Season 4 of Community is considered by most to be the worst season of the show, and to be fair I do understand why. Creator Dan Harmon was no longer involved with the show, and this is almost always a bad sign for any series. And honestly, this is probably my only real hang-up about the season. You can tell that there is someone new behind the scenes, because throughout the season there’s always that feeling that something isn’t quite right.
Other than that, though…I think season 4 is still pretty solid, honestly. This season has a drastic reduced episode count of 13 episodes, and it chronicles the group’s senior year of community college. The episode plots aren’t quite on the same level of creativity as previous seasons, but I can definitely tell that the effort was there to make it the same style of show, so I appreciate that. And honestly, in the end there’s still a few big hits for me this season, so I don’t quite think it’s as bad as people say.
The cast is still really great, and this is the last season where all of them are still on the show. They consistently continue to make the world of this show one that I want to keep visiting. My only real problem with the season is that the writing didn’t always nail the mark. There were always certain little moments where a character would do something that didn’t feel in-character, and so this is what I mean when I say it doesn’t quite feel right. It’s the kind of season that feels like someone watched the show and then tried to write their own scripts for the characters. They do a really good job, for sure, but you can always tell when someone else is trying to continue something that someone else created.
Still, in the end I actually still really liked season 4. It’s the worst of the first four seasons, for sure, but not by a huge margin. It definitely doesn’t reach the heights that seasons 2 and 3 did, but it’s pretty close in quality to the first season. When it’s at its best, it feels like a natural continuation of the show, and I think a big part of this is the actors behind it. I was expecting something truly terrible when I started watching this season because of all of the hate that I heard about it, but truthfully I still really liked it, even if it is a bit of a decline in quality.
3.5/5
