Revisiting Community

[Povidone]

My original thread title was Community: Revisited but I realise that could potentially fool people into thinking it was about an upcoming revival which sadly is not the case.

I recently sat through all six seasons and I have some thoughts, I've badmouthed Community plenty on here which obscures the fact that it's something of a comfort watch for me. I also started going to college this year as an adult so that might be why I was drawn to it. I had followed the original run, becoming less amused and less invested as it went on, I stopped watching as soon as Donald Glover left and never went back so I had the back half of season 5 and all of season 6 waiting for me but I decided to go from the start and it is a wild ride. I'm not going to do individual episode reviews like the excellent Star Trek threads, feel like it's a bit beyond me, but I'm going to go through the seasons just to get started. In spoiler tags, for space and the offchance someone hasn't seen any and might want to.

Spoiler alert

Season 1

This is the main event for me, a rare occasion where a comedy show's first season is arguably its best. When I first encountered the show the entire first season was out and despite a slow first couple of episodes it had enough going on to keep me hooked and I binged the season twice consecutively. They build on the initial premise so wonderfully across the 24 episodes, with little storylines woven in and blocks of episodes forming mini seasons (they use the weird American scheduling to their advantage with the mid season break marking the boundary between semesters). The characters all feel believable and Ken Jeong resembles something close to a human being. A+

Season 2

On first watch I started to lose interest in the second season, on reflection this may be entirely down to the change to watching weekly instead of binging the whole season because I enjoyed it so much more this time around. I still think they made a massive mistake taking Chang from teacher to..well whatever it is they decided to make him from this point on, the study group too have begun to morph from well rounded characters to cartoons whose personality defects occasionally go into overdrive to drive the plot of an episode, it's fine but it detracts from the emotional payoffs to just about every story and makes the darker character exploration really jarring - like the running storyline with Pierce with his pill popping and destructive behaviour. There are still some cracking episodes here though which keep this season in A territory.

Season 3

I feel much the same about this season as I do season 2, there are some great episodes, the best being the contained stories and not the ones dealing with ongoing storylines. Not sure I'm entirely comfortable with how the Abed stuff was handled but overall I think the story works well and despite years of tedious fanwanking about 'Remedial Chaos Theory' (BEST EPISODE EVARR OMIGOD ITS SO CLEVAAAR - proto Rick and Morty fanbase) it still holds up as a funny, well put together half hour of TV that contains a lot of deft touches to subtly define where the characters are in their lives and where they are going. Still A all the way baby.

These first three seasons are the golden age and are all pretty much of a piece but I do feel they diminish ever so slightly in my estimations as they go on

Season 4

Not as bad as people make out, the subsequent 'gas leak year' jokes are pretty funny but you can feel Harmon's wounded pride every time they come up. It's ridiculous how little Chevy Chase appears, to the point that it becomes a running joke. I thought the Troy and Britta break up episode was pretty good and I reckon the writers did a good job paying off a not-very-interesting storyline they had been saddled with. There is definitely an uncanny feeling about this season though, highlighted by the bright, oversaturated colours it's filmed in. Also a bit jarring that there are now two endings to the 'student era'

C+

Season 5

Welcome to the weird afterlife of Community!

Due to his lack of appearance in season 4 (he was kind of sidelined in season 3 as well), Chevy's absence is barely noticed but Troy leaving really does rip the heart out of the show, it was my first time seeing the post-Troy episodes and they are definitely tinged with sadness, I do like that they spread that out over the remaining episodes rather than doing one big 'we miss Troy episode' and putting it all into that. Jonathan Banks is of course a welcome addition and getting John Oliver back does help to round out the cast (even if I've never been a big fan of the character). This season heavily leans into the darkness and bleakness and as with the previous season that is underscored by cinematography (which makes sense this time); colours are darker, more muted and crisp.

Jeff basically tries to commit suicide (I noticed a thing in the D&D episode where they just allude to suicide rather than actually saying what they mean and Jeff's "drinking a bunch of whisky and tanning chinese pills" is played as a daft mistake. I know it's a comedy but this seems a bit weird to me)

B

Season 6

Truly the after-after-life of Community, this is a weird little season and fair play to the four original main cast members for sticking it out this long but everything feels a bit tired at this point. Frankie and Elroy are excellent additions to the cast, nice to see a brief cameo from Will Hines in the first episode (wish he turned up in more stuff). Ultimately though everything feels a bit pointless...B-

[close]

fuck me I've written a lot there and I'm losing the will to go on. Got a lot more thoughts on the last three seasons to mention and may even rewatch them before I do. Final ranking of seasons (subject to change):

1
2
3
5
4
6

MVP of the whole enterprise is Jim Rash, Dean Pelton is the most consistently funny character and would love to see more of him. I would absolutely watch a movie if they could get all the cast back together...including Glover...and Chase (I've an idea for that).

