Community Season 6 Finale Review: The Really Great Unknown

Community S06E13: "Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television"

I'm beaming after Community's Season 6 finale "Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television," a picture-perfect ending to the outstanding lesson in survival known as the move to the online world (and every narrow escape Community had before). I'm speaking particularly about Season 6, the Yahoo-bound but knows-no-bounds 13 episodes that reenergized the series with fresh life, but also amplified the series' usual emotion around late May or June: paralyzing uncertainty.

Community has lived paycheck-to-paycheck for just about every season, twiddling its thumbs while others determine its future. It's the nature of television, but it's especially true with Community, the underdog show about underdogs that refused to die. And "Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television" grabbed that uncertainty by the shoulders and screamed in its face, staring into the void of the unknown like a college-bound senior filled with dread and hope. We don't know for certain if Community will be back. It'll be back. Probably. Maybe, as several characters said. That feeling permeated the entire episode as Chris McKenna and Dan Harmon, the duo most responsible for the show's personality and who wrote the episode, invited us into their world of the unknown.

Life in the meta-verse can get really old really fast, but Community has found a way around that using its characters, and with the Save Greendale Committee a success and Greendale Community College still miraculously standing, the impromptu pitch meeting about what a seventh year (or "season") would look like doubled as a question about the study group and the show itself. What would happen to Jeff? What would happen to Annie? What would happen to Jeff and Annie? What about Abed and Britta? What would Dean Pelton wear? And Chang? Let's not forget about him. And hell, let's bring back Shirley and briefly ponder the future of newcomers Frankie and Elroy, too! What Community acknowledged so well and put out there was that if Season 7 doesn't get a greenlight, these characters wink out of existence. That's it. They're gone. And you know what? That idea was really fucking sad. (Hey, they cursed, so I'm going to curse, too.)

But hope! Ahhh, glorious hope. As curmudgeonly as Harmon can be, he's also a slave to hope and it shines through in his work. The unknown isn't all gloom and doom, it's also the prospect of something better, something more. Annie and Abed were the embodiment of that hope, Annie landing the internship at the FBI and heading to Quantico (see you on ABC next fall, Annie!) and Abed getting a job as a P.A. on a 30 Rock-I.T. Crowd show about a video-game studio and moving to Los Angeles. It wasn't necessarily a sad goodbye.

The character that had the real meat in the finale was Jeff. Man, his story hit hard. Jeff was never supposed to be at Greendale in the first place, but he always found a way to stay (because television) and he began to wonder if he was stuck there, particularly after the bombshell that Annie was leaving. Jeff's first pitch for Season 7 was a goddamn nightmare: him at the study table surrounded by Todd, Garret, Vicki (UGH, Vicki), and other Greendale side characters, left behind while everyone else moved on. Again, hitting close to home with the departures of Shirley, Troy, and Pierce, and who knows who else if Season 7 happens.

It's apparent that Jeff was a stand-in for Harmon going through the usual emotional cycle that comes with the end of a season with Community. At first he was fearful, but as the episode moved along, he began to get it and accept it. Entirely opposed to the idea of pitching Season 7 at first, Jeff ended up throwing out the most pitches of anyone, by far. He pitched an idea about Annie returning to solve the murders of Britta's parents. He pitched an idea where they were all teachers at Greendale and together again. He pitched an idea where it was just him and a bunch of sexy redheads (Harmon likes redheads if his wife Erin McGathy is any indication). He pitched an idea where he and Annie were married with a kid named Sebastian. Not all the pitches were good, some of the pitches were made out of desperation, but it was obvious that Jeff (Harmon) didn't want to leave. He didn't want this to be over, and we felt that, sincerely. And we didn't want it to be over, either.

Because this could be the series finale, some closure had to be doled out. We got a kiss between Annie and Jeff, Annie telling Jeff that he better kiss her now or else he might regret it for the rest of his life. If Abed lives out his life working on some terrible Fox comedy (which no doubt he'll contribute all the good parts to), I would be happier than if he came back to Greendale. Annie heading to the FBI was perfect because she was always too smart for Greendale and destined for great things. And Jeff, Britta, Dean Pelton, Frankie, and Chang staying back in Colorado and meeting regularly for drinks at Britta's bar also made sense. As characters in much different places in their lives from Abed and Annie, they've found their space. I almost don't want Community to come back because the ending was so fitting and everyone ended up where I wanted them to end up. Come on, don't be so selfish and take away Abed's dream of working in Hollywood. Don't you want to see Timeosaurs in the movie theater?

So "Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television" had it all, and I haven't even mentioned the funny parts that kept things the perfect amount of weird and light to balance out the heaviness of the uncertainty. Dean's pitch for a third black person in the group sitting off in the corner, the cell-phone eating ice-cube head man from Chang's pitch, Britta's self-important HBO-style Community Season 7 pitch complete with grumbling theme song lyrics, Jeff and Annie shitting on Marvel movies (finally, someone gets me), and that brilliant and dark end tag about the Community board game and the non-existence of its pitch family.

This was one of Community's absolute best episodes and it used all the tools in Community's chest—fourth-wall annihilation, extreme self-awareness, and effective emotional beats—and wielded them like they were new. As though it was proof that the series still had plenty to work with. Like this wasn't the end. Maybe Community should be back for a seventh season. It will be back. Probably. Maybe.

I'll leave you with Abed's love letter to television because it feels appropriate here, and it literally made me cry. "There is skill to [making TV]. More importantly, it has to be joyful, effortless, fun. TV defeats its own purpose when it's pushing an agenda, or trying to defeat other TV or being proud or ashamed of itself for existing. It's TV; it's comfort. It's a friend you've known so well, and for so long you just let it be with you, and it needs to be okay for it to have a bad day or phone in a day, and it needs to be okay for it to get on a boat with Levar Burton and never come back. Because eventually, it all will."

STUDY GROUP NOTES

– OH MY GOD Annie admitted to being the Ass-Crack Bandit, didn't she?

– And in a span of one episode, Community became one of the most gay-friendly shows on TV when Frankie and Chang both admitted they were gay.

– The best joke for me was Chang farting during Abed's fourth-season "cool." So good, I love that Harmon gives that season so much shit (and gas).

– About that scene of Jeff dropping Annie and Abed off at the airport. That was such conventional television that it didn't seem like it belonged in a television show as unconventional as Community. But conventional television is conventional television for a reason: it works. So Jeff dropping them off with zero dialogue while Fleet Foxes or some shit played in the background did work in this case and provided one of the most powerful and telling moments of the episode. Community is so aware of itself as a television that it deployed a television convention to great effect and didn't bother trying to do something different. Maybe I'm over-analyzing it a bit much, but it worked very well when on paper it seemed like it shouldn't.

– And here's Harmon's Chuck Lorre-ish rant that played as fine print over the board-game end tag: "Dice not included. Some assembly required. Lines between perception, desire and reality may become blurred, redundant, or interchangeable. Characters may hook up with no regard for your emotional investments. Some episodes too conceptual to be funny, some too funny to be immersive, and some so immersive they still aren't funny. Consistency between seasons may vary. Viewers may be measured by a secretive, obsolete system based on selected participants keeping hand written journals of what they watch. Show may be cancelled and moved to the internet where it turns out tens of millions were watching the whole time. May not matter. Fake commercial may end with disclaimer gag which may descend into vain, Chuck Lorre-esque rant by narcissistic creator. Creator may be unstable. Therapist may have told creator this is not how you make yourself a good person. Life may pass by while we ignore and mistreat those close to us. Those close to us may e those watching. Those people may want to know I love them but I may be incapable of saying it. Contains pieces the size of a child's esophagus."