Community Season 5 Review

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