[up_the_hampipe]

For me, season 2 is the strongest mainly because the show didn't quite figure itself out until the mid-point of season 1, or arguably towards the end as we got to the paintball episode. Early on it feels like a weird show that's trying to fit into NBC's mainstream primetime parameters while sneaking in some smarter stuff.

I started to lose it a little with season 3, as the concept episodes were running thin. As you mentioned, the show is more enjoyable on a binge watch, and considering how much they fucked with the scheduling of season 3, that probably didn't help.

I watched seasons 4, 5 and like half of 6 but I don't really remember any of them, they feel like a shell of the show. Despite what Chevy may have been like as a person, Pierce was an excellent character that I did feel was underappreciated as the show went on, so I understand his frustration and desire to leave from that standpoint. His villain arc throughout season 2 is one of the reasons why that's my favourite. It's a shame he left, but again as you say, Troy's departure really was the tough blow. Those were, in my opinion, the two funniest characters/performers in the main cast and Troy was an integral part of the show's soul (that's racist!), so it couldn't fully recover.

[Huxleys Babkins]

This is one of the stupidest, funniest things I've ever seen:

[BritishHobo]

I did a rewatch back at the start of lockdown, and for me it confirmed that season 3 is where it all goes off the boil. For all its faults and its infamy, everything that's shit in season 4 can be directly traced back to where season 3 took the show. I know Dan Harmon had his stupid plot system thing and it was meant to be the 'darkest hour', but a lot of the seasom just comes across as a cynical dismantling of the characters via increasingly lazy and self-indulgent guff. Sure season 1 leans a bit more towards the tropey 'I learned something today' sitcom ending, but it felt like it had far more heart and spirit than season 3. For me it typifies what I hate most about the excesses of Harmon's wanky meta-comedy, which is that it too often relies on juvenile nihilism in a way that thinks it's really clever, but is actually just a lazy copout to avoid good character writing. To me, the stupid finale of season 3 with Evil Abed trying to cut Jeff's arm off to make the darkest timeline is the absolute (Abed) nadir of the show, just a hollow, pointless load of self-indulgent nastiness that feels like it has absolutely nothing to say. To my mind the season 4 episode where Pierce stands up for Britta is better than any of the character work in the back half of season 3, which constantly leans on easy catchphrase shit in a way that feels insincere.

Seasons 5 and 6 definitely have an eerie aimlessness to them, but I enjoy them a lot in spite of that. They feel fresher and more original and inventive in vision than season 3, and there's something compelling about the atmosphere (in season 6 especially) of these guys being stuck in the same old comfortable situation while all their friends have moved on. It's odd but I think it has the perfect finale for a sitcom that's essentially about TV and sitcoms. There's a lot of interesting stuff in there (intentionally or otherwise) about how the longer a sitcom goes on, the harder it is to avoid undermining and devaluing the characters and their emotional journeys, because you have to keep going back on their development.

[Stoneage Dinosaurs]

I think season 4 is fairly passable Community at its best (first episode and the body switching one) and actively terrible at it's worst (inspector spacetime convention episode). However it did rub me up the wrong way when Dan Harmon got all snarky about it - i.e. with the whole 'gas leak year' thing - because the new showrunners wouldn't have even been necessary were it not for Harmon's unprofessional behaviour.

Seasont started off well but the last few episodes and the majority of season 6 is bizarre. It's like there was no-one in the entire creative process willing to say 'no' to the guy.

[ishantbekeepingit]

I seem to recall a few articles about Community mentioning a scene in one episode that existed purely for Dan to make fun of one particular fan on Twitter.    He really does seem to be a nasty prick.

What I remember most about Community is a heavy leaning on racial humour, and getting bored stiff of the gimmick episodes by S3.  Also, Britta was the best one (and, I've recently found out, a real name).

