To polish a turd- Community Season 4 or Fixing of Mediocrity 101

From the dizzying heights of all the other seasons to the comparatively low depths of Season 4, this was a tough season to be a Community fan. The funny thing is that Season 4 isn't actually the evil spawn of hatred that fans put it up to being. In any other sitcom, this would have been an average season but because of the staggeringly high bar set, the show could only go down. Regardless, this season is pretty bad and it has flaws that I'm going to try and fix, even if later seasons actually fixed these problems. So let's begin our descent into a mediocre season and all the ways we can forget about it.


I'll start on the obvious. One place where Season 4 tripped up before it even started filming was in the firing of main writer and creator, Dan Harmon. Harmon is undoubtedly the life blood on the show and no matter how much the same writers, directors and actors can pretend it's all fine, it's just not. While I don't want to talk shit about anyone who works on Community, without Dan Harmon, it would be a soulless, shambling corpse. Hell, this season showed us that without Harmon, we might as well be watching episodes of Big Bang Theory only with characters who we used to care about.

A side effect on Dan Harmon's disappearance was that the show still thought it was the same show. Again, I don't want to insult anyone who worked on the show at this time but it wasn't the same show. Unfortunately, no one mentioned this to the show and as such, it tried to be the same show and became a limp imitator. Case in point, the season finale paintball episode. We all loved the paintball episodes in Seasons 1 and 2 (and the new one in Season 6) so it made sense to try another one. But the charm was gone. It didn't even feel like an imitator at this point, just sad. Another example, the puppet episode. The off-genre episodes are amazing for their heart and commitment to the format. This episode managed neither and made me sad. Community season 4, stop trying to be Community seasons 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6. You're not, you're any episode of Big Bang Theory.

But finally, the real kicker: they attempted to pull off a lot of really important plotlines that it simply couldn't. At the end of Season 3 we got set up for Jeff finally meeting his dad. This should have been a huge event, as one of Jeff's defining features. However, it was handled sloppily. They Britta'd it, for want of a better phrase. Equally, we got Jeff's graduation which should have been a warm and emotional moment like the Season 3 finale. Unfortunately, it became botched paintball, Pierce ruined it by trying to graduate before Jeff (although he did leave which was good news) and we got the whole "it was just a dream" cliche to wipe away most of the episode. In any other season, these plots would have worked and made us get that fizzy feeling we get when Community falls into all the right places.

Look, if Dan Harmon hadn't been sacked, then pretty much none of these problems would exist, as the most recent seasons proved. Community Season 4 will forever be remembered as the gas leak year, as a stumble in it's excellent race, as a scratch that we can just ignore. And that's for the better. But we can never forget this season. This shaped us into who we (as Community fans) have become. I'm just glad it's back on track now. 


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