Community aces first test

Kacper Niburski
Opinions Editor

I’ve never been one for zombie series but when I heard that Community was coming back for a fifth season, I prepared a rise-of-the-undead-kit.

On paper, the show should have wilted into television death ages ago. Season three saw the loss of Dan Harmon and a series of public catfights between Chevy Chase (Pierce on the show) and the director, Harmon. The fourth season was born from this tumult. In the chaos and unrest, the show soon devolved into a slaughterhouse of comedy: each episode was caught on an automatic conveyor belt that was hurtling towards a blunt, gear-squealing meat-grinder. No matter the screams and furious backtracking, the cash cow of a series was a bloody mess.

Though the characters were still the same and though Greendale was still Greendale with its cartoon-like reality and improbable plots, the fourth season’s episodes could never mesh. Any movement seemed like a botched homage to the show’s past; any attempt at a hijinks felt rushed and premature. Everything was steeped in the show’s darkest timeline, including Community itself. Something always appeared to be amiss, despite the efforts of everyone on the cast, the talent behind the scenes, and the recycling of previous plot devices.

So as I sat down on Jan. 2 for the episodes, I prepared for the worst: my zombie-kit was beside me. In it, I had ready-made popcorn, a battalion of tissues, and a little bit of alcohol just in case I needed help getting through the horror show.

And yet there were laughs instead of grumbles, smiles instead of tears. The impossible had happened. Community was back, and this time it really, really was.

Under the aegis of Harmon’s renewed creativity, the two episodes scaled back to their origins. “Repilot” and “An Introduction to Teaching” flashed a brilliance that gave the show its name in the first place. In fact, “Repilot” kicks off the dirt of season four by mirroring the first pilot episode ever aired – the crestfallen Jeff Winger (played Joel McHale) gets help by an old acquaintance, unassumingly brings together a beloved but fickle study group, tears them apart through wild lies, and then by stressing little, worn domestic truths, helps himself and the group reassemble their shambled together lives.

It is almost like a dream. In season five, we are caught in a beginning of a beginning, an end of an end. And unlike season four, it is not a nightmare. The repetition is purposeful. The blemishes of season four are adroitly dealt with. It is a five-season cycle. We are spun backwards and forwards and backwards again.

There is no telling when we’ll have to wake up from this dream and when the show will soil this newly found honeymoon period. Who knows – maybe in the next few episodes the luster of the old will fail, they’ll Britta the whole thing, and all the hype around the fifth season will be blamed on a gas spill.

Or maybe none of that’ll happen and the truncated fifth season will keep the “pop, pop” until there are six seasons and a movie.