TV Review: Community finale "Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television"

Series finales are strange things.  They used to be rare, back in the days when television series were theoretically going to last forever.  There was the final episode of The Fugitive in the 1960s, the most watched TV episode until that title was taken away by MASH (although at 2 ½ hours that was less a finale and more of a miniseries).  The British series The Prisoner fascinated and alienated most of its audience with an ending that explained everything and nothing. 

Lost was one of the first TV shows to want to know its own end date, so it could plan accordingly.  At some point, we all decided (or it was decided for us) that we needed closure.  Any successful series (either critically or monetarily) had to produce a last hurrah so all the fans could come back for one final thrill.  Sometimes it worked (Mary Tyler Moore Show) and sometimes not (Lost). 

Sometimes finales were far stranger than the shows they were wrapping up (Newhart, St. Elsewhere) and sometimes they just . . . ended (The Sopranos).  Some were actually so bad the seriously diminished the quality of all the prior episodes (How I Met Your Mother).

Yet another neo-classic TV series has apparently closed up shop.  Community, despite very long odds, managed to reach the first part of its mantra, “Six seasons and a movie.”  Okay, the show ended on Yahoo, not NBC, but given that currently NBC’s longest running sit-com is Undateable, that may be for the best.  The good news: Community sticks the landing, nailing it with one of the best and most internally satisfying TV episodes of all time, Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television.

Which is not to say it is a great episode of Community; Community is far too quirky to be reduced to a ranking of episodes.  Even the best episodes of Season Six were not nearly as funny as the pinnacles the show reached in seasons one and three (two was just sort of there; four was produced without showrunner Dan Harmon; season five was some sort of apology from NBC to Harmon that ended with a whimper). Season six produced a couple of very good episodes (Queer Studies and Advanced Waxing, Modern Espionage) and some real drek (Intro to Recycled Cinema, Basic RV Repair and Palmistry).  But mostly it was about seeing the gang some more.

Community has done a great job of replacing cast members on the fly, and the additions of Paget Brewster and Keith David have helped ease the losses of Donald Glover, Yvette Nicole Brown and Chevy Chase (okay, Chase’s absence didn’t need easing).  But for the final episode they mostly ignore the newbies and find emotional strings binding the long-term characters together in ways they (and we) weren’t aware of.

That is one aspect of the Community [season/series] finale that makes it stand out compared to most other episodes of the show: it has a surprising amount of heart.  They have toned down the ‘shipping a lot since the early seasons when there was an intermittent but on-going Britta/Annie debate taking place in Jeff Winger’s head.  Season one set up the straw man of a Britta/Professor Slater choice only to end with Jeff and Annie memorably locking lips in the final episode.  Meanwhile, one of the funniest moments of a lackluster season two was the reveal near the end of the season that Jeff and Britta had been hooking up in secret during the entire season, the audience just never saw it.

 

Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television brings appropriate closure to the matter, as Jeff now fantasizes about being married to Annie only to realize that his moment has passed and that Annie’s no longer an option.  Community typically focused solely on the sexual aspects of (pardon the phrase) coupling; the disastrous Britta/Troy hook up was based on nothing but the fact that they were both good looking heterosexuals.  The attraction between Jeff and Annie was initially physical; she was an insecure but incredibly hot 18 year old, and he was an older, worldlier man dissimilar from the boys she’d known in high school (her high school crush Troy was the opposite of worldly).  But as they grew into the characters they became in season six, Jeff’s feelings for Annie blossomed into something far deeper than lust, while her feelings matured and became platonic.  It is to the writers’ credit that they acknowledge the rift instead of shoehorning in a stock happy ending with Jeff, Annie, their imaginary son Sebastian and a white picket fence.

Of course this being Community, the final episode has to be meta, or rather it has to be meta about being meta, coming up with the most meta plot since Cabin in the Woods.  Each character pitches what they’d like “Season Seven” to be like, which results in Jeff leading a study group of hot/nerdy redheads and Britta running a rogue nation state in international waters.  Mostly Dean Pelton runs around in a diaper.

But ultimately the pretense is stripped away.  The two brightest characters, Annie and Abed, leave for the FBI and Hollywood, respectively.  Elroy takes off to visit an old flame in California.  And the rest . . . they sit in a bar and toast themselves.  When anyone announces they are leaving, they are asked if they are coming back, only to answer, “Maybe. Probably. Maybe.”

Given that two of the cast (Ken Jeong and Paget Brewster) are already signed for other series debuting in the Fall, season seven seems unlikely.  But Community always lived by its own terms, even if that meant surviving on corporate support from Subway instead of millions of dollars of ad revenue from the network.  But I guess there is the pesky issue of the movie . . . .

Community produced some great episodes, from the first paintball episode Modern Warfare (directed by Fast and Furious Five director Justin Lin) to season five’s animated GI Joe parody, GI Jeff.  It won an Emmy for animation (Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas) and was nominated for writing in a comedy (Remedial Chaos Theory, which was also nominated for science fiction’s Hugo award).  It was erratic, and often some shows were sacrificed so the cast and crew could put more effort into other episodes.  IIRC, according to the DVD commentary the role-playing game episode in season five, Advanced Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, was more or less responsible for the last two episodes of that season sucking (in creator Dan Harmon’s own estimation).

Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television is one of the most satisfying series finales I can remember.  No grand send off, no mystical whoozits, just the characters being themselves for one last 30 minute ride.  What happens to Jeff Winger, Britta Perry, Craig Pelton, Ben Chang, and Frankie Dart is left up to the fates that control these things. 

Will the prophecy be fulfilled?  Will six seasons be followed by a movie?  Hey, if they can make Entourage into a movie, Community deserves a shot.