This post began its life as an exploration of expectations versus reality when it comes to my viewing of season and series finales of shows. The dashing of unknown expectations is something that happens with every show I watch, even the ones where there aren’t a lot of stakes to be raised.
This is not that post. That post died when I woke up this morning to find out that not only had Dan Harmon (the now-former showrunner and creator of Community) had been ousted, but one of the last remaining season one writers of that show had left as well. The nature of the game has now changed. Now I kind of want to talk about this instead.
After viewing the three final episodes of Community‘s season, I had a lot of thoughts about how they fit into what I wanted to happen, what I expected to happen and what actually occurred. It was going to be an excellent example as I puzzled my way through this question of whether or not expectations are good or bad and how they change the game. Don’t get me wrong, I deeply enjoyed those episodes, but I am not entirely certain how they handled some aspects and how they serve to set up season four. Basically I laughed, I cried, I had a lot of feelings and even more questions. They were good, a little odd (I’m not entirely certain how “Digital Estate Planning” fares when staked next to “First Chang Dynasty” and “Introduction to Finality” as far as season enders go), but still good.
I can appreciate the vision that Dan Harmon had when he set out to create this show. Community colleges are fascinating little microcosms of reality. If you’ve ever set foot on one, you instantly can get a feel for how they are both similar and different from more ‘traditional’ four-year schools. They can be kind of weird, populated by a variety of students and people with different backgrounds and different agendas. It’s a setting that is perfect for telling a variety of stories and part of the charm of Community is how it has embraced the spirit of these types of schools. Or perhaps this kind of fundamental weirdness is unique to community colleges in the Midwest. I wouldn’t know.
I don’t always think that this initial vision was pulled off, but I get it. I appreciate how the writers of that show have worked to create this group of people who have insane adventures and who still pretend that they are in a study group when they are so much more than that. I’ve been in a study group, in fact I have been in several and I know that I have managed to go an entire semester without learning someone’s last name. Being friends with your study group is not a pre-requisite; if anything it is a hinderance. Study meetings tend to devolve into sessions of quoting Arrested Development and making weekend plans and less actual studying. The Greendale Seven are no longer a group of people who study Spanish (or Anthropology or Biology) together, but a group of friends who take the same class to keep up the pretense that they are a study group. (Another thing I recommend against: taking classes with your friends; it usually ends with writing papers while drunk.)
Community has always been an interesting show. Some of its best episodes are also some of its weirdest which tends to drive away new viewers. When suggesting places to start watching the show to new people, I am always careful with what I choose. Pick the wrong episode and it can undercut what is so good about it or just play on something so odd that no one gets it. For example, I loved this season’s “Remedial Chaos Theory” but I know that to someone who doesn’t understand that character dynamics can spend much of that episode confused and possibly a little irritated.
When my brother started watching this show earlier this year, I told him to go back and watch the pilot after he had started with “Spanish 101”, possibly waiting until he had finished “Comparative Religion”. While my brother ultimately ignored me, the point that I was attempting to make was that the pilot of Community suffers from a common problem that pilots have: it sets up a situation, pulls things together but ultimately is kind of boring and doesn’t represent what the show would ultimately become. Community is a show that is built around raised stakes and an odd version of reality where we can spend an episode where everyone is an 8-bit video game character or entirely claymation and it still feels perfectly natural. That’s impressive. There aren’t many shows that can pull that off.
When Community comes back in the fall I have this feeling that I am going to have to prepare for the worst. I know that I am not alone in this. Change is hard to deal with when it deals with things that I don’t particularly enjoy or care about let alone times like this. Right now I am feeling the same way that my brother must feel when he finds out his favorite player has been traded or a beloved coach has left a franchise. It’s fear, mainly. A sense of dread and worry that combine to make me wonder if the show will ever be good again.
I’m not ready to give up on this show. I like it too much, I care too much about the characters to want to walk away from their story just yet. But right now I am prepared for possibly doing just that. I won’t, at least not right away. When the show returns I am going to be sitting there, holding a metaphorical knife wondering if I should just cut the cord already. The season four opener will be viewed with the same skepticism that I viewed the pilot with back in 2009. I will wonder about the show, see if the game has really changed or if I am just looking for issues that aren’t actually there. I might find myself falling into familiar patterns of “This wouldn’t have happened if…”, cries that it will never be as good as it once was.
There is no way of truly knowing what the future will hold. For all I know, every character could die in the first episode and then the next twelve will be this post-apocalyptic wasteland set in the halls of City College. Or I could just not notice the change, accepting blithely that it is ultimately the show it has always been at its core. It is hard to really know at this moment. But one thing is absolutely certain: I’m not going to forget how great the show was and hopefully will continue to be.
Remember everyone: six seasons and a movie. Hopefully one with Dan Harmon at the helm.
Adjectively Speaking 