The fourth season of Community is an interesting thing to tackle because it's something that had a lot of hurdles to overcome. The season was shorter than the previous three seasons, it's airing was delayed until February 2013, and it signaled the departure of Dan Harmon and Chevy Chase from the series. However, not much else changed from previous seasons. Though Ken Jeong was in a reduced role as Chang, known as Kevin this season due to "Changnesia" which apparently a rare form of Amnesia brought on by Chang being completely insane following season 3. Trust me, I'll be getting into that a little bit later. Right now I want to talk about the controversy surrounding this season.
At the end of season 3 NBC fired Dan Harmon as showrunner and he and Chevy Chase got into a disagreement at the third season wrap party, resulting in Chase leaving the show during filming of season 4 and Pierce only being in two or three episodes during the back half of the season. This resulted in two new showrunners being brought in to fill in for Harmon. And, as what usually happens when a showrunner is replaced, this season ended up feeling different because different people were in charge of the show. Actually, Harmon wasn't completely fired. He was fired as showrunner, but was given the title of consulting producer, which as any Trekkie reading this review knows, is something that Paramount did to Gene Roddenberry following Star Trek: The Motion Picture and similar to what NBC did to Roddenberry in the third season of Star Trek. And like Roddenberry on the third season of Star Trek and the Star Trek films, Harmon didn't do any work on Community for the fourth season. At the same time Chevy Chase was unhappy with the way Pierce was being written on the show, feeling that the character didn't need be as racist as Harmon had written him to be through the first three seasons. Which is understandable given that Pierce is so unlikable in season 2 and Harmon never quite fixed that mistake in season 3.
One of the more fascinating aspects of this behind the scenes turmoil is that Adam F. Goldberg was hired as another consulting producer. He was only on this season as he'd already pitched The Goldbergs to ABC, and as I recall, the pilot filmed in April or May of 2013, as Community was wrapping up the fourth season, so Adam left and did his successful show that just got renewed for an eighth season. I don't actually know what contributions Adam made to Community but I suspect it wasn't significant if he'd already been working on developing The Goldbergs. I just thought it was interesting that he worked on Community while developing a show that's been on the air longer than I thought it would be.
The season, while consistent with previous seasons wasn't as well executed because they didn't have as many episodes this season as they'd been used to previously. Of course we're getting into the mid 2010s when thirteen episode seasons were becoming commonplace thanks to streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. The show however began in the era of twenty plus episode seasons being the norm and I don't think the writers on the show knew how to do shorter seasons.
One of the things this season gets crap for is the Britta and Troy romantic relationship. Which is understandable since the show had so far avoided pairing the study group into romantic couples. However, the Britta and Troy romantic relationship was seeded very early on in season 3, long before Harmon was fired as showrunner. Though if you're paying attention, it was actually hinted at in season 2, before it was revealed that Jeff and Britta had been sleeping together for the majority of that season. This was intentional on Harmon's part along with writer/producer, Megan Ganz. So it's not something the showrunners for season 4 did out of nowhere.
The thing that I like about the Britta and Troy relationship is that it wasn't based solely on sex like most TV romances end up being based on. In fact their relationship didn't even start with sex like most TV romantic relationships start out with. Which I appreciated since that particular trope is as old and tired as many other TV tropes. I also appreciated that they didn't constantly fight with each other just for the sake of drama and that Troy wasn't portrayed, both by Donald Glover and the writing, as being dumb and constantly screwing up the relationship for no reason. Trust me, if I wanted to watch that I'd just watch seasons 3 to 7 of Arrow.
My problem with this season is the wasted potential of certain characters and storylines in this season. For example you don't get Malcolm McDowell for two episodes and barely do anything with him. That right there is wasted potential. So was the whole Changnesia thing which just petered out with episode 12 "Heroic Origins" where Abed realizes that Chang is the real reason the members of the study group started going to Greendale in the first place. Abed knew that Chang was pretending to have Changnesia and doesn't tell the others or Dean Pelton and just lets it go. Despite the fact that he knew that Jeff had been trying to expose that Chang was faking it six episodes earlier. I guess Abed knew that the show was dropping that storyline.
