All's for the Best in This Best of all Possible Worlds

Community shows signs of life!  Come on, Hulu!  Maybe it won’t be cancelled!  Could we have 13 more episodes of one of the best shows on TV?  Let’s celebrate!

Oh, what’s that you say, nation’s online TV critics?  You don’t want Community to be revived?  Well, you must have never liked the show in the first place.  Wait, what?  You did like it, and still like it?  Yet you’re happy with its cancellation?  I’m confused. 

Let’s start with Todd:

The show had a tremendous run: Community made it to five seasons and ran 97 episodes, far more than the vast majority of TV shows ever have. 

It’s also funnier than the vast majority of TV shows.  97 episodes, a lot of them pretty fucking good.  Let’s have thirteen more!

It had, by any stretch of the imagination, a terrific run, particularly when one considers how close it came to cancellation so many times. Is it really worth potentially sullying that reputation for a handful of additional episodes, 

Um—that last season was kind of good, wasn’t it?  So, odds are, a potential next season would be good too.  And if it’s not, oh well—maybe we get one or two more great episodes—no harm in that! 

I sense a creeping Victorianism in Todd’s worldview today—“sullying reputations”—never want to do that.  Keep that chastity belt on, Community!

particularly when it could be fun to see all involved stretch their wings?

Little birds, leave your nests!  Fly, fly, fledglings!  Your home is in a newer, probably worse nest!

Will I watch more episodes of Community if they come along? Undoubtedly.

Will I continue to write like Donald Rumsfeld?  Indubitably.

And I’ll likely enjoy them, too.

So, of course, you’re happy that Community is over.  That makes sense.  Todd’s asceticism is stronger than ever.  Enjoyment?  Pleasure?  Fie!  Fie on that!

But everything—even TV shows—has to end, and Community is at a point where its legacy is secure. Why mess with that?

Maybe because it’s still really fucking good?  Sure, TV shows have to end.  Maybe for, you know, TV shows that actually make you laugh, they could end when the creators and stars want them to end or when they get bad.  That has not happened with Community.  But Todd “Chopping Block” Van DerWerff wants us to think of the children.  He’s so concerned with the “legacy.”  You’re not trying to get your kid into Yale, Todd.

To steal from a friend, here’s basically Todd’s argument, transposed into another context:

Ya know, Lebron is great, but I think I'm ready for him to retire. I'm not really sure there's anything else he can show me at this point. He's a great, great basketball player, sure, but we've seen what he has to offer already. He doesn't want to linger just for the sake of it, like Jordan did with those pointless final three championships.

Also, Michael Jordan kind of did stick around too long with that ill-fated Wizards comeback.  Did that destroy his legacy?  Not exactly.

Could Sony get more Community on the air? Sure. But why should it have to?

Going for the gold there with the rhetorical questions today, I see. Sony doesn’t have to produce more shows.  But the show’s kind of good—as you attest!  So why the hell not?

Community was a great show, one of the best of its era. But new shows—sometimes from the same people—will rise up to take its place. They always do.

Do you hear the throbbing drums, the vaguely “exotic” background singers?  They’re swelling and rising.  Yes, I hear it now—it’s “the circle of life”!   And it moves us all!   It’s the circle, the circle of TV sitcoms!

Yes, look for Community in the grass.  It will filter and fibre the blood of new brilliant sitcoms like NBC’s remake of The Odd Couple starring Matthew Perry.  Because really good sitcoms are as common as dandelions.  And for a new one to be born an old one has to die.  So off with their heads!

If it proves to be time to let it go for once and for all, don’t let that be a sad thing. Let that be, instead, a celebration of all that the show was so good at—including telling stories about letting things come to a peaceful, natural end.

Man, you just love endings, don’t you?  You’ve been wanting Community to end from the moment it began.  Forget the humor and innovation—what you want is a “peaceful, natural end.”  The essence of all great comedy. 