[frajer]

I think season 4 is fairly passable Community at its best (first episode and the body switching one) and actively terrible at it's worst (inspector spacetime convention episode). However it did rub me up the wrong way when Dan Harmon got all snarky about it - i.e. with the whole 'gas leak year' thing - because the new showrunners wouldn't have even been necessary were it not for Harmon's unprofessional behaviour.

He also started slagging it off on Harmontown until his friends and colleagues still working on the show pointed out that he was directly insulting their efforts.

Season 4 was sub-par at best (although I don't think the shortened episode run helped) but as you say what else could the new showrunners do but try to find their own version of the show?

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I'd been thinking about starting the same thread, having recently watched it all. Thanks for saving me the effort.

I'd have to agree that the show peaked in the first season. To be quite honest, I think it's probably the most overrated sitcom of the last decade. I watched a bunch of New Girl shortly after this and it's at least as funny as Community ever was.

'gas leak year' jokes are pretty funny but you can feel Harmon's wounded pride every time they come up.

Oh very much so. I could be reading too much into it, but Harmon's wounded pride seems like a running theme throughout his work. It's there whenever Abed or Rick act like dicks, only for the show to call everyone else gits for getting pissed off with them. It's there in that awful Pillhead Pierce storyline (although that wasn't as bad as I remembered - mainly thanks to binging it, instead of dragging it out for weeks). And it's there in all the gas leak stuff, especially since the subsequent series were no better, in my opinion.

[Old Nehamkin]

Would agree with season 3 being the downturn. I remember looking forward to that season with all the goodwill and excitement in the world and just getting progressively more bored and annoyed with the smug meta-commentary, the half-baked story arcs and the increasingly repetitive "high-concept" episodes until by the end I was just fed up with the whole thing. Seasons 1-2 are still an all-time great sitcom run as far as I'm concerned but I think the show kind of burned itself out by doubling down so heavily on gimmicky format-bending/genre pastiche episodes. That stuff all felt fresh and fun and transgressive for a while, but I think it only really worked when the show still had a strong sitcom foundation to play around with and subvert and the ensemble were still well characterised and consistent. When they started to lose those latter elements it just all became a bit self-indulgent and tiresome.

Dan Harmon seems like a massive dick and honestly I thought he came off worse than Chevy Chase in that whole feud they had, which is an almost impossible feat.

[BritishHobo]

It's exactly the same problem that the worst episodes of Rick and Morty suffer from, where intentionally half-arsed meta stuff gets trotted out as if it's clever just because it's meta. I'd rather have a polished and sincere episode of a broad sitcom than an episode of this where the script essentially says "we're not really trying but it's fine because all the characters are saying 'it's like we're in a TV show', so we know it's half-arsed". I think it was season 5 that ended on a finale where Abed is trying to find a plot for the episode because there's nothing going on. Absolute wank. It's as if they were embarrassed to just be a show about people getting into situations at a college.

[Virgo76]

I didn't get Inspector Spacetime. It was so obviously Doctor Who, it didn't work.

[ishantbekeepingit]

Also they pronounced constable weirdly.

[Povidone]

Seasons 5 and 6 definitely have an eerie aimlessness to them, but I enjoy them a lot in spite of that. They feel fresher and more original and inventive in vision than season 3, and there's something compelling about the atmosphere (in season 6 especially) of these guys being stuck in the same old comfortable situation while all their friends have moved on. It's odd but I think it has the perfect finale for a sitcom that's essentially about TV and sitcoms. There's a lot of interesting stuff in there (intentionally or otherwise) about how the longer a sitcom goes on, the harder it is to avoid undermining and devaluing the characters and their emotional journeys, because you have to keep going back on their development.

Just been rewatching a bit of season 6 I agree with this, As strange as those last two seasons are they do a good job of compensating for the loss of major characters by pushing the boat out when it comes to the bizarre reality breaking and meta-narrative. Up to that point most diversions from reality had some 'real-life' explanation but that starts to break entirely by the end of the 5th season: in 'Basic Story' Abed is actively running away from the camera even though it doesnt exist but sort of does...I did enjoy the camera panning down to some asian kid slurping on noodles then holds on that shot for longer than is comfortable, at first I thought there was some greater significance to it.

I seem to recall a few articles about Community mentioning a scene in one episode that existed purely for Dan to make fun of one particular fan on Twitter.    He really does seem to be a nasty prick.