The Darkest Timeline thing was pretty dumb too. It seemed like it was building up to something weird and awesome, but it too fizzled out, just being a thing that Jeff thought up in his mind in the season finale as a reason to not leave Greendale after graduation. It's funny because the Darkest Timeline that Jeff thought up is quite more involved than the one that Abed thought up in previous episodes. For instance, Evil Britta doesn't have as big of a blue streak in her hair in Jeff's version. Also in Jeff's version, Evil Jeff and Evil Annie are sleeping together. Yeah, it's the show's way of doing the whole "Will they, won't they" thing without actually doing the whole "Will they, won't they" thing.
My favourite episode this season is episode 11 "Basic Human Anatomy". This episode deals with Troy's insecurities concerning his and Britta's relationship and the fact that he's not ready for a mature, adult relationship, but also is too scared to break up with Britta. Aside from it being an homage to the 1976 live action Disney film, Freaky Friday, it's another example of how good the writing and acting on this show can be. Even when the showrunners are people who used to work for The CW. Yeah, that might be why this season feels a little bit off. Anyways this episode really shows how close Jeff has become to Britta, Troy and Abed since he spent the entire episode indulging Troy and Abed in their role playing even though it made no sense to him whatsoever.
I also enjoyed three other episodes this season. "Conventions of Space and Time" where the group goes to an "Inspector Spacetime" convention, "Herstory of Dance" where Britta screws up her protest of a Sadie Hawkins Dance that Greendale is holding and winds up having to get Sophie B. Hawkins to perform at the dance she puts on in protest of the Sadie Hawkins Dance, and the season finale "Advanced Introduction to Finality" which is as close as we got to having another Paintball episode, which we haven't had since season 2.
Matt Lucas, who played Nardole on Doctor Who, guest stars as a fan of "Inspector Spacetime" intent on kidnapping Abed for some odd reason. However, the three things that I liked about this episode are the fact that Britta went to the convention despite not being into "Inspector Spacetime" to support Troy, who is her boyfriend at this point in the season, the fact that her and Troy tried to keep the fact that they had started sleeping together from Abed, even though he'd be the first to know since he observes everything around him, and the way things escalated between Jeff and Annie after the hotel staff started referring to Annie as Mrs. Winger despite the fact that she and Jeff aren't even dating. Oh and Tricia Helfer being in the episode helped as well.
I liked "Herstory of Dance" because I remember listening to some of Sophie B. Hawkins's songs on the radio in the '90s and because of Jeff's gesture of texting Britta an apology and a sincere compliment for pulling off her dance despite her screw up. Also, watching Brie Larson and Danny Pudi play off each other was fun too. Now I'm even more convinced that Brie Larson was miscast as Carol Danvers in Captain Marvel because the character just wasn't written properly. It was just a feel good, sincere episode.
And finally I liked the season finale for two reasons. The first being the study group, despite it just being in Jeff's mind, facing off in a Paintball fight against their evil counterparts was pretty great. Also, seeing Jeff finally graduate from community college after four years of insanity was very satisfying. Of course there's two more seasons left for me to watch, with even more insanity so Jeff isn't out of the woods quite yet.
Final Thoughts and Rating: Despite my praise of the stuff that I enjoyed about particular episodes, this season wasn't great. It wasn't terrible or unwatchable. In fact I've seen worse seasons of Television than this. But it wasn't up to the standards of the previous three seasons. And the shorter season meant less episodes to properly develop certain storylines. I'm giving season 4 of Community 5.9/10 stars because there were things I liked about the season, but as a whole it was a mess and just didn't gel together as well as it could've by this point in the show's run.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_(season_4)
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