season six likely final season of community (but not really 100% confirmed)
On my morning commute, I picked up the local free newspaper and saw an article featuring Joel McHale ahead of some comedy shows he's doing out in western/central Canada and he seems to suggest that this is the final season of Community
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We've talked about this before but I also pretty much expected this to be the final season. With all of the cast commitments to other projects (and perhaps simply a desire to move on, on the parts of a couple) it seems like it's going to be increasingly difficult to get a S7 done. Impossible? Of course not, but certainly unlikely. But then, look what show I'm talking about. Community probably shouldn't have made it through its second season, much less be staring at a theoretical seventh. So who knows....?
I've been wondering about the different forms a future Community could take and it's true that there are some intriguing options, albeit I'm not certain how realistic any one is over another. You could do British-short seasons to the tune of six episodes. You could go full-on web series and just have little ten minute webisodes. You could go the Sherlock route and air three ninety minute eps, although that might require a complete structural reworking of the series and I'm not sure sitcoms are especially well suited to that format. You can spin off, ala NBC's Joey. Or just continue marching on but with mostly different characters, ala ABC's Scrubs S9. You could even switch to animation and just need the actors to lend their voices.
I've also never really been onboard with the fan theory that Alison is the most likely to leave. And it's an ongoing thing; if you follow the IMDB and reddit boards, almost everyone seems to think there's no chance she'll return for another season and yet, I think she might be among the most likely to return, based on all the TV show commitments other cast members have.
Like you, I have really mixed feelings about this season. On one hand, I'm happy Community got an extension, a chance to fulfill the fabled hashtag. But, it's been a really uneven season, in my view and I also get that feeling that the writers are flailing a bit, kinda scraping for ideas. The creativity of previous seasons seems to be missing along with much of that famous Community heart. And quite frankly, most of the humour. Like I've stated, I still basically enjoy the show even if I'm not laughing as often as I used to. I have such an almost intrinsic love for these characters that I'll pretty much watch them do anything. But perhaps that's part of the (perceived) problem; by continuing to watch something that has become a shadow of its former self, maybe I'm enabling Dan and the writers to continue with what I consider to be largely lazy writing. We are all enablers. We demanded that the show come back so loudly, we didn't take time to think what show might be coming back.
Quick edit - I just read the review on itsjustaboutwrite.com and Deb, the reviewer, hit upon the perfect terminology to describe my feelings on this season: treading water. There it is.
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No, I'm being serious. Remember that clusterf*ck back in 2009 when Jay Leno left The Tonight Show to start his own hour-long variety/interview show at 10 p.m.? You should since it resulted in that whole mess with Conan taking over, only to have him fired when Jay Leno's show tanked resulting in the local stations threatening to riot. NBC reinstalled Jay Leno at The Tonight Show, and Conan and his people were out of a job.
To make room for a daily hour-long Jay Leno show at 10 p.m., NBC basically cancelled everything, including (*sob*) My Name Is Earl (*sob*) and abandoned hour-long dramas in the 10 p.m. slot. Community premiered in 2009 as part of NBC's decision to build its evenings around Jay Leno.
The problem is, when Leno tanked, NBC had nothing to fill the dead air space with. That's a big part of the reason why Community got a a three-episode extension (it was originally a 22-episode season, not a 25, episode season) and early renewal.
The problem is, NBC is only just now recovering from the 2009 bloodbath. The reason why Community kept getting renewed for as long as it did was because NBC literally had nothing to replace it with during seasons two and three because their pilot pipeline was mostly dry. The reason why it got renewed for a fourth and fifth season was because everything they put in that 8 p.m. slot opposite TBBT failed badly.
(Television history is fun!)
In any case, the fact that we even got to six seasons is due in large part to NBC's screw-up and Jay Leno flopping at 10 p.m. For sure, it was the reason why we got five seasons on NBC. Without those five seasons, Yahoo wouldn't have picked it up.
(Although it turns out that it really was almost Hulu that picked up the show, but the budget would've been a lot smaller.)
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You would have thought that NBC would've had a deep bench to go to, but instead they had virtually no backup and the whole situation set them back years. You're right, they are just NOW recovering from that mess. It's often been said that probably at any other network, Community would've been shitcanned by the end of its second season, maybe even before the first season ended. And that's likely true. NBC's incompetence at proper programming and developing absolutely anything at all on the sitcom side that would stick, directly led to longer lifespans for not only Community, but it's likely that also P&R and 30 Rock got extra time that they might not have otherwise been given. And ironically, those evenings when NBC had those three plus The Office programmed has to stand as one of the best, most quality driven nights of comedy in the history of television.
It's almost as if the fate of Community was hanging on the flip of a coin all those years......or the roll of a die.
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