After last year’s much-publicized ouster of Dan Harmon as head writer of NBC’s Community, its fan base had a nearly universal reaction: This isn’t good.

[Image credit]

The preparation was underway. Gone would be the aggressively quirky show about a bunch of community college misfits and their psyches of various levels of maturation. Replacing that would be something that resembled According to Jim: laugh tracks and pies in the face and stale characters.

And it’s fair that that was the assumption. NBC has been a disaster in making television outside of a handful of critically acclaimed shows that were guided by forces of personality (Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, and Tracy Morgan at 30 Rock, and Amy Poehler, Michael Schur, and a strong, deep cast at Parks and Recreation being the two most obvious examples). So replacing a figure like Dan Harmon — and read the Grantland piece if you haven’t; he’s everything he’s cracked up to be — with a pair of generic Hollywood screenwriters, regardless of who they were, seemed hopeless from the start.

Which brings us to season four of Community, which seems to have underwhelmed. I say “seem” for two reasons: 1) I won’t pretend to have read all assessments of it, nor to have talked to a significant enough base of its watchers and 2) I’m starting to wonder how much of Community’s lackluster season has more to do with us than it does with them.

There’s one story arc that is undeniably predictable in terms of sitcom plots, and that is of course Troy and Britta’s relationship. Specifically, the “We have to hide/downplay it to not upset our friends” angle, which only seems unique because they mostly hide from Abed, who is one of the more unique characters I’ve seen on TV. It’s hard to imagine this relationship playing out under Harmon’s oversight — he flew in the face of that sort of development earlier in the series when he revealed that will-they-or-won’t-they Jeff and Britta had been sleeping together for months, and then moved on from it.

Beyond that, though, I wonder. As I’ve watched each episode, I find myself being a little bored, or scoffing at a joke that seems too obvious, or even one that is filmed in a different way. If a camera is too close on Alison Brie’s face as she delivers something that should be an aside, I find myself thinking “Way to be subtle, guys.” 

The problem is, of course, that I’m not watching the show in a vacuum. I’m watching the show with the knowledge that Harmon is gone, and is replaced by “Hollywood insiders,” and that the show isn’t the same. So is the show really not the same, or am I just inferring what I want to infer so I can maintain some odd idol worship of Harmon, who I (like most Community viewers) have no relationship to or thoughts about outside of the show? Maybe Alison Brie always got close-ups on her jokes, maybe the Dean’s monologues were always so similar, and maybe I just gave them too much credit because I was sucked into the Internet’s powerful Community hype machine.

It’s impossible to separate the show from its perception, and as a result I fear the show is somewhat doomed. It was already getting inconsequential ratings, and if other loyal viewers feel the way I do (I know Andy Greenwald does) the well is poisoned. It’s hard to imagine it regaining the love it once received regardless of how it continues, and of course as time passes more and more plot lines are used up.

I still enjoy watching it overall, as I’m sure many fans do, and will watch every episode until it’s over. The Dean is still insane, Joel McHale is still a great anchor, the return of Chang is promising, and Alison Brie is still remarkably easy on the eyes (and obviously funny too). I just worry that there’s nothing they can do to make it like it was, and that’s not even their fault.