The concept is simple but rich in characters and potential comical situations. Suspended lawyer Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) has been sent back to college because his academic degree was discovered to be phony. Now he’s stuck at the local community college—which he describes as a “school-shaped toilet.”

The show includes at least a few genuinely amusing moments per episode, but it also takes its characters seriously to some degree, which makes it more than just a string of gags. In the first episode, Winger ends up leading a Spanish-language study group even though he has little grasp of the language. The various members of the group are comically beset by a multitude of emotional, social, and functional problems.

Winger, however, very quickly (and somewhat implausibly) turns the group into what he describes as a “community.” The tables are soon turned on him, however, as he is revealed to all as a shallow, selfish, conceited moral relativist. This is not characterized as a good thing.

Taking up this theme of the need for redemption, in the first episode a professor tells Winger he has “a second chance at an honest life.” Then, demonstrating both forgiveness and kindness, the other students in the study group end up helping him study for a Spanish test because he never learned good study habits, having always been able to get by with little effort because of his intelligence.

This motif recurs in subsequent episodes as the others in the group make frequent efforts to help one another with their problems, big and small. They really become their own little community, entirely by their own choice.

The characters’ troubles are typically shown as being the results of their own bad choices, especially the search for shortcuts to happiness. For example, in Episode 3, “Introduction to Film,” Winger takes a film class because he figures it will be an easy A. In a later episode he becomes the supervisor of the student newspaper and uses his reporters to get free things for him. Both schemes turn out to be bad ideas.

Similarly, in a recent episode, “Investigative Journalism,” guest Jack Black plays a new member of the study group, Buddy, whose enthusiastic narcissism leads to some good jokes. The humor of Buddy’s character derives from his powerful desire to be seen as a distinctively interesting individual without actually accomplishing anything distinctive, let alone anything good.

In this way Buddy contrasts with the rest of the people in the group, who are actually trying to better themselves by developing whatever meager talents they possess—and thus he directs attention to that laudable desire on their part. That includes Winger, who really does try to be a good mentor to the group.

The members of the study group want to exclude Buddy, as he is extremely annoying, and Winger initially agrees. In the end, however, he decides to let Buddy stay because he sees that Buddy’s admiration for the group as a good thing, which he recognizes by mentally putting himself in Buddy’s place. In so doing, of course, he is clearly exemplifying Jesus’s Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” yet this is done with humor and without overt piousness.

Ironically, Buddy immediately ditches them for “the cool group” led by guest star Owen Wilson. Thus doing the right thing works out best for everybody.

In the most recent episode, “Physical Education,” the group tries to help plain-looking Abed get a girlfriend, only to find out that he does very well in that area already, and that looks and other superficial measures of attractiveness aren’t nearly as important as they thought.

An even more comical and bizarre story line in that same episode concerns a physical education class in which Jeff’s instructor insists that he give up his obsession with clothes and other cool-guy attitudes. This leads ultimately and inevitably to a naked billiards match between the two, and a good time and serious learning experience for all. Well, maybe not too much of the latter.

In all, Community does an excellent job of providing laughs and a little more. The jokes and occasionally sexed-up story lines will draw viewers, and the exploration of personal choices might just give them something to think about.

Stir all those factors together with his insider knowledge that ADM was colluding with overseas food companies in one of the planet’s biggest price-fixing schemes ever, and the fact that Whitacre became both one of the FBI’s best informants ever may not have seemed all that surprising. But the fact that he also hid a highly unstable tendency to lie or leak information as well also made him one of the Feds’ most nerve-wracking and unreliable head cases ever – and it’s this dichotomy that forms the center of director Steven Soderbergh’s head-spinning and comically offbeat take on the ADM scandal, “The Informant!” 

Showcasing Matt Damon in a highly amusing turn as Whitacre, the film is an entertaining oddity because it tells the story of Whitacre and international conspiracy as a comedy, while its source book – investigative reporter Kurt Eichenwald’s 2000 book “The Informant” – is dead-serious in tone. In fact, Damon signed on for the role thinking that he was going to be delivering a dramatic performance, only to find later that Soderbergh (“Traffic,” “Erin Brockovich,” “Oceans 11, 12 and 13”) decided to start over from scratch and play off the ironies inherent in Whitacre’s double life. 

The film’s supporting cast is also filled with rich surprises, headed by Joel McHale and Scott Bakula as the two main FBI agents working the case. The real revelations, though, are a string of new-school and traditionalist standup comics – ranging from Tom Papa to Patton Oswalt to Jimmy Brogan – playing a mix of the film’s funniest and most serious roles. It’s rare to see some of these comics act at all outside of their comedy-club sets, so the casting is odd and yet spot-on as everyone delivers with spot-on peformances. 

While the film’s script by Scott Z. Burns (“The Bourne Ultimatum”) is only truly hilarious with the occasional throwaway line, the key to its highly amusing nature is the out-of-left-field, kitschy ’60s-lounge style score by old-school composer Marvin Hamlisch (“A Chorus Line”). The score’s jaunty undertones, mixed with occasional bursts of James Bond-style dramatics, provides the perfect undertone for Whitacre’s delusional mindset as he inflates his actually boring wiretapped meetings to the level of CIA-style excitement. In one of the film’s funniest lines, he shows a friend his elaborate and supposed-to-be-secret wiretap apparatus and says he’s known as “Agent 0014 – because I’m twice as smart as James Bond.” 