Also, the primary feeling I feel isn’t sadness.  It’s anger—anger at reviews like this, and anger at NBC for cancelling the show.  But far be it for you to even possibly suggest that NBC might have gone so far as to make a mistake—no, no, Father Network knows best.  All’s for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

For more of the same, here’s Andy Greenwald.

The new status quo rolled for a while: Somewhere between Troy leaving on a lake of lava and Jeff hallucinating himself into a GI Joe cartoon, Community reclaimed its mantle as the most inventive show on network television as well as the one most contemptuous of its rules.

Community—still the most inventive show on television.  Kind of a shame it got cancelled in its prime, huh?

But eventually there was simply too much entropy to overcome. By the time the final two episodes aired — one of which was built around the idea of nothing happening at all — it was hard to avoid the sense that Community was out of gas. The finale, “Basic Sandwich,” wasn’t just lousy, it was exhausted.

So let’s get this straight—for 11 of its 13 episodes. Community was the most inventive show on television.  But two lousy episodes (which were actually really funny, but whatever) and you’re convinced that the show is lousy and exhausted?  Two fucking episodes!

Sentiment aside, where could this show possibly go from here?

Let’s take it to Mars!  Strap on the jetpacks, put on the spacesuits, and shoot that sucker into space!

How ‘bout this—maybe Community shouldn’t “go” anywhere.  Maybe it should stick around and continue being the “most inventive show on network television.” High praise, from a certain Andy Greenwald.

Greendale has been saved, Jeff and Britta separated, and a deadly meteor could strike at any time. This feels right. Believe me, I understand the desire to pound on Community’s chest in hopes of a miracle, but sometimes it’s best to give the dead some dignity.

Let me suggest a more apt conceit: Mr. Community lies on his death bed, struggling for life.  Nefarious doctors with a peacock logo on their lapels disconnect his life support systems.  We all begin our process of mourning.  But suddenly: a turn for the better—do we dare hope for a miracle?  No—Andy Greenwald sheds his mourning weeds, takes out a sledge hammer, and bludgeons the almost restored Mr. Community to death.  And . . . scene!

But Greenwald doesn’t take the cake.  No, that honor goes to Ben Cosman from something called The Wire. 

Wednesday evening, Deadline reported that Hulu was "in talks" with Sony Pictures TV to bring Community back from the dead for a post-cancellation season on the streaming service. We respectfully ask Hulu to not do that. 

Don’t save a brilliant show!  Please, we beg of you.  The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will ride through a blood-red sky, the seventh seal will be opened, and darkness will descend over the face of the waters.

Community doesn't need to be revived. This isn't a Freaks and Geeks situation – Community had five seasons on air, more than most cult shows, and it isn't as if the show was only now hitting its prime.

No, it’s not just hitting its prime.  It’s in its prime.  Or let’s say, for comparison’s sake that Community is in its Seinfeld Season 6 phase—just after its prime.  That’s still pretty fucking good. 

Sure, it's one short of its six season hashtag, but that's no more reason to bring it back than any other Twitter joke. The show left very few story lines unwrapped at the end of the fifth season. There's no cliffhanger to resolve. This wasn't a premature death.

Yes, because the only possible reason for a show to continue is if there’s some serialized plot that needs to be resolved.  Not just that it’s a great show that’s still going strong.  Again, this is the whole problem with the growth and learning bullshit—comedies don’t usually have story arcs across episodes.  They’re not going to have cliffhangers.  Don’t judge comedies by the same criteria as fucking True Detective.

A sixth season on Hulu would be nothing but pandering fan service.

“Fan service” is a term that people keep throwing around recently, and like most terms that people obsessively throw around, it means nothing.  So, according to you, making more of a great sitcom is “pandering fan service?” 

Boy, that William Shakespeare: Henry IV Part I, fine, but did you have to do a part II?  I know audiences like Falstaff and all, but that’s just pandering fan service. 

And James Joyce, didn’t we have our fill of Stephen Dedalus in Portrait?  Did you really need to service your fans with more of the same in Ulysses?  

And moreover, Community shouldn't be revived. Just because this is the Internet and we can do that now doesn't mean every show that gets cancelled while people are still marginally interested in it needs to find a new home online. 

