“Community” season five recently started, and Dan Harmon, director of seasons one through three, is behind the wheel once again. After a rocky fourth season, it seemed as though there was little that could be done to restore the show to its former glory.
The first three seasons were interesting because of their postmodern absurdity. The cast and crew managed to take overused story patterns and traditional relationships and make fun of them without being too cynical.
Instead, the uncertainty of real life was looked at as hopeful. The show poked fun at played-out plots and television motifs by including them in episodes and then referencing their presence and breaking from them for better, more-heartfelt things. It made fun of the idea of a perfect family by making the characters a diverse study group in constant conflict while still caring for each other.
Unfortunately, season four, run by writers David Guarascio and Moses Port, lost a lot of its subtlety. The absurd and stereotypical stayed, but the pop-culture commentary, the real relationships and the conflict that came with them didn’t. The twist in each episode was gone, and the stories seemed empty.
The fifth season addressed this by immediately becoming self-referencing and mocking again. For instance, all of the characters referred to the fourth season as the “gas leak” year.
It also started with a much darker tint than all of the previous seasons. Not only do many of the jokes sting, but the characters are truly in trouble. Many are unemployed, with few personal relationships and nowhere left to go. I think this is intentional—the first episode is called “Repilot,” after all.
This dark humor is completely disparate from why I enjoyed the show to begin with, but I think it was the right move. It seems to make the show much more genuine, and Harmon had to get back to where the characters were real people in absurd circumstances.
His move not to ignore season four may even strengthen the show in the long run. The flaws that were ruining the characters are being used as their motivations to return to Greendale, so they can grow as people. For example, Jeff asks what happened to Annie, the “unstoppable go-getter.” Shirley turned from an “independent divorcee to a bankrupt fry cook hoping for a call from her husband.” Both are returning to work on themselves, which should provide real character development.
While the characters’ return to Greendale was predictable, the show needed it in order to find its bearings and reorganize. They’re getting re-grounded, and the tone and characters are already improving. There is less absurdity for the sake of being absurd, and I was surprised by the return of witty one-liners.
My only complaint is the darker humor, which may suit other viewers better than it suits me. Though I enjoyed the jokes, it was saddening to see characters simply fail. Hopefully, since the characters have returned to Greendale, it’s no longer as necessary, and I hope it will lessen as the characters grow.
Another worry is that Donald Glover, who plays Troy, will be leaving after the fifth episode. His close friendship with Abed (Danny Pudi) will be sorely missed, but it seems that Harmon has already begun working him out of the plot, as he has had fewer lines in the first two episodes of the fifth season.
Really, we’re looking at a whole new show, and we’re just going to have to wait and see how everything goes before we can call it. But so far, the “gas leak year” has been expertly dealt with, and I’m quite hopeful for how the rest of the promised “six seasons and a movie” will play out.
