I watched two episodes of that and said, “Never again”.
Good riddance. Chevy Chase is an Anti-Star. Sucks whatever good there is out of any project.
Harmon hated the fourth season, yet when he came back, I didn’t notice any major improvements. And to be honest, even though it got off to a rocky start, I thought season 4 over-all turned out OK.
Edit: Actually, I thought Professor Hickey was a great character and a huge improvement over Pierce.
I liked Pierce. Loosing him and Troy didn’t help the last season. The Breaking Bad guy felt like he would’ve been a better one-off character, he wasn’t really funny or interesting enough be a regular.
The show was really handicapped by Harmon’s weird choice to have the seasons play out in “real time”, with one year of real time explicitly made to be a full school year for the characters. This made the original hopeful tone of the show (screw ups trying to get a second chance) kind of depressing, since we knew the characters were going to trapped in Community College until the show ended.
Still a fun show though, but I think it’s probably a good time to end it.
The whole thing totally threw me, as I could have sworn I’d read here on the Dope that they had a two season contract. In hindsight, I admit that doesn’t make a lot of sense for a show just coming back from cancellation, but that was what I remembered.
The fan-base for this show is really amazing.
There have been a lot of cancellations for other shows announced in the last few days, but Community has been written about far more than any other show. I see posts of disappointment on web sites that aren’t anywhere related to covering TV shows.
Too bad that never showed up in the ratings.
Note that The Office (US) was on the edge of cancellation early on due to low ratings but NBC kept it alive due to the large audience that didn’t show up in the ratings. The kept hoping the ratings would turn around for Community like it did for The Office, but it never did.
TV is changing so amazingly fast. The networks are struggling to keep up. Who knows how a Community-like show will do in 10 years when the prime demographic is using streaming video?
At its worst, the show was still better than almost any other show on Network TV. This is a shame.
The series never seemed to recover from the controversy with Chevy Chase. It staggered along afterward until it finally collapsed. Maybe they should have kept him around, in retrospect.
That would have been difficult. Besides having to have Dan and Chevy make a truce, Chevy was openly criticizing the show, his character, and sitcoms in general. Towards the end of season four he quit, he didn’t get fired. So getting him to stay probably would have meant a much larger paycheck and a major rewrite for his character. Even then he probably would have bailed eventually anyway.
Pierce was interesting in season 1. After that they turned him into such a villain that having him stay with the group made no emotional sense. That’s part of what turned him against the show. There may have been 1000 other good reasons to want him out but he was completely right about that.
And you’re right about this. Even in the alternate universe that the show was set in, the graduation deadline loomed over everything. It would have been better to make the setting into some kind of perpetual limbo of no escape.
The difference between Harmon’s seasons on an individual show level and the gas leak year was immense. The show looked and felt like nothing else on television and the weird scenarios it dropped the characters in are what fed the fanaticism of the fan base. Those episodes were addictive and he held the only source. How could any other fanbase compare? Do not try to tell me that last year was as good as this year: you’re dead to me.
Agreed. This past season was insanely better than the 4th season. They tried their best, but it was just so forced in Season 4 and not nearly as interesting, amusing, or meta-critical. Season 5 brought a lot of that back (though yes, not all the way).
I didn’t hate Season 4. It is a weak season but it had some highlights. The best of season 4 could stand up to the good episodes of the Harmon years.
Agreed. I thought it got off to a bad start, but after a few episodes I thought it found its feet.
I definitely have mixed feelings about the cancellation of Community. As much as I have enjoyed the show, it has fallen off a bit. To clarify, I did not hate Season 4 the way that a lot of fans seemed to. It took them some time to find their groove but the best episodes of the Harmon-less season really do belong at the top with all of the others. I feel like some fans really missed out on a fun (but different) experience by rejecting 4 just because Harmon was gone. (This was a big issue that I had with a lot of the Season 4 reviews)
The reason that I have mixed feelings about the cancellation is that I did not really enjoy Season 5 as a whole. Now I might be hanging too much on the finale (really did not enjoy those last two episodes), but about half of the episodes from this past season made me feel like they ran out of steam. The weaker episodes particularly standout when compared to G.I. Jeff, A AD&D and a few others.
Still, I am going to miss the show. For anyone looking to take a trip down memory lane, I would recommend checking out this Intro to Community in 10 Episodes Article. Its an entertaining read.
Dan Harmon responds to his perceived lack of response.
Yeah I will miss Suburgatory too. It was often very funny, although it seemed to be getting more cartoonish as it went on. The cast was excellent.
That’s how I feel, I didn’t always dig Harmon’s groove, but every episode was amusing in some way. I still think the Asscrack Bandit episode was one of the best.
Oh great. Another couple of months of McHale referring to this in various and increasingly unfunny ways on The Soup.