Yesterday was not a particularly good day. First, the
Supreme Court of the United States ruled
in favor of Hobby Lobby, essentially stating that corporations are allowed
to refuse birth control coverage for female employees due to religious
objections. Then, Noah Berlatsky, a writer I’d previously
respected,
published an article in The Atlantic
arguing that Orange Is the New Black doesn’t pay enough attention to
men, despite the fact that the show is set specifically in a women’s prison and therefore has no
reason to represent male convicts (if anything, I wish it didn’t care so much
about its male characters, but that’s another discussion entirely). And as if
that wasn’t enough, Community got renewed by
Yahoo! (yes, that Yahoo!) for a
last-minute sixth season.
For many people, the revival of
NBC’s beloved cult comedy, following its cancelation earlier this year, is a
cause for celebration. But when I saw the news, I felt a jolt of irrational
exasperation. Of all the acclaimed, prematurely axed shows, from Terriers to Enlightenment to this season’s Enlisted,
why is this the one that gets a
second chance?
Once
upon a time, I did genuinely like Community.
Although many fans consider the first season the show’s weakest, I’ve always
had a soft spot for its zany, idiosyncratic, relatively unassuming brand of
humor interspersed with moments of surprising sweetness (I might or might not
have cried during Abed’s
family reconciliation video). Season two earned its hype with consistently
hilarious episodes that delighted in subverting sitcom conventions, pop culture
tropes and audience expectations without abandoning its characters (see: “Mixology
Certification”, “Critical Film Studies”, etc.). I was as anxious as anybody
waiting to see how long it would survive despite middling ratings.
Don’t even get me
started.
What officially soured my attitude
toward Community, however, was the
fanbase. It seemed like as the show grew increasingly mean-spirited and
insulated, feeling less like hanging out with a quirky group of friends and
more like attending an ill-advised family reunion, so did its fans – or at
least a vocal, ubiquitous subset of them. This was the show that introduced me
to the less pleasant side of fandom: its sense of entitlement. At first, I
admired the passion and enthusiasm of Community
fans, but the longer the show went on, the more it felt like they relished its limited appeal, its lack of
mainstream popularity, as though that were somehow proof of their superior
intelligence and discerning taste. They prided themselves on championing something
perpetually on the verge of cancelation, and even as the creative team shuffled
around, major actors left and the show stretched on for a more-than-adequate
five seasons, they continued to view it as the scrappy, undervalued David to The Big Bang Theory’s Goliath.
Obviously,
that’s all a vast generalization and, I should note, not necessarily specific
to Community; when you spend extreme
amounts of time gushing about something to people who more or less have exactly
the same opinions that you do, you’re bound to become at least a little
egotistical and obnoxious. But regardless of whether my resentment was
justified or purely speculative, I eventually got fed up with the constant
irony and self-referential inside jokes, the catchphrases that had long since
worn out their charm, and quit after the end of season three. For all the
complaints about The Big Bang Theory
and its disparaging treatment of nerds, Community
is hardly innocent when it comes to cynicism and condescension. It’s impeccably
calibrated to satisfy pop culture-savvy youths raised on a steady diet of
sarcasm disguised as wit while gleefully excluding anyone else, those pitiful
souls that aren’t “cool” enough to understand its arcane references. The more I
think about it, the more convinced I am that the show itself adheres to Jeff
Winger’s apathetic outlook, with its distrust of outsiders and penchant for
punishing Britta for actually caring about things that matter. Even Abed’s pop
culture obsession is often portrayed as tongue-in-cheek (i.e. the origin of the
“six seasons and a movie” meme).
Hey, NBC, you know what really deserved more? This.
If there’s anything that defines
fandom, though, besides unbridled fervor, it’s a reluctance to let things go.
Stories live on forever, whether it’s through sequels, spin-offs, reinventions
or fan fiction, and characters are now resurrected on such a frequent basis,
from Agent Coulson to Captain Kirk and half of the Hannibal cast, that death itself has become meaningless. And that’s
not even touching on the inexplicable
barrage of professional articles commemorating random movies from the ‘80s
and ‘90s and nostalgia-fueled reboots and remakes. It’s as though, probably
thanks in large part to digital technology, we’ve become hyperaware of the fleeting
nature of time and decided to compensate for it by attempting to make
everything last forever. Or maybe fans are just so used to interacting with
members of the entertainment industry via the Internet and social media that
they fully expect their opinions and demands to be taken seriously.
Personally, I find this trend
somewhat disheartening. Of course, there are plenty of shows that I miss and
wish lasted longer (R.I.P. Kings, Happy Endings), but to be honest, if
someone asked which one I would want to see revived, I’d say none of them. My
reservations are partly due to the fact that I would rather see something end
too soon but well than have it drag on and on until it becomes a
zombie of its past self (The Simpsons
is one exception because even though I’ve stopped watching it on a regular
basis and whenever I do, it feels like someone is kicking the corpse of my
childhood, I simply can’t imagine a world where it isn’t on air). I love Scrubs, but I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t
rather pretend that the ninth season didn’t exist.
Part of
the medium’s essence lies in its unpredictability and malleability: unlike
movies, which end (in
theory) once the credits roll, television feels alive, capable of changing
on a week-to-week basis, our experience of it subject to the whims of our moods
on a given day or ongoing conversations with critics and fellow fans. As with any form of nostalgia, our
relationships with TV shows belong to specific moments in time, specific
feelings, and can’t be recreated exactly, no matter how hard we try. For example,
Lost isn’t my favorite show because I
think it’s particularly well-made (though I will defend the ending until my
dying day) but because it feels, on some level, like a relic from a certain
part of my life, a memory, a close friend. And for all the flaws that emerge in
retrospect, I still wouldn’t change a single thing about the show; for me, it’s
perfect just as it is now, and to quote Vulture’s
Matt Zoller Seitz, any material added ex post facto would be nothing more than a
glorified postscript, a pale imitation. I would rather cherish and fondly
remember the show I got than pine for a show (or movie or miniseries) I could
have.
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