It was a long time, and now the show has returned for all of four weeks. There has been a Halloween episode, a premiere, an episode about an in-joke, and just this past evening the first episode in the busy itinerary to actually take place in a more or less normal day at Greendale. I think it's been a long time since I've talked about the show. I'd like to make some comments about it.
Firstly: I'm glad it's back. The four month delay was probably because NBC was considering shit-canning the show for good. Season three was almost unbearably meta at certain points, but then again so was Season 2. Any purist would only accept Season 1 minus the paintball episodes as the true greats. If you want, you can identify a purist by how they will maintain that the paintball episode 'was a bit too much the first time and definitely overplayed as a two-part special.'
For the record, the first paintball episode was what drew the show into a 'hype updraft' which lasted roughly until the end of the first half of the third season. By that time, several characters lay in ruins, multitudes of fans felt betrayed and increasingly disturbed by the show's directions and obvious funding cuts, and every casual viewer had stopped watching entirely. Season 1 had become a memory of a brighter time, when the show had no popular appeal because it was simply excellent and fresh and 'too smart' or whatever down-talking supporters tell themselves. To be fair, Community Season 1 was a damn lot brighter than Two and a Half Men or the Big Bang Theory, and easily more fun to watch than anything that year.
What happens if you talk to a purist now, and you like the show? Tough question. Good luck with that, actually: I can't answer it. I have no idea what would happen, but it would be like admitting you prefer the second season. I was a particularly rabid fan during the time of the first season, but that was only because there were not a lot of good TV shows on network television at that time, and essentially zero good new series, and I needed distraction because I was a useless head case with a shaky full time job that would ditch me just in time for the Christmas Episode - which can be compared to anything the show has done since and still be puzzlingly superior despite how basic it is.
2009, around the time Community premiered, was another era. Dollhouse wasn't cancelled yet. The Recession was still fresh in everyone's mind. The 2012 elections only took up 15% of daily newscasts. Ghaddafi was still alive. Glee hadn't yet fallen so astoundingly low, and making fun of it was still sportive. 100 Questions hadn't premiered yet – and to me, this is important to note, because when it premiered in May it was return to the awful network television standards that made Community stand out so much in the first place. There have been few television experiences as jarring as Community finale-ing one week and the Worst Show Ever premiering the next, ushering in the season where healthy people stop watching TV. I am still kind of incredulous about 100 Questions. It is my Abed Moment, and makes absolutely no sense to the observer.
Nobody who watched Community in 2009 had any demands on it. It was easy to enjoy because it had very few precedents and almost every other network TV show was a complete wreck and/or waste of time to watch. Something like that could only happen once in a lifetime. Season 4 comes at a tumultuous time. 30 Rock just limped across the finish line, the bloated corpse of the Office is being carted off the airwaves (bound for endless syndication), New Girl has taken the 30-something/yuppy demographic by storm. Leaving Community, by itself, without its creator or original producers, in new hands, subtly different, seemingly doomed from the start.
For all that, it is an energetic and brave return. If you look back four years, as many fans might, a sobering realization will strike you – it's possible that the show's gone on too long. The world has grown and changed in that time. All those 'meh' episodes were telling us something. It was time for everyone to move on, to accept a glorious past and move into an unknown future. The show has come close to saying it outright. There won't be a sixth season, and a movie seems incredibly misguided and doubtful.
If there is still a television metavisionary, and I doubt that very highly, it isn't on network TV. That said: Community (with provisos: such as it is, as a subjective experience, potentially, absolutely, perhaps) is ongoing, and it still aims to entertain. Everyone who is a true fan will remember what was written on the sweater that Britta held up for a half-second in Season 2 Episode 18. Those words were or weren't a prophecy, but it is certain they were truest pessimistic meta-joke of all time.
On a related note: does anyone else remember Dollhouse?
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