It’s true!  How many shows were cancelled this past year?  A fuck ton.  You don’t hear people clamoring for more Dads, do you?  You know why—it fucking sucked.  Community, on the other hand, is really good.  So people want more of it.  Is that so fucking wrong?

And that's the problem with these post-cancellation revivals, isn't it? How often do they live up to the hype (see: Arrested Development)?

Far be it for me to point out the most fucking obvious point in the world here, but kind of a different context between Community and Arrested Development.  Arrested Development: years go by and the show is resurrected under huge logistical constraints.  Community: basically, if it gets picked up on Hulu, it would just continue uninterrupted.  Exactly the same. 

Giving fans exactly what they want is the surest way to make nobody care about a sixth season of Community. 

I don’t even know what that means.  So providing a sixth season of Community is the surest way for people not to care about a sixth season?  I don’t know, I kind of think NOT HAVING a sixth season would be a better way for people not to care about the season.

So please, Hulu, snuff out this talk right now. Let Community rest. It had a good run, it was on a decline, it ended when it should have, and no hashtag can convince us otherwise. At its best, Community was the most creative and interesting show on television. It won't be the same on Hulu.

Because, why exactly?  The show “was the most creative and interesting show on television.”  But if it’s on Hulu, it won’t be?  Are there structural constraints about Hulu that will prevent the show from reaching its potential?  Oh, right—that’s the end of your article.  You’re just a fucking idiot. 

But let’s back up a bit.

It had a good run, it was on a decline, it ended when it should have.

Let’s ignore the fact that the show wasn’t on a decline.  Basically, this is the message of all three of the articles above.  In sum: don’t be upset.  Don’t complain.  Trust in Dr. Pangloss: All’s for the best in the best of all possible worlds.  Trust in our corporate overlords: they’re so wise, they’re so benevolent.  They know just the right time when every show should be cancelled.  And if the show’s not actually in decline, well we TV reviewers, as their faithful servants, will pretend that it was in decline.  March in lockstep, everyone!  Criticism, dissent—fuck that!  Just be grateful for what you have.  Don’t ask for more.  Those NBC execs, they’re better than us, more knowledgeable (and oh so competent in building hit shows).  Let the CEOs do their jobs, and the TV critics can just justify their decisions.  TV “criticism”?  I think not. 

The Non-sense of an Ending

Let’s power up the old time machine and take a trip back into the past.  Way, way, back.  All the way to April 10, 2014.  Man, life was different back then, wasn’t it?  I’ll set the stage.  Pharrell Williams’s “Happy” was the number one song in America.  Real catchy number.  Captain America: The Winter Soldier was wowing those who love extra-long movie titles.  An innovative NBC sitcom’s prognosis for a sixth season was still looking positive.  And a certain AV Club recapper was finally seeing the light.  Seems a long time ago, doesn’t it?  Let’s head back to that long-ago moment, and see what Todd has to say.    

“Basic Story” is also about how all of the characters occupy a kind of sitcom purgatory. When Jeff and Britta decide to get married, it’s a pivotal moment both for the show and the episode, but it’s mostly notable as a sign of something that can’t happen so long as they remain sitcom characters. If Community is renewed, then Jeff and Britta will be right back there [sic] squabbling; TV shows are often all about a kind of fundamental resistance to change.

Well, maybe not all TV shows.  But sitcoms?  Definitely.  I’ve been making this point for years, while Todd has gone on and on about journeys and growth and other bullshit. But I’m not here to rub salt in old wounds.  Let’s celebrate Todd’s conversion!  I’m glad he finally got it, even if it took him so very, very long.  Sitcom purgatory is actually a nice way to describe it.  They’re never going to change.  Because they’re characters on a sitcom.

And now, theoretically, the story should “end.” But it won’t get to, because this is a TV show, and God willing, there’s one more season and a movie to get to.

Ah, the irony of historical hindsight, I mutter, shaking my head ruefully.

