipe Rozenfeld (Santiago Korovsky) from Community Squad and says he’s the leader, he looks Jewish, and he likes money (which is something he can say about someone who’s Jewish because she is also Jewish). One of the Koreans, Kim Wong, shoots the two thugs for calling him Chinese, something he has no patience for.
The Community Squad in Palermo has been so successful that other neighborhoods in Buenos Aires have gotten their own squads. While Felipe is rehabbing after getting shot, Sofia (Pilar Gamboa) is taking medical leave, leaving their relationship status up in the air, but still going in the right direction. Felipe is also living with his parents, which isn’t exactly giving him sexy points. Oh, and swears he’s being followed. But there’s good news: Miguel (Daniel Hendler) wants him to lead the squad after his own promotion becomes effective.
He finally ditches his crutches because insurance won’t pay for them anymore, and when he comes back to the squad, he sees a guy named Dave. Dave is also Jewish and looks a lot like Felipe, to the point where Esteban (Martín Garabal), a police officer assisting the squad, calls him “Felipe 2.0.”
Julio (Marcelo Subiotto), the deputy police commissioner, calls Felipe into his office and introduces him to Arellano, who works for the city’s Intelligence services. She’s the one who’s been following Felipe around. They need someone on their team who is Jewish and has a forgettable face, and Felipe fits the bill. So does Dave, whom it turns out they’re also interviewing.
But Dave is a lot more dynamic than Felipe. He calms the expanded squad when there’s a disagreement. He talks to protesters who think that the squad’s diversity claims are more like quotas. And he speaks many languages. Dave is so much better at, well, everything, than Felipe he gets a rapid promotion to squad leader, but Julio ends up giving him the job that Miguel was going to be promoted into.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Like we said during the show’s first season, Community Squad feels like Brooklyn Nine-Nine or Animal Control, except that this show is a heck of a lot more violent than the other two are.
Our Take: One of the reasons we didn’t like the first season of Community Squad is that we didn’t think that the balance of a quirky workplace comedy with a really violent police procedural was going to work. We’re still not 100 percent sure; we had forgotten how violent Season 1 was until near the end of the first Season 2 episode, when a shocking death pretty much takes whatever went on in the episode and renders it moot.
What we can say is that Community Squad, created by Korovsky, continues to be a funny show, mixing character-driven humor with verbal and sight gags that manage to land most of the time. Yes, there are silly, Airplane!-style lines, like when Kim asks the informant who sent her and she says, “Free will,” he says, “Never heard of him.” And there’s also a funny sight gag involving Felipe, Sofia and a romantic bubble bath.
But for the most part, the humor stems from Felipe’s relative incompetence, the squad’s attempt to have one (or sometimes two) of each kind of underrepresented group they can find, and how they all mix together. For instance, in the team meeting, a new recruit named Luciana says she’s autistic, so the always-insensitive Esteban dumps a box of paper clips on the floor and asks her how many there are; he assumes that everyone with autism is some sort of genius with numbers. She glances at the box and tells him the number that’s printed on it, because why shouldn’t she?
At the very least, the violence feels more integrated into the story this time around, rather than being just there for shock value. We’ll see how much of it surrounds Felipe as he works for Intelligence, with the specter of the Koran mafia coming after him being something he’ll likely have to worry about.
Sex and Skin: The tub scene we mentioned earlier.
Parting Shot: As Sofia snores in her sleep, Felipe reads the file he was given about “Operation Flat White.”
Sleeper Star: Martín Garabal and Charo López play Esteban and Paloma, the police officers who assist the squad. Both of them have to be completely insensitive and borderline offensive jerks, and they do a good job with that responsibility.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Arellano tells Felipe that he will get a cover name using his initials, he asks for “Franklin Roosevelt.”
Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re changing our minds on Community Squad because we think the show can be funny and violent at the same time, mainly because this time around, the violence feels more story-oriented than it did during the first season.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.