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Short answer, no. Long answer, nooooooo.

domino harvey wrote:Could Dan Harmon return?

Yup.

Thank goodness. Although this means tons of pressure for Harmon, and also sadly means I should probably watch the zombie season to catch up.

Joel's graduated and Chevy is gone. Boom you don't have to see Zombunity.

knives wrote:... you don't have to see Zombunity.

Great. Now I'm just disappointed that there isn't actually a Community/Zombie themed Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas.

Dan Harmon reacts to Season 4 community on his Harmontown Podcast, then apologizes about it on tumblr.

Season 4 wasn't nearly as bad as I was afraid it was going to be once I heard Harmon was off (NBC is the worst). that said, it still wasn't nearly as good as any of the other seasons. I kind of wish I had seen Season 4 without knowing Harmon wasn't involved, just to gauge if my reaction is purely genuine to the episodes themselves or if I'm just projecting stuff. i'm fairly confident i still would have been able to tell something was amiss, so much of Season 4 felt like the cast and the show runners trying to do their best imitation of an original that had so much more real character and thought to it. again, not as bad as i thought it would be, and some episodes were actually funny, but the first three seasons had a coherence and even a sort of subtly building storyline that kind of just disappears in Season 4 without the creator's vision to guide the proceedings. they really tried to keep the self-referencing going full force but it all kind of rings hollow and doesn't really feel purposeful the way it did before. and, yet, still one of the better comedies on television, which i guess is a testament to the cast and some of the creative forces still on-board.

but, yeah, big-time mixed feelings about Community getting renewed. don't really want to see the show die a long, slow painful death (ala X-Files) at the same time that that season finale would be a horrible way to finish the show. it's like they really, really tried to bring some resolution to the show and still managed to fail, utterly.

Which means only five more episodes of Troy-and-Abed's Dope Adventures and even less potential for Troy to realize that giant-sized desserts are a metaphor for their friendship. Maybe this will free up some salary for them to throw at John Oliver.

I don't blame him after how the last season treated Troy, but this is really sad. A bunch of my favorite Community moments are Troy jokes.

Hopefully by season eight the show will boil down to the essential and just be thirty minutes of Gillian Jacobs facing the camera

It might have actually been interesting if the thing that broke up Troy and Britta was something meta about his character phasing out of the show.

domino harvey wrote:Hopefully by season eight the show will boil down to the essential and just be thirty minutes of Gillian Jacobs facing the camera

Gillian Jacobs and Paul F Tompkin's Garry Marshall character from Comedy Bang Bang, plotting to murder people and hunt down mythical creatures.

For me this is a bigger loss than Harmon. Glover was the main reason why I stuck around and Troy is the only character I still find consistently funny mainly because of his delivery.

domino harvey wrote:Hopefully by season eight the show will boil down to the essential and just be thirty minutes of Gillian Jacobs facing the camera

I would watch this for 30 minutes.

Gillian Jacobs 4 President of my heart

Troy + Abed in Atlanta! (... minus the Abed and also not actually Troy, but you get the idea)

For those curious if it was an idle threat, there is a commentary track for every episode from the fourth season, but none feature Harmon

In case you still aren't excited for season five, Jonathan Banks will guest star for 11 episodes.

The Narrator Returns wrote:In case you still aren't excited for season five, Jonathan Banks will guest star for 11 episodes.

That's awesome! So it appears he'll be their new professor that we see the most.

Finally watched the rest of Season Four and, yeah, not a whole lot new to add to the argument. Basically not as bad as I'd feared, not as good as I'd hoped. The most shocking thing to me is how few jokes there were in every episode, especially given that the interim showrunners came off the most joke-heavy live action TV show in history. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I laughed out loud the entire season, and I can count on no hands any of those funny moments I can remember now. Still, the show was kind of interesting in how it continued down the sink-drain of high concept ideas without any jokes to tether them to audience interest. I reckon the two most compelling episodes were Jim Rash's body-switching episode and the Christmas one where they kidnap Malcolm McDowell, and mainly on that last one because the cold open and the first act both open with really obvious long takes and I think they were going for a Rope feel before abandoning the concept from a visual perspective. That one was completely laugh free but the dynamics at least made it entertaining regardless. Same with the Thanksgiving episode. Otherwise, whatever dude. Ah well, bring on Harmon!

I believe the director of that episode did admit to aiming for a Rope knock-off but was told to stop it for logistical reasons or something like that.