It seems as if I have been writing about television a lot lately. Perhaps I need to work on my reading/television balance. Anyway. . .
Community, like Arrested
Development and Freaks and Geeks before
it, is going the way of Janice Joplin and James Dean--untimely, youthful deaths
that lead to beatific devotion by a committed group of fans who will forever
wonder, what if? Granted, they are still making
episodes of Community, but the show will never be the same
without show creator and showrunner Dan Harmon and that has been fully evident
in the first several episodes of the new season.
When news of
Harmon's release from the show came out last year I let out an audible gasp,
not unlike when I found out Bill Snyder retired for the first time as Kansas
State's football coach or that Rage Against the Machine was breaking up (in
retrospect I am a bit ashamed of being so moved by the latter). Why do the
perfect things always end? (I am not talking about Rage Against the Machine
anymore.)
Community is/was, as far as it goes for me, the
most fascinating show on television. It was witty, parodic, meta. It basically
took every convention of the sitcom and inverted it. There was a claymation
Christmas episode, a clip show with clips never featured in an prior episode,
two Glee sendups, a mockumentary of Ken Burns's Civil
War series, an entire episode about Dungeons and Dragons, a bottle
episode about a lost pen, two paintball wars, a zombie episode, John Goodman in
a ponytail, and the dean (oh, the dean!). The Sam and Diane couple, Jeff and
Britta, are revealed to having been sleeping with each other without the
group's knowledge for an entire year. This was not a typical sitcom by any
standard.
And now it is
dying. Not because Season Three wasn't awesome. It was. It was totally awesome.
But because America would rather watch eight incarnations of CSI and Two
and a Half Men. And everything on television is subject to the tastes of a
culture for whom Honey Boo Boo is an icon. It is hard for works of art, on
network television at least, to survive in that environment.
But part of me also
thinks that Community will in the long run benefit enormously
from its short run. Harmon will almost certainly benefit from this long term.
He gets to be the genius who was kicked off his brainchild only to watch it
founder without his guiding hand, only adding to the aura of his genius. Maybe
it is because I am so naturally uncreative, but it is hard for me to imagine a
show as different as Community sustaining itself for seven or
eight seasons without descending into an unfunny caricature of itself. This is,
in fact, what we have seen this season as the show is helmed by different
talent. Perhaps Harmon could have kept up the brilliance for another season,
but there are only so many other places a show like that can go.
I think of how
terrible The Office has been without Steve Carrell, and let's
be honest here, it was headed downhill before he left, and I can't help but be
grateful that Community has been (likely) spared the same
fate. It will die after this season and its first three seasons will sit on my
shelf as artifacts of untarnished brilliance. And I will remembers its death
kindly. It is not Janis Joplin's Cheap Thrills or James Dean
in Rebel Without a Cause and the eternal "what if?",
but Mickey Mantle retiring, not because he wasn't still good, but because he
wasn't Mickey Mantle anymore. In that sense, and in those situations, you are
glad that people called it quits, even if their death is somewhat forced. We
remember Barry Sanders with more affection than Brett Favre for a reason.
Quitting with grace is better than not knowing when to stop. So for your own
sake, Community, just quit and die already and let us eulogize you
properly. "Goodnight, sweet prince. And flights of angels sing thee
to thy rest."
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