I feel like I say this in almost every article I write, but it bears repeating: it’s a great time to be a TV fan right now. After the fantastic year of television that was 2014, the first few months of 2015 have only added to the bevy of great new series out there, with the likes of Better Call Saul, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and iZombie, while long-running series, such as Parks and Recreation and Justified, have given us terrific final seasons. With so much good stuff to watch nowadays, it’s easy to take certain older shows you enjoy for granted, and for a while, that had been my mindset with Community, a show that used to be my favorite comedy on television during its first three seasons but one that I felt struggled during its Dan Harmon-less fourth season and also its fifth and final season on NBC, which saw Harmon return to the series. However, in its sixth season, which premiered on Yahoo Screen last month, Community has enjoyed a creative resurgence, making me incredibly eager to fire up every new episode that debuts each Tuesday, and this rejuvenation is directly related to the show’s move from network television to the streaming platform.
While Community was always a quality comedy series on NBC (yes, there are even some good episodes in the much and deservedly despised Season 4), it’s been given the freedom to be the show it truly wants to be on Yahoo. Similar to Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix (although I’m not exactly sure how any of those three measures the profitability of their original series), Yahoo does not look to Nielsen ratings as an indication of a show’s success; it follows a different business model than that of broadcast and even cable networks and isn’t looking for a large, somewhat engaged audience but for more passionate, devoted viewers. Without feeling pressured to appeal to a wider, broader range of people (although that never stopped Dan Harmon before), Harmon and his writing staff can focus on crafting the series that they want, no matter how weird or “out there” it gets. While I’m sure Harmon still may receive some notes, this as unfiltered a version of his true vision of Community as we are going to get, and it’s been wildly entertaining.
Additionally, the fact that Community is no longer limited by the typical running time for network TV comedies (something it could have only had on streaming sites like Yahoo or Netflix, or premium cable networks like HBO and Showtime) has provided the series with more time to breathe in each episode. Some Season 6 installments have run as long as a half hour, a good eight to nine minutes more than your typical sitcom episode. And while that type of time flexibility hasn’t always been helpful for comedy series (one only needs to look at some of the longer and lesser episodes of Arrested Development‘s fourth season), it’s worked wonders for Community, which has been able to allot more time and attention to some of its more interesting storylines (such as the episode two weeks ago that primarily focused on the Dean’s sexuality) and create longer, weirder, and downright better end tags to episodes (like the Tokyo teenager who pretended to be Jeff while texting the Dean becoming the leader of the Yakuza later in life).
Furthermore, perhaps due a smaller budget on Yahoo, Community feels more scaled-down in Season 6. Instead of paying homage to certain films or giving us another “big event episodes” (although I’m always up for more paintball, which I’m pretty sure we’ll be getting later this season), the show’s writers have instead allowed the characters to just interact with each other at Greendale without much tinkering. Sure, one week, part of the school will be turned into a speakeasy, and in another episode (the show’s most recent one), prisoners attended Greendalve via tablets–the series is still being its odd, fun self but on a smaller, more personal scale, which has led to some really nice character moments in these early Season 6 episodes, especially for Britta, Annie, and Dean Pelton.
Even characters that Community had forgotten how to use, such as Chang, have found their place in the show’s first Yahoo season. In fact, I’d argue that Chang hasn’t been as entertaining as he is right now since Community‘s first season, when the writers knew how to utilize Ken Jeong well as the college’s crazy Spanish teacher. And even the series’ new additions, Paget Brewster as Frankie and Keith David as Elroy, have fit in well with the group, helping fill the voids left by the exits of Donald Glover and Yvette Nicole Brown.
Is Community in Season 6 as terrific as the show was back in its early years, particularly its spectacular second season? No, of course, not; all comedies lose a little bit of their luster as they age and evolve, especially ones that have gone through as many major changes as this series has. But Community does feel fresh and bold and inventive in a way that it hasn’t in a couple years, and that’s in large part because of its move to Yahoo Screen. Now let’s just hope they can keep it going for the movie.
New episodes of Community premiere every Tuesday on Yahoo Screen.
[Photos via Yahoo Screen]
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Couldn’t agree more