Community has always set Greendale up as a purgatory. It’s a very TV setup—the place where you least want to be is the place where you learn who you need to be.

Or the place where the show needs to be because that’s its central premise. 

But at the same time, the whole idea behind purgatory is that it ends, that the fires eventually burn away your sins and you move forward to paradise. (This episode throws out the name Dante for a reason.)

Hmm, I sense that this purgatory metaphor might be going a bit too far. 

A TV show only ends when somebody is good and ready to have it go away, and even that might not be enough for fans, who may will new episodes into being through their imaginations or crowd-funding or something.

So that “somebody” who ends a sitcom, in this case, is a cadre of brainless NBC execs who want to double-down on How I Met Your Mother ripoffs?  Because I was not “good and ready” for Community to end.  It remains—how should I put this?—really fucking funny.

Longing for more story is just a basic human desire, and it’s one that Community is almost always careful to fulfill.

I’m not quite sure what this means.  Yes, the show tells stories.  It’s not a Hollis Frampton film.

But longing for more story also deprives the world of endings, and endings are what help us make sense of those stories in the first place (even if they aren’t as important to understanding an ongoing TV show as we’d all like them to be).

Someone has been reading Reading for the Plot!  Actually no.  But someone really should be reading Reading for the Plot.

Yes, endings are important to make sense of narrative.  But, as you kind of point out, sitcoms are the least dependent on endings of any form I can think of.  Because nothing and no one changes, as you mention.  No one really cares that the last episode of Seinfeld was kind of a let down: the show was brilliant. 

Pierce got his ending through death, as we all will. Troy discovered that his journey and evolution would have to take place elsewhere.

Wait, I thought we established this just moments before.  Sitcom characters don’t go on journeys.  No one changes.  Nothing changes.  The only “changes” are when actors (not characters) decide to leave the show.  Or when NBC pulls the plug.  That’s the ending, an ending, alas, that we’ve now experienced.

And Annie and Abed and the Dean need Greendale to keep existing, because they’re not yet done being prepared by it for whatever paradise awaits them in the next world. Greendale has always been a waystation, a place between places, but for that to have any meaning, there needs to be somewhere else to go to, and right now, there isn’t, at least not yet.

Somehow this just became Pilgrim’s Progress.  Well, with all this talk about journeys, it’s not too surprising.  Have you been saved?  Have you been washed in the blood of the Lamb? 

So you’ve gone and undermined everything you’ve just said.  Great.  No, there doesn’t need to be “somewhere else to go to”; it’s a sitcom, and there’s no change, as you began this recap by stating.  Change equals cancellation.  1+1=2.  Todd + recap = idiocy.  It’s a very clear equation. 

Oh my God—I’ve just realized something.  Todd’s got in my brain, man!  He’s the Thought Jacker!  I too want growth, change, a journey.  I want Todd to learn that his criteria for judging Community are, and have always been, bullshit.  I want him to evolve towards a better, more insightful whole.  But I need to learn that, like the characters on the show, he’s never going to change.  He’s just not that smart.  Despite the relative flash of insight of this recap, he’ll just keep bringing out the whole journeys and growth and hugging mumbo jumbo.

As proof, let’s rev up the old time machine again and jump forward one week, to Todd’s final Community recap, a fitting encapsulation of his five year long engagement with the show.  Let’s start it off with a bang, shall we?

Honestly, I might be ready for Community to be done.

Me too; after watching that brilliantly funny final episode, I was like, who needs more of this?  NBC’s got a new pilot where Debra Messing plays a bad-ass lady detective who also has to contend with her school-age kids.  Dump Community, and give me more of that!

Well, you got your wish, jackass.

Its fifth season has been one of its most consistent yet, perhaps even more consistent than the vaunted season two (which had the highest highs of the series’ run but also had episodes that felt fairly phoned in).

Fifth season was the most consistent yet!  Therefore, cancel it.  Off with its head!

And yet for as much life as this season has brought to the show, it’s not hard to feel as if it’s started to run out of stories to tell, things to explore.

