Friday, March 20, 2015

TV Review--Community season 6

There’s an old saying—be careful what you wish for.  I broke that bromide out several years ago when fans of the TV show Angel (of which I was one) were gnashing their teeth and filling the internet with invective because the show had been cancelled.  I pointed out that if we learned one thing from the TV show Angel, it’s that living forever isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. 

Fans of the TV show Community had a dream; six seasons and a movie.  The first part of that scenario seemed doubtful as the show’s ratings were in the tank.  But, thanks to corporate sponsorship from Subway (who also sustained another “little engine that could” show called Chuck), the show managed to make it to five seasons (I suppose now 13 episodes constitutes a “seasons” even on network TV).  But then the well ran dry and the show was cancelled by NBC.  Let me repeat something I mentioned in my review of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: NBC turned down that sitcom because they didn’t have any sitcom good enough to pair it with.  RIP Must See TV; RIP Community.

But wait!  Yahoo came to the rescue and resurrected the show for streaming.  By now the show had lost half of its original study group; Chevy Chase left in a dispute that is still confusing, Donald Glover left to pursue other projects (and get nominated for two Grammy awards), and Yvette Nicole Brown left to take care of a relative and also pursue the ubiquitous other projects.  Heck, even Fat Neil left to do CSI Cyber.  Would the reduced cast be enough to keep the magic alive?

There are two answers to that question.  Answer one is yes, of course they can.  Community was always nimble about its cast, elevating Academy Award winner Jim Rash to regular status and keeping Ken Jeong around long after Senor Chang and any real reason to stick around, plus the addition of Jonathan Banks last season.  With new cast members like Paget Brewster, there will be a new dynamic, but it will seem familiar.

The second answer is, there wasn’t that much magic to begin with.  I recently watched every episode of Community on DVDs from Netflix, and while seasons 1 and 3 were awesome, season 2 was a major disappointment, the Dan Harmon-less season 4 was erratic, and the re-Dan Harmonized season 5 was a disaster.  So there’s nowhere to go in season 6 but up, right?

Mostly right, if the first two episodes released by Yahoo are any indication.  The show has some pacing problems that probably stem from the fact that, now divorced from network conventions of length (the show can run longer than 22 ½ minutes per episode) there is less incentive to trim the marginal stuff and just leave the grain.  In the first episode there is a bit in the closing tag that starts out amusing, but then just keeps going, and going, and then bends into absurd, and not in a good way.  There are other draggy spots that probably would have been tighter in a 22 minute format.

The closing tag for episode 2 goes on for too long as well.  These closers were originally designed to give the audience something to watch while the closing credits rolled, but in the new streaming format, that’s no longer a consideration.  It’s another example of the new expanded format creating more problems than it solves.

There is still humor to be mined in the Greendale Community College mine, although how much remains can be a matter for debate. The first episode starts off harkening back to season 5’s thread about the group fixing everything wrong Greendale, with Frisbees turning out to be an overlooked hazard of epic proportions. The second episode, co-directed by Jim Rash, gives Mr. Rash an opportunity at displaying the kind of physical comedy he is so adept at (and displayed at the Academy Awards when he thrust his leg out Angelina-style) but in the end is just a little silly.

The new cast members have potential only hinted at in the first two episodes (give them a chance to settle in).  Reliability isn’t an adjective often associated with comedy, but Paget Brewster has proven herself to be a reliable comedic actor and possibly could distract Jeff (Joel McHale) from resuming his past Britta (Gillian Jacobs) and/or Annie (Allison Brie) flirtations.  Keith David, as an aging computer whiz, presumably steps into the departed Chevy Chase’s role as older curmudgeon.  David did great work doing the voice over for Community’s classic season 3 Ken Burns parody episode, “Pillows and Blankets,” and, as that episode pointed out, he was also on The Cape (so watch for Abed to make a meta comment on THAT)(note-after writing that I read an interview with Dan Harmon who says that connection never occurred to him; more's the pity).


Community has an erratic history, but that only proves that the show lives on the edge, willing to take risks that don’t pay off.  It has produced classic episodes such as Modern Warfare (the paintball episodes), Remedial Chaos Theory (the alternate realities episode), and Lupine Urology (the Law & Order parody).  Season 5 was mostly a misfire but they still managed to produce the animated episode that parodied G.I. Joe.  These are characters I care about, and if I stayed with them through what they themselves refer to as “the gas leak season” (the Harmon-less season four), then I’ll stick with them even though they are streaming rather than being broadcast.

No comments:

Post a Comment