2015 comedy, 13 episodes; most of the same team of misfits continue to
try to keep their community college going.
The original Community cast was superbly balanced, and bringing
in new people to fill the gaps was always going to be tricky. Keith
David as Elroy Patashnik, former Internet millionare, often feels as
though he's trying too hard; but the real gem of this season for me
was Paget Brewster as Frankie Dart, "the sensible one", brought in to
try to get the Save Greendale Committee (formerly the study group made
up of the show's core characters) to do something useful rather than
carry on with its usual hijinks. I've previously seen Brewster as an
FBI agent on the thoroughly grim Criminal Minds, and her role here
(mostly as straight woman with occasional outbreaks of madness) is a
revelation. Ken Jeong just does the standard Ken Jeong act, and every
moment he's on screen is a trial.
The writing style has changed again: when Dan Harmon came back for
season 5 after his sacking for season 4, he seemed to want to get away
from doing the same old thing even though it had still been working.
Season 6 is definitely for the long-term fans, and since it was
released on Yahoo! Screen rather than a broadcast network there was no
worry about viewers stumbling across it by accident and being put off
because they couldn't immediately grasp what was going on. There's
less of the split-second comic timing, and more recognition of the
long-term connections between the core characters (sometimes veering
into schmaltz). It's all a bit cheaper-looking and smaller-scale than
it used to be, but the show's bones still just about carry its weight.
This is definitely not the place to start, though, as the show
constantly comments on its own artifice, and it's only the excellence
of the cast and scripts that stop it wearing out its welcome. In an
era when television is where the smart visual storytellers are going,
this still stands out.
Yahoo! Screen is now defunct (shortly, I suspect, to be followed by
the rest of Yahoo!), all the actors' contracts have expired, and some
of them now have much more lucrative careers elsewhere. Still, there's
talk of getting the cast together for a film.
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