"When Dan Harmon saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to explore and conquer."

Yup, that’s a wrap.  We won comedy.  Let’s pack up and move the circus out of town. 

Um, Todd, aren’t those last few sentences maybe kind of just a little in conflict with each other? (Not that I should ever expect consistency from you; especially considering that just one week prior you were gunning for a sixth season). If the show’s still good (and it is), then, I don’t know, maybe it still does have stories to tell.  Is it funny?  Yeah, it is.  So don’t cancel it.  End of story. 

Don’t get me wrong: If this show gets another season, I’m going to watch it (and probably write about it), but it’s also becoming more and more clear that Community is closer to the end of its run than the beginning,

Well, yeah, I would assume that a show in its fifth season would be closer to the end than the beginning. You don’t have to know anything about the show to guess that.

and I’ve finally reached a point where I’m not necessarily going to celebrate simply because Greendale has been saved.

I know, why celebrate that the best comedy on TV is saved?  Let it pass, man.  Let it pass.  I’d hate to live in Todd van der Werff’s dictatorship.  Once someone reached the age of fifty they’d be summarily executed. Or to be his girlfriend on her birthday. “So what, you lived another year? I’m not going to celebrate simply because you’ve been saved.”

It’s a weird position to be in, honestly, where you still like a show but also are ready for it to be done, if only to preserve its own legacy in your imagination.

Ok, let’s get this straight.  You want the show to be cancelled to preserve its legacy.  This about a show that you begin this recap praising and saying is almost as good as its first two seasons.  It’s not the late seasons of the Office, where the show sucks.  It’s still great.  It’s still funny.  And even with the Office, a show with only one good season out of nine, that one season remains really great.  I still watch it.  If the show is still at least somewhat funny, why the fuck would you not want it on the air?

But I shouldn’t be surprised.  The fact is, as I’ve said from the start, Todd fundamentally, despite his protestations to the contrary, doesn’t really like Community.  Or, he doesn’t like the show as it is, harkening back to some touchy-feely emotional growth and journeys season 0 that never actually existed.  With fans like these, who needs enemies? Here’s Todd at the end of season four. 

This is no longer a show that’s capable of much beyond repeating elements it thinks the audience will like over and over again. It’s become a jukebox musical version of itself, endlessly spinning its greatest hits to a crowd that grows smaller and smaller until it finally disappears.  Even yesterday, I would have been sad at a cancellation, thanks to all of the good times I’ve had with this show over the years and even in this season. But not anymore. It might be time to be done. The earth, it has been salted.

Admittedly, season four sucked.  But Todd’s writing the same old bullshit—the show has nothing to say, it’s repeating itself, blah blah blah.  If it had been cancelled after season four, there wouldn’t have been a season five.  And we’d have missed out, n’est pas?

But let’s go further back—how about the first episode of season four?

Yet even as the show has all of these weapons in its arsenal, it feels increasingly empty. It’s a show that knows what it used to be, a show that’s a bit too obsessed with its own history and repeating it until the repetition grows irritating and finally just exhausting. It’s a show that feels tired of being Community, in some ways, with all that word implies.

Methinks the pot is calling the kettle black, Todd, with you repetitively denouncing Community’s repetitiveness. Ok, that recap was still season four.  How ‘bout strapping on the time machine and going even further back—how about to the recap that prompted me to start this blog in the first place?

But it’s also a show that’s settled quite a bit into what it’s going to be for the immediate future. I still love the show, as I think should be obvious. I just don’t love it like I once did, and that will take some adjusting.

I can imagine Todd on Season One, Episode One: “I just find the show a little repetitive; I just don’t love it like I used to love it, before it was on the air.” 

Community: they don’t make ‘em like they used to!

How many months will we have to wait for Todd’s nostalgic paean to the lost glories of Community season five, a classic cancelled in its prime?  Not too long, I’d wager. 

But for now let’s return to Todd on the last episode of Community, and why he’d be fine if it were to be cancelled. 

It’s churlish, then, to hold something against “Basic Sandwich” for refusing to conform to my own emotional journey with the show.

