ICYMI: COMMUNITY
The Cult Sitcom Graduates to Netflix
In Case You Missed It is a series on PROVOKR highlighting cult TV series that have recently made their way to streaming platforms.
Few shows have fought maddeningly uphill battles to stay on the air quite like Community. The Dan Harmon-helmed sitcom ran for three full season runs on NBC followed by two abbreviated seasons. After NBC dropped the show in 2014 due to low ratings, the now-defunct streaming platform Yahoo! Screen picked it up for one more 13-episode run. Alas, that wasn’t enough to save Community—the beloved if overlooked series ended its tenure just shy of its stated goal, six seasons and a movie.
Now, though, Community is on Netflix and subscribers are flocking to the show, some for the first time. Renewed attention on social media, not to mention a litany of articles from pop culture purveyors eager to revisit the quirky sitcom, have also helped bolster the show’s belated popularity. And yet it’s hard to describe what made Community so special in just a few words. The all-star cast featured the talents of Joel McHale, Donald Glover, Alison Brie and Chevy Chase, among others. The music was scored by Ludwig Göransson, who would go on to win an Oscar for his Black Panther score. The top-notch writing team excelled under showrunner Dan Harmon’s watchful eye and even managed to pull off a Harmon-less season four.
That same skillful writing that endeared Community’s small but loyal audience to the series may have been its undoing, however. Though it was part of NBC’s “Comedy Night Done Right — All Night” lineup, a who’s who of acclaimed sitcoms including 30 Rock, The Office and Parks and Recreation, Community was by far the least accessible of these shows.
Why’s that? For starters, the series’ Greendale Community College setting was little more than a backdrop for wide-ranging genre parodies and conceptual riffs on film and TV tropes. A popular season one episode sees Greendale devolve into an action movie wasteland in the wake of a paintball tournament gone awry.
As the show went on, Harmon and company took on Law & Order, Mad Max, Glee… nothing was off limits or too esoteric. There were multiple episodes shot to resemble documentaries (including a Ken Burns spoof), two episodes where the characters play Dungeons & Dragons for half an hour and an entire season six entry animated in the style of G.I. Joe cartoons from the 80s.
The one problem with Community? Its premise was unsustainable—eventually, college students have to graduate. Season five saw most characters re-enrolling at Greendale, though Donald Glover soon departed the show, as did Chevy Chase. By season six, it made zero sense for any of the remaining characters to still be there.
Taken as a whole, Community is a reminder that even in the golden age of television, there are some shows that are once-in-a-lifetime feats of flawless comedy writing, and even those shows can stay on the air too long. Whether or not it stuck the landing in the end, we ought to count ourselves lucky that a show like Community survived for as long as it did. All six seasons are available now on Netflix.
