Plot: The study group discovers a secret passageway that leads to a historical figure in Greendale’s past, ultimately helping them save the school.
The last review I wrote for this series was the Dungeons and Dragons episode, which was classic Community just by the theme alone. I’m happy that I got the opportunity to review this season’s finale, as it was classic in that it one of the most meta Community episode ever produced.
If you’re not familiar with how meta Community can be, tonight’s episode was the gang working with the school’s first dean, Russell Borchert (Chris Elliott) to save Greendale. However, this is not what the episode is about.
In actuality, this episode was a metaphor to Community’s ongoing battle with both staying on NBC’s Thursday comedy line-up and staying on the network in general. Both have been a huge undertaking since the show’s third season, and it’s questionable whether or not this will happen again for Season 6.
*If you didn’t come to this conclusion, here are all of the indications throughout the episode where it makes sense:
*The study group fighting to Save Greendale which represents the small group of Community fans out there who have been saving the show from cancellation.
*Subway taking over the school, because if these characters didn’t have Greendale, they wouldn’t have any real connection.
*Jeff (Joel McHale) and Britta (Gillian Jacobs) getting married, because it doesn’t matter if they are together, the show will end!
*Basically anything Abed (Danny Pudi) said (of course, he’s always the meta one), especially at the end when he said, “We will definitely be back next year, unless a meteor destroys the Earth.”
And finally the end credit sequence, which was a commercial for a series of shows that will air depending on what fails. This alone is a joke about how Community only aired if and when new NBC programs failed. What made this particularly special is that it features Amber Tamblyn, Questlove, B.J. Novak, Paul Schneider, etc. Not so ironically, some of these people appeared on previous NBC programs.
If I didn’t know all of this, I wouldn’t have appreciated this episode as much as I did. I’m glad Harmon ended out the episode this way. It’s the perfect way to conclude the season and the series, just in case Community unfortunately gets the axe next year.
Related Articles:
Review: Community, ‘Basic Story’ (Daniel Cohen)
Review: Community, ‘G.I. Jeff’ (Logan J. Fowler)
Review: Community, ‘Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons’ (Lauren Stern)
