Community Revisited
Over the past few months, when free time allows, I’ve been rewatching Community for the first time since seeing the ending 5 years ago. That might seem like a long gap, but it’s oddly one of the bigger compliments I can pay a show. When I really like something, I’ll often walk entirely away from it for a length of time, letting my brain forget as much as possible so I can go back to a semi-fresh experience. It’s the same reason I have raved non-stop about Into the Spider-Verse since it debuted but haven’t watched the film again yet: I loved it enough to try and replicate the experience.
I always loved Community. I really doubt that surprises any of you reading this, given that it’s an ensemble comedy set in a college, which sounds like something I would flat-out write and is definitely up my alley. Or you might not be surprised because Community was generally considered to be extremely good by those who watched it. I realize the truthfulness of that statement will wax and wane for people depending on the cast and season in question, but generally speaking Community is remembered as a good show that died a slow, undeserved death.
Time away from this one definitely gave me a better sense of perspective than when I was watching as they aired, in the thick of cast changes and drama. I was better able to appreciate each episode and season for what they were, rather than getting through the whiplash of suddenly shifting tones and characters.
One element that surprised me quite a bit compared to my memories: Season Six was actually pretty darn good. The addition of Frankie was a fun shake-up, someone who could stand up to Jeff as a fellow leader added nice wrinkles to the group dynamic and her character overall had interesting layers to play with. As for Elroy, Keith David is always value added to any production he’s in, and if you disagree then we’re going to have a ridiculously long fight scene in an alleyway. All in all, Season Six is a fun show to watch.
The trouble being, it wasn’t the same show as what started in Season One. It had the same look, some of the same cast, and carried a few of the running gags, but in almost every way that mattered things were different. They had to be. The series started on the bedrock of these people being essential in one another’s lives, and then having to pivot once cast started leaving. Losing Pierce was a blow, though far from a fatal one given how he’d already been cursorily moved to the edge of the plot, but Troy was a load-bearing character. While I wouldn’t say his departure killed the show, it inherently changed it, and the shift was far from easy. For as much shit as I know Season Four gets, I found some of the weakest episodes to be in the back-half of Season Five once Troy is gone. It wasn’t until they veered almost into a soft reboot with Season Six that it felt like everyone had found solid footing once more.
It is fascinating to me, the way character departures struck this show and how well they parallel to the source material. Because for all the hijinks and shenanigans, Community is about a college, and college is usually a limited-experience. What happened to the show is exactly what happens to students in reality: people leave. Sometimes, they were a person you knew at the fringes of a social group, no more missed than Chevy Chase. But eventually, it’s going to be someone core to your life, people you never even tried to imagine attending college without. When they go, it’s not always easy to fall right back in step. It can take a long while for things to go back to feeling normal. Sometimes, they never fully do.
For the last five years, when Community and it’s finale came up, I would say that the finale wasn’t very good, but largely because they’d held on too long. Between how much had occurred and the loss of original cast, I thought it was impossible to do something truly satisfying. On the rewatch though, I think I have to amend that opinion. See, it was a good finale for what the show had become. And they weren’t the ones holding on too tightly, we just couldn’t let go of what had come before. We wanted things to be like they used to, especially in these final moments. Which is why Jeff’s storyline at the finale is so well-done.
Jeff is essentially us: trying to hold on too hard, attempting to force some version of a Season Seven that preserves what remains from the core group they started with. He wants things to go back, to stay in that dynamic and moment, even though so much of it has already slipped away. I have to tell y’all, this part hit me especially hard. Due to some dumbfuckery called being in my early 20’s, I ended up graduating a semester behind most of my friends in college, meaning I stayed behind when the mass exodus post-graduation hit. It seems so silly, but there is something heartbreaking about seeing your friends, your community, scatter to the winds while you’re stuck in place. For those of us who aren’t great with change and have trouble making those connections in the first place, it’s all the harder. So when you find something like that, people who make you feel like you’ve discovered a home, the idea of losing it can seem like devastation.
That’s part of what makes the Community finale so good, in one last meta-bit, it is commenting on the nature of accepting change and letting go. Be it in your TV cast, your social sphere, or even merely the make-up of your local community college. Nothing stays the same forever, and we can either try to keep an iron grip on what has been, or accept the possible highs and lows of what new adventures await. Would Community probably have been better if they’d had the full cast and creator on until the very end? Probably, yeah. But in a way it’s almost more fitting that they worked their way through the shifting cast to find a resolution on the inevitability of things coming to an end. That’s as much a piece of the college experience as parties and studying, one that people watching will probably be grateful to have some warning for.
When I started rewatching this show, I was of the opinion that it was likely best that it ended when it did. After this, I’m not so sure there might not have been more potential, but I think it was as good a closer as the TV series could hope for. That said, I do believe there’s one last major foreshadow to deliver on, and after looking the full show over with fresh eyes, I think the cast might just be able to pull it off. Say it with me, my fellow Human Beings:
#SixSeasonsAndAMovie