Oh, so now that you realize that the characters aren’t on an emotional journey it’s about your own emotional journey?  Sweet.  I hope you reach the land of Sugar Plum Fulfilment and bypass the Slough of Humor. 

The problem, then, is that the episode never really makes a compelling case for Greendale to keep existing. It’s meant to keep existing, because if it exists, then we get to see Community, and if we get to see Community, we are happy.

Hmm, I think you just made the case for Community to keep existing.  It makes us happy.  Because it is a funny, innovative television program. 

The show has had some great finales in the past that have argued for the necessity of this place as somewhere that allows the characters to work on their own endless self-improvement projects.

Endless self-improvement projects! The foundation of all good comedies. Next up on NBC: Poor Richard’s Almanac! Followed by The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, starring Judd Hirsch and Christina Applegate.

“Basic Sandwich” doesn’t really bother with this part of the characters’ journey;

Funny, I read a critic the week before who said Community wasn’t about change or growth.  A certain Todd van der Werff.  Perhaps you’ve read him?

instead, it hopes to gain its emotional climax from leaning on stuff that happened in the past.

An emotional climax!  A larger, warmer whole!  Todd, think of the children.  That sounds more appropriate for the ten o’clock hour. 

And forget the past.  I like to live in an eternal present.  I got one of those Men in Black-style amnesia sticks.  What was I saying?

It felt almost too wacky for the show, which is saying a lot for a series that just a couple of weeks ago came up with a really solid mid-life crisis episode disguised as a G.I. Joe parody.

How is this any wackier than any other laugh-producing episode of the show? Remember the Ass Crack Bandit, or Hot Lava for that matter (which, by the way, was from an episode you really liked).  Staid, severe, restrained.  Like everything on the show.

Community prides itself on having its goofiest stuff be based in some emotional core,

Only you believe that.  You are the only one, Todd. Watch “Modern Warfare” again.  No emotions.  Just brilliant, goofy comedy. 

and I don’t know that this ever once worked on that level, because the salvation of Greendale was always going to happen.

Because it’s a fucking sitcom.  Until the show ends, it’s not going to blow up its basic premise.  That only happens when the show is cancelled.  Which it is.  And posting recaps like this isn’t exactly helpful for extending the life of a brilliant sitcom, is it? 

It might have worked as a hidden origin story for the school—and I did like Greendale Computer-y College—but it felt like a lot of yelling and then Jeff feeling things. Which could describe a lot of the season, really.

Or the whole show.  That’s the basic formula.  But what made it so good (have to use the past tense now, alas) was how it innovated and played on and was self-aware of that basic formula.  Exactly the things you didn’t like about the show. 

The thing that bugs me about Todd is he’s semi-self-conscious about how inane he is, but not self-aware enough to say anything intelligent, like when he commented on the pitch-perfect fake show promos that rolled in the credits.

I’d review them, too, and read way too much into minor lines that don’t really have anything to do with anything! (“As he licked the strange cupcake batter off the spoon, I realized that Captain Cook is a show about exploration. Then, aren’t they all?”)

This is such a fitting ending, summarizing perfectly the Van der Werff Experience™.   For one, Todd doesn’t seem to understand what “reading” is.  Believe me, there is no danger of overanalysis in Todd’s recaps.  Why?  Because overanalysis kind of has to include “analysis.”  And analysis doesn’t lead to conclusions about how a show is “about exploration.”  I know you’re being jokey here, Todd, but really that banality is what all your so-called analysis of Community boils down to:  it’s about exploration, dude.  The “analysis” of a stoned college freshman.  Here’s a hint for you: if you could apply that same statement to basically any cultural product, then it doesn’t fucking mean anything at all. 

Now that you’ve gotten your wish, and Community is off the air, why don’t, next time we’re provided with a really funny sitcom, you spend some time actually analyzing it.  Not yammering about growth and journeys and your other fan-fiction crutches.  Instead, bother looking closely at what’s actually there, before it’s gone.