'Community' season 5: the quirks are back

For you who’ve been the devoted fans of the Greendale’s gang since season 1, must be agree that season 4 is totally a disaster. It had all the formula to make the sitcom once we loved turned into a cheap, embarrassing comedy. The one season that made the greatness of the whole three seasons before seems to be forgotten. 

But, thank God, season 5 now already came out and it given the fans everything we’ve missed from the good old days of ‘Community’. Of course, I’ve already expect the best from the show since Dan Harmon was back behind the wheels to stir everything up and making it right again, but still the results were beyond what I’ve been hoping for.

On season 4, fans had to bear with dull and repetitive jokes, ridiculous romance relationship between Britta and Troy, and even a silly attempt to hook Abed up with a girl (I mean, c’mon!). And that wasn’t even the worst part.

I always love ‘Community’ for its randomness and weird storyline. Harmon used to treat the show as a loose cannon and never try to give the viewers a specific storyline for a whole season. But on season 4, we can see the writers gave a consistent timetable for Jeff to seek his father out and a pretty long Troy-Britta romance to evolve. Ugh, boorriingg. I mean, if I actually want to watch a narrative comedy that tells story, I wouldn’t have had watched ‘Community’ in the first place.

So, when the show got a surprising renewal for season 5 with its original creator back on boards, I knew I would get my dearest gang of quirks back. An assumption that proved to be right after I watched the first two episodes of this season.

‘Community’ returned with double episodes on the same day, titling ‘Repilot’ and ‘Introduction to Teaching’. ‘Repilot’ was Harmon’s way to ask the fans to start anew. Despite a horrible season last year, there’s still a way the show could get back to its original roots this season. He did it right away by making Jeff a teacher at Greendale and gathered the old study group members (minus Pierce, of course) to enroll once again.

We didn’t get much laughter from ‘Repilot’, but never mind. That wasn’t the purpose of the episode anyway. ‘Repilot’ meant to remind us of how the show used to run and how the characters used to behave. We could see Annie again as an annoying go-getter, Shirley back as a lone divorcee who left by her man (this time along with her children), Troy as a hilarious one-liner, and Abed-Troy dynamic with no Britta to mix up between them.

The show also back with its witty in-jokes. When Abed referred the episode as a repilot, akin to season 9 of ‘Scrubs’, he mentioned that one of its regular cast, Zach Braff only appeared on 6 episodes. And then Troy said, “That son of a bitch! After everything ‘Scrubs’ did for him!”. All ‘Community’ fans must’ve realized that was an insinuation about the actor who plays Troy himself, Donald Glover who’s planning to leave the show after 5 episodes this season. Bummer, I know. But the way they brought it up on the show was hilarious and smart nonetheless!

Meanwhile, ‘Introduction to Teaching’ brought out all the best things we used to see in ‘Community’. It took us to the weirdom once again and it was a 30 minutes full of a joy ride! From a student rally of ‘slightly higher grade’ to Abed’s Nicholas Cage-good-or-bad nervous breakdown, the entire characters were even quirkier than I could’ve remembered.

The second episode of season 5 also opened a whole new territory to explore. With Jeff being one of the teachers at Greendale, the other faculty members now have a chance to be involved with the storyline without seems to be an outsider. And Harmon handled it right away by adding a new teacher character to the show, Prof. Buzz Hickey who plays by none other than Jonathan Banks (woohoo!).

Jonathan Banks addition to the cast list was the last cool thing I could’ve expected from the new season of ‘Community’, especially since I lost him on TV on the first half of ‘Breaking Bad’ season 5 last year. And his appearance on the show couldn’t be in any better shape.

Banks plays a character similar with Mike Ehrmantraut, the character he played on ‘Breaking Bad’. He is a cold, intense forensic science teacher with military background. Even some of his lines were ridiculously close to what he used to say on ‘Breaking Bad’. Like when he suggested to get rid of Annie from Jeff’s class. He plainly said with deadpan expression, “She needs to be taken out.” Priceless.

At the end of episode two, Prof. Hickey took Pierce’s place on the study group table as one of the members of Save Greendale Committee. And that could only mean one thing: we’d still get to see him on plenty episodes ahead. Sweet.

With new character this season, not to forget our beloved faculty members Dean Pelton and of course, Chang. Those two consistently continue to crack me up this season with their fabulous performance. Dean Pelton with his obsession of Jeff and glorious wardrobes to show off was hysterical. Chang, on the other hand, being Chang as he is, still full of crappy comments, weird attitude, and perfect comic timing (“Ooowwhh, she in your class yoo”).

So, to sum up the new episodes of ‘Community’ this season, I’d say the show had successfully back to the quirky, weird show we used to know. Yes, Dan Harmon definitely makes the show far better than last year. And the first two episodes were enough to give me the full picture of how the rest of the season would unfold. It’s gonna be frickin’ awesome.