hhh

This season blew ass. In the whole first 3 seasons, I can only think of 2 memorably weak episodes: Abed-as-Jesus and Model UN. But I would rank those 2 over any of season 4's episodes. Last week's origin story episode was the biggest wank fest ever, even for a show that's always been up its own ass a little bit. The entire episode seemed to be constructed to jerk off the segment of the Community fanbase that edits their own shipper videos set to Snow Patrol songs and makes [shudder] fan art. "Yeah, congratulations on remembering details alluded to in season one, look we actually filmed them for you so it's easier to make gif sequences for your Tumblr". And then they casually create massive continuity issues like Troy breaking his leg instead of his shoulders, and a dollar theater showing Phantom Menace in 2008. Nothing was improved by making these old stories come to life and stringing together some fabricated connections, they would have been better off left to the imagination. It's fitting that there's a Phantom Menace storyline, because I got the exact same feeling watching that episode as I did watching the Star Wars prequels.
 
Don't even get me started on the finale, where they simultaneously beat the Darkest Timeline shtick to death and dig up the cold body of paintball only to hump its corpse a bit. It's a perfect encapsulation of just how badly the new writing staff doesn't get why people like the show. They've tried so hard to reference every popular thing from past seasons (Darkest Timeline! An Inspector Spacetime convention! The Dean just cross-dresses all the time now! Bring back the German foosball players!) but missed the fact that the show was great because (at least at the beginning) it was about exploring interpersonal relationships and the human condition, through 7 super fucked-up characters, the most normal of which is a socially underdeveloped pop culture obsessive with Aspergers.
 
Of course, Chevy Chase's unwillingness to cooperate and eventual quitting hasn't helped, and the resulting lazy and awkward write-outs and write-arounds have been a massive distraction this year.
 
All I know is that I'm done. This show doesn't interest me anymore, the characters have been sucked dry and I'm completely uninterested in the direction the show is going. Season 5 might be better, it might be worse, but the magic of the earlier seasons is gone and it's just another sitcom.

Sucks that they never made it to Australia; it would have been great to see them.