Yes, seasons 5 and 6. The ones that include Troy leaving, Shirley leaving, no Pierce, Frankie, and a rotating “older guy” slot. Our favorite “older guy” on the show is Keith David in season 6.
I had always heard the show peaked around season 2 & 3 and while I found season 4 to be a dip in quality, I found seasons 5 and 6 to be the best. We actually have two more episodes left int he final season, but we have enjoyed almost all of it.
Did we hear wrong or are we just in the vast minority?
Bonus: rank the older guys in the group.
Elroy
Buzz
Pierce
I like Pierce, but my wife and I actually enjoyed Buzz and Elroy more. I think it became clear that Chase did not want to show up and his character was sidelined. Both Buzz and Elroy have more consistent screen time and we liked their characters a lot more.
Anyway, did anyone else really enjoy the final two seasons?
I’m with you. I don’t know what else I can say other than to express my complete and total agreement. I even agree with your ranking of the older guys. Which is crazy, because sometimes I forget Buzz even existed when watching the series from start to finish, and I am surprised when I see him stick around for another episode. And another and another until I finally figure out he’s a regular cast member. And then he’s gone.
Crazy.
Anyway, here’s hoping that kid in season 6 finally got a better daddy… with a bigger hand.
Yes, you are nuts. I thought Seasons 5&6 were fine, but can’t hold a candle to Troy, Shirley, and Pierce years. I consider the S1-3 group to be the best ensemble cast in comedy shows.
I think S5 and S6 get labelled as not as good, purely because S4 was so bad, but they aren’t. Indeed, the more memorable and interesting episodes do come from those Seasons and S3 did suffer from Chase being annoying towards the end when he clearly didn’t want to work with Harmon. Frankly anyone could have played his role, and a lot lot better, it was one which worked despite it being Chase rather than because.
The loss of Troy and Shirley, however, made it lesser than S2+S3 though.
The actual plots of the episodes were pretty solid. Pierces reading of the will was classic Pierce character without the actor who played him. MeowMeowBeenz still relevant today. I refer to the virtual reality one all the time “WORLDS WITH WORLDS!”. Karate Kid one was wonderful. The Prisoners on Ipads was sufficiently strange to be Community. Honda Marketing? Grifting? Flashbacks in the Deans RV?
I can completely see where you’re coming front. Except Tory and Shirley (Season 6) missing. Though I must admit the new characters were pretty solid.
The last two seasons had some great episodes (the Ass Crack Bandit, MeowMeowBeenz, Chang’s sci-fi movie) but also plenty of episodes that felt like warmed-over repeats from previous seasons (floor is lava, more paintball, more D&D) and some outright duds (the final episode is easily one of my least favourites, but YMMV). Keith David is great, but I’m not sure he was given much to work with.
Of course, all of the seasons had their share of gems and duds. Yes, even Season 4 had some funny episodes.
I enjoyed all of those. MeowMeowBeenz was a classic, and I even found the ‘warmed-over repeats’ fun. Yeah, they really milked the paintball thing, but the first one was just a parody of a generic shoot 'em up action movie. I liked how they morphed from a western into Star Wars in the 2-part paintball ep in S5. And Jonathon Banks seemed to be having fun in the “Floor is Lava” episode. I like to imagine he enjoyed a change of pace for that one season doing something lighter than Breaking Bad.
If anything, I think the first season was the worst. Or at least, it took some time for the show to find its feet or figure out what it was going to be. I actually attempted to watch s1 ep1 when it first aired, and I thought it was ordinary sitcom crap. They employed a couple hoary old sitcom tropes, seemingly unironically. I bailed.
Later I heard for years how good and groundbreaking it was, so I tried it again on Netflix a couple years ago, and found ep1 to be every bit as bad as I had remembered. But fortunately I stuck with it the second time around.
Season 1 Episode 1 was ordinary sitcom crap. The notion of having Jeff set up a “study group” just to get in Britta’s pants is the hoariest (or horniest, lol) of old sitcom tropes … you are absolutely right.
I don’t think it took too long for the show to find its footing, though, but I wasn’t watching it from the beginning. I was actually recording the shows around it on NBC Thursday nights, so my recordings would catch bits of the openings and ending tags … those started to pull me in, and then my very first exposure to an actual episode was the first paintball war. Then I was hooked.
I haven’t seen the last season yet (I’m working my way through a rewatch) and frankly don’t remember a whole lot of 5 and 6 - MeowMeowBeanz, though, that one I remember.
It is more than this. It was the Trojan horse in which they took the sitcom through the normal starting gates, with the normal type of simplistic “story arc”.
Donald Glover used the same idea with Atlanta, the idea that it was a comedy about him managing a rapper who was his cousin, a Trojan horse to explore a whole lot wider range of comedy.
You can’t start the show with this, the executives get confused.
Y’know, despite the ‘Seinfeld’ writers condemning it, a little bit hugging and learning isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
It’s only bad when the hugging and learning are used in a cloying and artificial way, and are substitutes for actual comedy. I enjoy Seinfeld as much as the next guy, but every character in a sitcom doesn’t have to be a misanthropic, unrepentant near-sociopath in order for humor to happen.
Season 4 was certainly an uneven season with Dan Harmon leaving as showrunner and the Chevy Chase behind the scenes conflict coming to a head. I don’t remember that season becoming quite the hug-and-learn fest that you remember, but I’ll agree it was a weaker season (I still think most of season 1 was the worst).
Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic seem to agree with you that S4 was the worst (judging by the chart on the right):
And it didn’t take THAT long for the show to find some footing in Season 1. It didn’t fully realize itself until “Contemporary American Poultry” (S1, Ep 21) and “Modern Warfare” (S1, Ep. 23), but you had some really excellent episodes early on, like “Introduction to Film” (S1, Ep 3) and “Debate 109” (S1, Ep. 9).
I think season 1 was a deliberate attempt to sell the network/execs on the idea that they shouldn’t worry too much or pay attention too much because, hey, this is just a normal sitcom, and only when they started getting into it did they let the real show start to emerge. Which is too bad, because I bet a lot of people who’d love the later stuff may have given up on it early. The early stuff is still pretty good as far as sitcoms go, but they don’t show the creativity and personality that make up the rest of the show after that.
Season 5 and 6 are underrated by community fans, I think, but definitely not the best. Seasons 2-3 are, by far, the best. Like half the episodes are golden. I thought the replacement characters were written/acted well, I think Keith David’s addiction to encouraging white people was probably my favorite bit. And I loved when Buzz Hickey interrogated two different goblins (via mirrored camera angles) in the second D&D game. But the Donald Glover was always the heart of the show and still what I think was the most impressive comedic performance of all time. He nailed it every. single. time.
Having rewatched season 4 for the first time since the show aired recently… it’s pretty bad. There’s a good thing here or there about it, but it really feels like fan fiction from people who were trying too hard to understand and display the quirks of the characters. It’s just not good. The actors do a great job of trying to carry it, and they’re the source of what little good is there.
5/6 feels sort of like… wounded… compared to previous seasons, like it’s being slapped together under more adverse conditions. It still has some amazing episodes there, and is definitely worth watching, but never reaches the highest of 2/3.
Donald Glover is a great actor, but I’m not sure the writers knew exactly what to do with him. It was a bit odd to see the character change from a dumb jock in season 1 to some kind of weird naive man-child. And having him date Britta was a strange choice (like pairing up Joey and Rachel in Friends).