In reality, however, Whitacre is seen as a doofus by almost all around him. Sometimes he’s aware of it, as is the case with the ADM executives whose lack of respect for his hard work pushes him to turn against them in the first place. Yet far too often, he’s too clueless for his and the government’s own good, creating an often-stunning series of betrayals and problems for everyone involved. The end result historically is that Whitacre was regarded as a national hero by the FBI agents on the case, yet was dirty enough himself in his side deals and lies that he himself wound up with a nine-year prison sentence for fraud – a fact the film glosses over. 

With two of Hollywood’s most outspoken liberals at the wheel – Soderbergh’s most recent prior film was “Che,” an epic four-hour biopic of Communist rebel Che Guevara, while Damon’s dream project is to produce a TV miniseries based on radical historian Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” – one might expect “The Informant!” to be an anti-capitalist screed. Yet the film refreshingly refrains from taking an overtly political stand, instead choosing to make what could have been a dry polemic highly entertaining.

Neither is mine.

Fortunately Joel McHale & Co. monitor all of these fine programs-and countless others-on my behalf, identify their most absurd moments, then mock them mercilessly in an easy-to-swallow half hour of weekly television fun.  Welcome to The Soup, which airs Friday nights at 10pm ET on E! 

The show, which has existed in various iterations for years, has reached new comedic heights on McHale’s watch.  In a nutshell, it features 22 minutes of distilled television trash; the very worst of what American culture has to offer.  Degenerate attention-seekers looking for “true love?”  Check.  Startlingly self-absorbed celebrities padding their inflated egos?  Indeed.  Washed-up/cashed-strapped stars demeaning themselves for a paycheck?  Oh yes.  The Soup peddles in the lowest- common-denominator programming that’s beamed to cable boxes and satellite dishes from coast to coast every day. 

So why bother to watch? 

First of all, the show is hysterical.  It’s impressive to see what a group of good writers, a charismatic host, a green screen, and a few outrageous video clips can accomplish.  While the humor sometimes falls short (the brief on-camera skits are generally pretty lame), McHale’s sarcastic evisceration of what passes for entertainment these days reliably includes a handful of laugh-out-loud one liners.  Often the clips themselves are so preposterous that they don’t even require an additional punch line, but McHale delivers anyway.

Second, The Soup serves up a convenient Cliff Notes guide to popular culture on a weekly basis.  The fact that it’s so entertaining is gravy.  Like many people with jobs, I have neither the time nor the stomach to watch even a small fraction of the rubbish McHale skewers, but I still value having a basic awareness of the shows that millions of Americans-many of whom are my peers-regularly consume.   Do I care if Spencer (and his creepy flesh-colored beard) and Heidi are still “married” on The Hills?  Of course not.  But approximately 90 percent of high school girls (who will soon be eligible to cancel out my vote) know all about the picayune details of this soulless, made-for-tv couple’s pseudo-relationship.  If conservatives, already panicky about “young people” and how they’ll vote, have no clue what’s relevant to the very group they’re wringing their hands about, it may prove rather difficult to relate to them, no?  Perhaps this is a juicy rationalization I employ to justify watching the show, although point #1 is the only reason I really need.

Finally, the show generally reinforces traditionalist values.  Bear with me here.  Admittedly, when partisan snipes sneak into the script, they’re usually aimed at Republicans.  And yes, I’m aware that Keith Olbermann is a huge Soup fan, which does give me pause.  Nevertheless, the vast majority of The Soup’s content features McHale flogging the entertainment industry for its gutter values.  He repeatedly rips celebrities over their insufferable self-importance-a theme that conservatives can appreciate.  (That McHale reserves a special brand of antipathy for Tyra Banks wins him extra points).  He also blasts the depraved, over-sexed “stars” of reality shows who seem willing to jump into bed with whomever it takes just to extend their 15 minutes of fame by a few seconds.  His frequent references to sexually transmitted diseases are always good for a chuckle, but they also subtly remind the audience of how disgusting promiscuity and its consequences can be.  While many of these dreadful shows actually celebrate the ignorance of those who appear on them, McHale will have none of it; slapping down this type of foolishness with added gusto. 

The implicit message behind the derision is that it really isn’t cool to be myopic, rude, slutty, or ignorant.  The unseemly behavior glorified on these shows may buy someone a few weeks in the limelight, but will serve that person very poorly in the long term.

The Soup is certainly not for everyone.  Its content and humor is often crass and may offend some people.  It also may take a bit of time to grow on certain viewers.  Not everyone will be instantly enamored with recurring segments such as “Chat Stew,” “Let’s Take Some E,” or “Scenes from Home Shopping.”  Still, if your gut impulse is to ridicule, rather than to accept or even applaud, popular culture, you may find an unlikely ally in Joel McHale.  There will be an extensive menu of television options this Friday night.  May I recommend The Soup?