The month of April saw the ending of another television
show for the foreseeable in the form of Community’s
Season five. Community is an American
sitcom that follows a group of students at a community college in the fictional and dysfunctional locale of
Greendale. The series heavily uses meta-humour and popular culture references,
often parodying other films and television clichés and tropes. The show holds
many familiar and famous faces in its main cast, along the likes of Ken Jeong,
Alison Brie, Johnathan Banks, Joel McHale, Donald Glover and many others.
Season five saw the beginning, return of and the
ends of certain story arcs and characters over the years but more importantly,
it saw the return of what’s known as ‘old school’ Community, as season five presented episodes of the calibre of what
Seasons one, two and most of what three gave us. The return of creator and
showrunner Dan Harmon ushered in a new era and a new chance for the show in the
hopes of staying alive in a sea that’s already plugged full of over tripe sitcoms
and reality television.
By being at the helm again after being replaced due
to “behind-the-scenes politics” at the end of Season three, Harmon finally gave
viewers another satisfying season of Community.
By hitting the ground running with the first episode titled “repilot”, it highlighted
that Harmon was not about to apologise for his season four replacements poor
empty efforts but to give us the whacky Greendale we’re more accustomed to.
Despite the classic Community bottle episodes slotted in, one of the standouts of the
season is the school-wide send-off game of “the floor is made of lava” for a
certain character; an episode that rivals Season one’s paintball episodes for
its Community-insanity. Communanity.
Along the other standout episodes of the season was
the beta testing of a phone app called ‘Meow Meow Beanz’ that turns Greendale
into an early 70’s dystopic future fable. Each episode that followed only
emphasised that they were here to make a statement with over-the-top lavish
storylines, wardrobes and comedy that speaks to the child within you and was
bigger than anything that has gone before it. This was asserted with the return
of the role-playing game of ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ in “Advanced Advanced
Dungeons & Dragons” and an almost fully animated episode of an 80’s style toy tie-in of G.I. Joe commercials and
incorporated them into a story of Jeff retreating into nostalgia as he turns
forty.
The many different styles and references that Community make in this season alone just
show how much they have left in the tank. This makes you wonder why NBC has not
yet renewed it for a sixth season. Community
is a show that never had impressive ratings to start with but instead they have
a fiercely loyal fan base and is still one of NBC’s best sitcoms (it airs on a
Thursday night in America and so it has little competition from other
comedies).
This season was also enhanced by an impressive
number of guest appearances from the likes of Nathan Fillion, LeVar Burton,
David Cross, Brie Larson and many many more. It also saw show creators trying
their hand at acting too with ‘Breaking
Bad’ creator Vince Gilligan starring as a long forgotten VHS cowboy game host and Mitch
Hurwitz, creator of comedy ‘Arrested
Development’ as the notorious party animal Koogler.
But this only led to a heartfelt, metaphorical and
meta-comedy season finale with a nod to ‘The
Goonies’ and police procedural dramas where Greendale acts as an obvious
stand-in for the show itself as
Dan Harmon’s Community continues to
lie in renewal limbo. The season finale, like others that have followed before
it, act as a potential closing point as a series finale just in case the show
was not renewed for another season. This way, at least there is some form of
closure and that they can go out with a bang.
The finale also
serves as a commentary to what might go on behind closed doors in an obvious
meta-way, as well as showing the basics of TV show finales and the usually
fruitless spin-offs in which they result. Not only this, Abed returns to his
long-held belief that he and his friends are in fact on a TV show, and that, in
the episode’s final moments, if renewal doesn’t come we should assume an
asteroid wiped out humanity, breaking the fourth wall as he declares this
“canon.” If, God forbid, Community is not renewed, I can’t imagine a
more fitting note on which Harmon’s baby could end.
But
until we know more… Go Human Beings! #SixSeasonsAndAMovie
