According to this Yvette Nicole Brown is asking to get out of her contract to take care of her ailing father. It also says,
I don’t know. This makes me worried. Yeah, you still have 6 original characters (I guess 8 if Leonard and Starburns are part of season 6), but over all it’s lost 4 (counting Chase) and now it’s getting two more. With each new character the dynamics of the show keep changing. Not that change is bad, but I hope the general feel of the show stays in tact.
One by one they all just fade away.
I loved the show in its prime, but to borrow the words of Professor Henry Jones, Sr.
Chevy was expendable. Donald Glover was a gut wound. Chang’s continued presence is a virus, and the notion of people being at a Community college this long is just really growing thin. Harmon and the remaining cast need to move on to other things.
I think, do 12 episodes, and then end with a movie, preferably with the original cast.
It’s an unfortunate loss. But, I enjoyed season 5 quite a bit and I expect that season 6 will be entertaining enough. There’s still enough life in the show that I’m not going to resort to internet hyperbolics.
The concept of the community college setting should have provided an excuse for characters to come and go, thus keeping the show fresh.
I mentioned this elsewhere but that’s what they did on the UK program Skins. It took place at a two-year college attended by older teenagers and the cast changed almost entirely every two years. (A minor character in the first two seasons/series was a primary character in the third and fourth seasons/series.) It worked well there.
I heard an interview with Harmon (maybe on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast) where said he wanted to do the opposite, which is follow the same characters after they left the college. IIRC, he said that’s why he called the show “Community”, and not “Community College”.
And yet he keeps finding excuses to keep everybody at Greendale.
True. I was a bit surprised when the last season started with the contrived circumstances to keep them at the college. I suppose either he changed his mind, or perhaps had network pressure to keep the setting.
Does anybody else think that Chang is the weakest link? He’s fine and funny in small doses, but not as a regular, and the lovestruck weirdo dean has gotten old as well.
If they could get Glover back, I would delight in a Troy & Abed spinoff even if no other cast member was to be on it.
Any word on when the show starts back up?
So January maybe?
Shirley has always been the weakest character, and they almost never use the chance to mock her religiosity, so she is rarely involved in bringing the funny. Losing Glover was a mortal wound, but this, eh, they can probably bring in a new character that brings more to the table.
Besides, season 6 is just to limp along until they re-sign the whole cast for the movie. It’ll be the greatest showing of fan-supported action until 2017’s Firefly Season 2.
Is that when Castle will go off the air?
As she was my least favorite character, I think it’s good news that she left. As a bonus it was a very Shirley-esque reason she had for leaving.
Oh, seconded!
I like it when she drops the cutesey voice and hints about her past growl out. Like the drunken photos at the bar.
True 
Sure, but what would they call it?
If that ^ isn’t a whoosh, then boy, do I have the answer for you! And I’ll tell you in the mooooorrnning!
Yeah, I was going for the whoosh. Was it maybe a little too meta?