Community
Episode 13: Advanced
Introduction to Finality
The Season Finale
By: Carlos Uribe
Community
is a show about the senior year of a group of friends attending
Greendale Community College.
Spoilers
Ahoy!
The
fourth season of Community ends and I call think about is what went
wrong with this season. The most obvious answer is that Dan Harmon is
no longer in charge of this show. Without his voice, it went from
being an imaginative and ambitious comedy to a mere shadow of itself.
The weirdness remained and the heart was still there but it lacked
the grace to make it work. The narrative arc of the season was all
over the place as plots were picked up or dropped with no rhyme or
reason. The whole Chang pretending to have amnesia to infiltrate the
school was suddenly thrown away because he was invited into the
group. The last episode had ended with the cliff-hanger of City
College seeking to shut down Greendale but it doesn't even get
referenced this week. The emotional undercurrent that helped made all
the weirdness is also gone. The genre episodes are still there and
there's an attempt to have them mean something. Some were more
successful than others but it all felt forced. There was some
ambition this season (the puppet episode) but it felt obligated. In
fact, I don't think I can name a single episode this season that I
would qualify as “normal”. With the limited run, this might make
sense but it basically diminished the specialness of each “genre”
or “ambitious” episode that came along. It was an attempt for
Community to recapture what it had under Dan Harmon but it was a
large failure. Oh, I still think this is a good show but it's never
really been able to reach the heights of the last couple seasons. I
can't name a single episode this season that stood out from the rest
and I would never point to anything that happened this season as to
why I fell in love with this show. Why did this all happen? Some of
it could be blamed on Dan Harmon leaving but not all. After all, the
people writing this show are still professionals. They might not have
his vision but they were clearly fans of it. No, I think that the
problem with this season of Community is that it tried too hard to
prove that it wasn't going to change from what Dan Harmon had done.
I
mean, honestly, how else could you explain this episode? It basically
played as a counter to how many references it could make to the past.
The dark timeline becomes a part of the show when Jeff throws a dice.
The “dark” counterparts come in to try and tempt Jeff into
accepting partnership at his old law firm. There's a lot being made
about the person Jeff used to be and the person he has become now but
it was more of a “let's tell you” rather than a “let's show
you”. So far, we have the dark timeline and their counterparts. Add
that a Cape reference because in the dark timeline the show is on
it's third season. I guess that means the timeline isn't so dark
after all? Why? It's because of the whole six seasons and a movie
claim that Abed made when he first watched the show. The way to
defeat these dark counteparts was to use paintball guns that send
people into the dark timeline. This is a clear reference to the
paintball episodes that Community did. There's a line where Abed
mentions that they found a way to make paintball “cool” again but
it was really a way for the writers to put it in because it's
something the fans used to like. There's jokes about how the Dean
likes to make a lot of pageantry about events. Dean has always been
known for his costumes in the last few seasons but this season really
had that a lot. Basically the season finale was a huge fan tribute
after a whole season intended to serve as that. I mean, come on:
inspector spacetime convention, overkill of meta-humor, and doing a
mockumentary episode all felt like they were added to please fans. An
attempt to prove that Community would keep doing what it's been doing
this whole time. I guess that the new showrunners proved that they
weren't going to change the show's weirdness but I think they failed
in their attempt. In presenting so much fan service, Community lost
it's way in the plot and character development.
Take
a look at the season plot and try to find it. Chang's “infiltration”
of the school was basically a way to try and revive how he had taken
over Greendale. Watch out for his latest shenanigans! When City
College turned out to be on the other side of the phone, it once
again felt like they were the villains because they've been
Greendale's rival. The plots were picked up and dropped like kids
playing with toys simply because the writers tried to incorporate as
many elements into the show as possible. In other words? The
serialized aspects of the season was in-itself a fan tribute that
made no real sense because it was too busy trying to please fans
rather than actually trying to tell a story. The character
development was also the same way. Jeff dealt with his father issues
by finally finding his dad. He deals with it and then it largely goes
away. How did it change him? It doesn't seem like it really did
except for a few times when the writers remembered it had happened.
If anything, I feel like the only reason that moment even happened
was because fans were waiting for it rather than because the writers
were interested in telling a character arc for Jeff. Likewise, the
group kept finding obstacles but they kept getting united because
they're close and imperfect. The show kept reminding us of this
because that's where the first three seasons put the group. All the
fourth season did was confirm this over and over again. This whole
need to prove to Community fans that the show was going to still be
Community basically took over so much that the whole season was
ruined by it. The showrunners missed the point of the concerns of
many people. Oh, some people might have worried about the weirdness
of the show. And it's good to show that the show isn't going to be
more mainstream. I think most people were worried that the actual
quality of the program would suffer and it did. The jokes weren't as
sharp, the plots went nowhere, the character development random, and
the group kept affirming it was united because that's where Dan
Harmon got them to. The season really went nowhere because the
showrunners were so busy trying to prove it wasn't going to change.
In the end, the quality suffered.
The
season ends with the natural development of Jeff graduating a
semester early. Pierce also graduates because they needed to write
Chevy Chase off the show. I guess it's nice that Pierce finally got
to graduate Greendale but it's too bad they couldn't have developed
his final arc more cleanly. I blame Chevy Chase for this but I also
suspect that the showrunners wouldn't have properly been able to
handle it because of fan tribute. They would try to give the best
Pierce moments rather than an actual arc dedicated towards him
leaving. Now that Jeff is off from Greendale, I wonder how the
writers will properly integrate him into the plots. I get he's going
to be in a small firm near the community college so he can drop in at
any time but there's only so many times the writers can have him
organically do this. I'm hoping that Jeff leaving Greendale will be
what gives the writers the kick in the balls they need to get the
show moving again. We get it: the group is together. What's next?
What happens now? The fifth season can't just be another 13 episodes
of the group talking about how they're imperfect and close.
I
doubt the Community showrunners will ever read this review but I have
the following advice: stop with the fan tribute. When the Big Bang
Theory is having more character development than Community then
you're doing something wrong. The first three seasons of Community
worked because they all had some semblance of a plot but also because
the character development and emotional undercurrents was strong. The
show was going somewhere in those first three seasons. It was
dedicated towards going to new places. The fifth season needs to stop
trying to please fans and start doing something new. It needs to have
a better constructed plot that goes somewhere new, character
development that's charted throughout the season, and “normal”
episodes that help ground the series. Basically: the fifth season of
Community needs to stop pleasing fans and have an actual season of
television.
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