Random Thought On Community, Season 4
Basic law of physics - you can tell where a particle is, or what direction it's moving in. You don't get both. And the same holds for characters in sitcoms.
Most sitcoms are about who the characters are. They're static, they're comfortable, and the humor comes from those familiar personalities interacting with new situations or in new combinations. That's the baseline - we know who these people are. They may learn valuable lessons in their 22 minutes, ones which are often forgotten by the start of the next episode, but really, they don't change much. The newness from episode to episode comes from outside forces acting on the characters - a guest star arriving, a sudden windfall or debt, a job loss or a new love interest who won't stick around long enough to become a regular cast member. Not every sitcom does this for every episode, but by and large, that's the blueprint, and it's why you could pretty easily pull a plotline out of King of Queens and drop it into Married With Children, Everybody Loves Raymond or The Flintstones with minimal modifications necessary.
Community started out like this. The first few episodes were easily recognizable - quirky hottie teaches uptight, jerky guy how to be a better human. Recast Gillian Jacobs with Jenna Elfman, and we've seen it a dozen times before.
But then something funny happened. Maybe it was the Halloween episode, where they took the usual "old guy does dumb thing trying to be hip" trope and extended it beyond all rational comprehension, topped off with a side of Batman. Maybe it was the psych experiment episode, which in any other show would have ended with canned laughter and a round of hugs as Abed and Annie chuckled off their mutual misunderstandings. Instead, what we got in both cases was character change, the recognition on the part of one character that they had affected another, and visible growth.
And with that, Community's characters were in motion - we could see where they were going, but not who exactly they were at any given moment. Troy was in transition from self-absorbed jock to affable nerd to burgeoning adult. Britta went from true believer to self-doubt to finding a purpose. You get the idea. But there was never a sense of destination, only that these people were actually changing as a result of their time at Greendale and with each other.
Then Season 4 rolled around. New show runner, half-season mandate - not the best of circumstances. And the new guys looked at what they'd been given and they made the only choice they could. Faced with a potentially hostile, fanatical fanbase and ridiculously complex premise for a sitcom, they chose not to continue the characters on their arcs. Instead, they focused on who the characters were - Pierce the aging, lonely racist, Abed the weird guy who likes TV, Annie the type-A personality with a crush on Jeff - and they locked these personalities down so that weird situations could be thrown at them, instead of having their own trajectories lead them into weird situations. I mean, we even got an episode with a guest appearance from a fossilized pop singer, which felt like it was right out of the "Very Special Episode of Blossom" playbook.
That's not to say that these episodes were poorly written, or that the new showrunners are bad people. Season 4 was frequently funny and always well-acted. There were episodes where I laughed as hard as I ever did at classic Harmon stuff. But it wasn't the same show, and everyone watching knew it, even if they couldn't quite put their fingers on why.
And now Harmon's back. Maybe he's changed in his year's hiatus. Or maybe his approach to the material has. Maybe his plans for the characters have altered. I don't know. But if he gets the characters moving again, I'll be watching.
Most sitcoms are about who the characters are. They're static, they're comfortable, and the humor comes from those familiar personalities interacting with new situations or in new combinations. That's the baseline - we know who these people are. They may learn valuable lessons in their 22 minutes, ones which are often forgotten by the start of the next episode, but really, they don't change much. The newness from episode to episode comes from outside forces acting on the characters - a guest star arriving, a sudden windfall or debt, a job loss or a new love interest who won't stick around long enough to become a regular cast member. Not every sitcom does this for every episode, but by and large, that's the blueprint, and it's why you could pretty easily pull a plotline out of King of Queens and drop it into Married With Children, Everybody Loves Raymond or The Flintstones with minimal modifications necessary.
Community started out like this. The first few episodes were easily recognizable - quirky hottie teaches uptight, jerky guy how to be a better human. Recast Gillian Jacobs with Jenna Elfman, and we've seen it a dozen times before.
But then something funny happened. Maybe it was the Halloween episode, where they took the usual "old guy does dumb thing trying to be hip" trope and extended it beyond all rational comprehension, topped off with a side of Batman. Maybe it was the psych experiment episode, which in any other show would have ended with canned laughter and a round of hugs as Abed and Annie chuckled off their mutual misunderstandings. Instead, what we got in both cases was character change, the recognition on the part of one character that they had affected another, and visible growth.
And with that, Community's characters were in motion - we could see where they were going, but not who exactly they were at any given moment. Troy was in transition from self-absorbed jock to affable nerd to burgeoning adult. Britta went from true believer to self-doubt to finding a purpose. You get the idea. But there was never a sense of destination, only that these people were actually changing as a result of their time at Greendale and with each other.
Then Season 4 rolled around. New show runner, half-season mandate - not the best of circumstances. And the new guys looked at what they'd been given and they made the only choice they could. Faced with a potentially hostile, fanatical fanbase and ridiculously complex premise for a sitcom, they chose not to continue the characters on their arcs. Instead, they focused on who the characters were - Pierce the aging, lonely racist, Abed the weird guy who likes TV, Annie the type-A personality with a crush on Jeff - and they locked these personalities down so that weird situations could be thrown at them, instead of having their own trajectories lead them into weird situations. I mean, we even got an episode with a guest appearance from a fossilized pop singer, which felt like it was right out of the "Very Special Episode of Blossom" playbook.
That's not to say that these episodes were poorly written, or that the new showrunners are bad people. Season 4 was frequently funny and always well-acted. There were episodes where I laughed as hard as I ever did at classic Harmon stuff. But it wasn't the same show, and everyone watching knew it, even if they couldn't quite put their fingers on why.
And now Harmon's back. Maybe he's changed in his year's hiatus. Or maybe his approach to the material has. Maybe his plans for the characters have altered. I don't know. But if he gets the characters moving again, I'll be watching.
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