Meta: Tritta and the Gas Leak Year (Comm s4)-- DFvQ

Due to various well-documented production issues (including Dan Harmon leaving the show for s4 then returning for s5 while Chevy Chase and Donald Glover leave at the beginning of s5, plus the shortened episode order of 13 because it was barely renewed), season 4 is often noticeably different from the rest of the series. Many consider it the weakest of the seasons, and it was summarily retconned in 5x1 (titled “Repilot”) as the Gas Leak Year (GLY)—everyone was so OOC because of a gas leak that has since been fixed. I personally have mixed feelings about it because some of my favourite episodes (“Conventions of Space and Time”, “Basic Human Anatomy”) are in this season, but also some of my least favourites (“Alternative History of the German Invasion”, “Advanced Documentary Filmmaking”, “Economics of Marine Biology”). It’s also the last time we see the original study group all together.

 

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Meta: Performativity in a Slightly More Magical World (Comm s5)-- DFvQ

CW: psychosis, self-harm, overdose, sexual assault

Community is well known for its meta-humour and frequent homages, and this playfulness can make the rules of reality in episodes look wildly different from each other. And yet, only very rarely does the show actually break with mundane reality completely—while many of the things that happen in Greendale are farfetched and fantastical, there is usually an attempt to at least ground the story in some sort of plausible continuity. In fact, the more high-concept or stylistically distant the homage, the more deliberate and poignant the connection to the mundane, because “Community subverts the tropes by using the oldest trick in the book: making you care about the characters” (Knode). There are several episodes throughout the show’s run evincing an approach to magic and performativity that emphasizes the importance of both ritual and whimsy in everyday life.

 

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Meta: The Heisenberg Panopticon (Comm s6)-- DFvQ

For a show so saturated with metanarrative, it’s fitting that Community’s series finale is all about what it means to end a TV show. Even the title, “Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television” (6x13)—especially ironic given that s6 was the only season not to air on NBC—embraces the philosophical task of interrogating what a series finale can and can’t be. What makes the finale work is that the entire plot is about the fictional season 7; nearly every main character pitches their ideal season 7, cued by a shortened version of the title sequence and a playthrough of how it would look. The ending is all about looking forward to what comes next, even as it slowly occurs to Jeff that things really are ending. Importantly, this intense focus on season 7 actually serves to emphasize that there is no season 7—the only thing we can say for sure about season 7 is that it doesn’t exist. By exploring and exhausting all the possibilities of season 7, the episode forecloses its very possibility.

 

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