Weird, going to have a look for that as I'd like to know more. I've always had a sense that he's a bit of a prick, seemed to be self evident which is why I've not really invested my time in his podcast stuff. Does seem a bit off how much he was slagging season 4 when so many of his former colleagues would have been the ones making it, he was the only one who was removed from the whole thing.

[Clownbaby]

I was obsessed with Community series 1-3. Absolutely smitten with it. The 4th series wasn't quite as horrendous as everyone says it is I think. Nevertheless I was so pleased that it was getting its original creator back for a series 5 but I just found that Dan Harmon had disappeared further up his own arse and it resulted in series 5 and 6 being unpleasantly smug and bleak. Outstayed its welcome. Like Arrested Development.

[JamesTC]

Season 6 wasn't great but the last episode was a classic.

[mtpromises]

Season 6 is severely underrated.  The ending vingettes from that season are particularly good.  Portuguese Gremlins, Tokyo runs on blood, the kid cop and the guy from Jeff's gym are some of my favorite moments in the entire series.

[Povidone]

The Japanese kid catfishing the Dean as Jeff and getting him to bring him olives was pretty funny, I like the way they started developing side plots that went nowhere.

Season 6 wasn't great but the last episode was a classic.

Yep, reckon it was a fitting end given they'd done the 'standard' ones before. Got a good laugh at the final scene with Chang just repeating 'I'm gay!' while they all hugged, thinking to myself 'this is how they decided to end it?', then the board game outro. The show had earned the right to disappear fully up its own arse by that point.

[Old Nehamkin]

I guess I just never related to the show's increasingly insistent meta-narrative about how much of an unfairly downtrodden underdog it supposedly was. I mean  this is a show that ultimately managed 5 seasons on network TV, a neat extra wrap-up run on streaming, large amounts of critical acclaim and a devoted cult fandom. Cry me a river!

A cynical meta joke here and there is fine but when it got to season 3 and they opened up with a big musical number about how bold and transgressive the show was compared to more mainstream sitcoms, that was when it started to become really insufferable to me and it only really got worse from there. And frankly I never really thought the show was anywhere near as weird or alienating as it started making itself out to be - at its heart it always remained a sunny ensemble comedy filled with beautiful people hugging and learning and having will-they-won't-theys and so on. It was incredibly skilfully written and packed with great jokes for the first two seasons, but there are plenty of sitcoms that have taken much stranger and more original approaches to the genre without making such a big bloody deal about it.

[Famous Mortimer]

It definitely had an interesting take on it for a while, but yes, I agree.

When this sort of thing is brought up, I like to mention season 4 of "Til Death", as bland and mainstream a sitcom as you can find. Season 3 was cut short, and I guess they knew they were getting cancelled in season 4, so they decided to make some changes. The useless boyfriend Doug becomes aware he's in a sitcom, but none of the other characters do, so he keeps getting freaked out by the cameras. His girlfriend, the daughter of the main couple, is recast (for the fourth time) so they make a bunch of jokes about it.

Doug realises he can't swear or have sex, and eventually goes to a therapist, played by Mayim Bialik. Only she eventually reveals she's actually Mayim Bialik, doing a reality TV show, and a few other members of the Blossom cast show up to bounce jokes about dead careers off each other. Martin Mull shows up as the principal of the school where Brad Garrett works, and he's in a pretty wild BDSM relationship with the woman who seems desperate to kill Garrett.

And just to add to the strangeness, all the episodes from season 3 that they never showed are then dropped in randomly among the fourth season ones, so characters change and JB Smoove pops up from time to time.

There's a great AV Club article about it HERE, and reading it just now reminded me of how even the fourth season episodes weren't shown in order, so the "final episode" was actually followed by three random episodes left over from season 3, and the marriage of the daughter and son-in-law was shown before their engagement.

"Community" at its worst would be preferable to all but the season 4 episodes of "Til Death", but it never went quite so far, and from such a normal starting point.

[Povidone]

at its heart it always remained a sunny ensemble comedy filled with beautiful people hugging and learning and having will-they-won't-theys and so on.

This is something that became increasingly grating as the show went on, the running theme that they're all somehow ugly losers failing at life just holds no water at all.

Famous Mortimer I have never even heard of 'Til Death' but that sounds intriguing, I'm tempted to just watch that last season on its own.