Community is one of those shows that a lot of people apparently don’t watch, but you’re on the internet so you are probably more likely to but anyway, the mob has turned out to be right in the end. Because it sort of sucks. But it didn’t used to. The first couple of seasons were funny. It was an amusing show, it did a lot of pop culture references, homages & parodies and was very in-jokey. All the stuff that makes for a cult hit. And then in the third season, they decided to go off the rails a bit, and it was a little hit or miss, but it was pretty character oriented, and you were invested by this point, so you stuck it out. Then the original creator went away, and someone else was brought in to be in charge, and produced content that consists of roughly the last fifth or so of the series, and it is just not the damn same.
You see the parallel here? If you compare The Wheel of Time, with a four-book arc being roughly equal to a season of a tv show, almost the same thing happened. The Battle of Emond’s Field/the Panarch’s Palace/Rand vs Asmodean was like the epic battle climax of season 1 (if you watched, you know what I mean). The big battle in Path of Daggers/ the end of season 2 fell a little flat by comparison, but then it seemed like things were moving forward in the next season/bunch of books. Sure there was weird stuff, like the multiple PoVs of Cleansing Day or the Air Conditioning Repair School arc or the Dreamatorium or Nothing-Matters-But-Faile, but we got compensated by things like the Cleansing or the Semirhage confrontation or Battle of Malden or the Law & Order episode or the Pillow Fight Documentary or the Video Game episode.
And then Robert Jordan and Dan Harmon died (as far as I am concerned. It’s not like we’re hanging out, so what’s the difference from my perspective), and they turned their works over to people who either didn’t get the characters, or couldn’t properly express the characters. They exaggerated mental shortcomings for “comic” effect, they ignored romantic relationships that had been briefly touched on by the creator, and did some nonsense that might have been entertaining to children but not to the vaguely mature people who were the established target audience (the Puppet Episode, Mat’s literacy). There were also awkward, if-long-hoped-for father-son reunions that made you wonder if the actual replacement creators ever had fathers or sons themselves, or did they crawl out of the same primordial swamp in which they left their understanding of human feelings.
But you know what? Because I had already been through it all, because I got to spend close to three years fuming over the travesty of the last three books of Wheel of Time, I was already prepared and familiar, and was able to fast-forward my way through the same stages when Community did the same thing to me in the travesty of the fourth season. So I was able to merely hold my disdain for the pale imitation to an objective level, and find things to like or laugh at. I was used to the phenomenon of a sub-par replacement creator and while still not garnering enough of a positive enjoyment of it to be happy, I was able to restrain my active dislike to keep it from ruining what fun there was to be garnered, and at least get to find out how Jeff & Pierce relearned laughter and tears. Or something. I am still hoping that if there’s another season, we’ll get a Community equivalent of Tarmon Gaidon, but either way, I am happy to report that going back in time to convince a couple of Mormons to sell their offspring to a cat food factory is not a necessary goal of mine anymore, as said offspring’s writing WILL serve a purpose someday.
And people think I can’t be positive….
