Between 2009 and 2015, there was arguably no show on the small screen funnier than Dan Harmon’s Community. There’s a reason why it landed in the Top 50 of CinemaBlend’s list of the 100 best sitcoms of all time. The series crafted a balance of dark, caustic wit with goofy, pop culture-obsessed sensibilities, and the series that came from that recipe is as smart as it is hilarious (and it has an impressive number of special inside jokes). With the ability to stream with a Peacock subscription and on Blu-ray, fans can reflect on multiple phenomenal seasons of television… but if you only simply watch/rewatch episodes, you may be ignorant to all of the conflict and drama that played out behind the scenes.
While its stars have gone on to do some excellent work, Community is very much alive in the hearts of fans, as we continue to patiently wait for fulfillment on the promise of “Six Seasons and a Movie.” But while we wait for the long-awaited feature to finally go into production, let’s take a look back at the show’s various casting change-ups, renewal issues, firings, hirings, and more during its network TV/streaming run.
Dan Harmon And Chevy Chase Butt Heads
The first two seasons of Community aired without the show producing any scandalous headlines, but it was toward the end of production on Season 3 that things started to get a bit complicated behind the scenes – and the ground zero of conflict was the relationship between showrunner Dan Harmon and star Chevy Chase. On the final production, Chase reportedly stormed off set without filming one of his scenes, and Harmon ultimately didn’t come up with the best response to that action. During the show’s wrap party for the year, the writer delivered what ended up being called a “Fuck you, Chevy” speech (both Chase’s wife and daughter were attendees at the event and witnessed the slander).
That was bad, but things escalated. An irate Chevy Chase called Dan Harmon after the wrap party and left him a vitriolic voicemail… and Harmon made the unfortunate decision to play said voicemail while hosting his monthly podcast that was recorded with a live audience in Los Angeles.
Dan Harmon Gets Fired From The Show After Season 3
Despite the fact that Chevy Chase has a nice long history of behind the scenes conflicts, there is no real way to defend the way that Dan Harmon responded to the actor’s behavior behind the scenes of Community – and that’s actually a sentiment that Harmon himself shared as the situation blew up. In April 2012, the showrunner took to his personal online blog and posted a message expressing great regret for his actions. In his piece, he not only apologized, but he assigned himself and both his speech and the podcast recording a litany of negative adjectives (not limited to "horrible," "childish," "self-obsessed," "unaware," "dumb," "unprofessional," "selfish baby" and "rude asshole.") It read as sincere, but it proved to not be enough to remedy the conflict. As a result of his treatment toward Chase, Harmon paid a significant price.
About a month-and-a-half after the feud went public, Community got a textbook case of good news/bad news. The former was that the show had been given the greenlight by NBC and was getting renewed for a fourth season. The latter was that Dan Harmon was not going to be involved, as his contract had been terminated as a result of his fight with Chevy Chase. Moses Port and David Guarascio, best known at the time for their work on the sitcom Just Shoot Me!, were hired by Sony to serve as the new showrunners on the series. The announcement of the news said that Harmon would be credited as a Consulting Producer for future episodes, but the series creator was quick to dissolve that sugar-coating. Posting a new blog post on Tumblr, the writer informed fans that he was not going to have any input into new episodes and was only receiving a credit because of his original contract.
Chevy Chase Leaves The Show After Season 4
The incident with the wrap party and the voicemail was definitely the most public conflict involving Chevy Chase and Community, but it should be noted that the relationships between the actor and the other people involved with the show weren’t exactly sublime prior to all of that (for example, it was reported in October 2012 that he used a horrible racial epithet while on set). Watching the show with this in mind, it’s not hard to pick up on subtext in the storytelling. Pierce Hawthorne is represented as an aging dotard in Season 1, but it’s hard not to notice that he takes a serious antagonist turn in Season 2 and Season 3, and that was motivated by his deteriorating relationship with Dan Harmon and the show’s writers – specifically in that he showed them the kind of character he was best suited to play.
Chevy Chase arguably “won” when Dan Harmon got fired and Pierce Hawthorne lived on for another 11 episodes in Community Season 4. But the actor’s time with the show ended there. In November 2012 (which, mind you, was about four months before Season 4 started airing), it was officially announced that Chase was leaving the show. He didn’t exactly leave with grace, saying in an interview with The Huffington Post around the time that being a part of the sitcom was a “big mistake.” Conversely, the series showed some class. In addition to having Pierce Hawthorne graduate from Greendale Community College in the Season 4 finale “Advanced Introduction to Finality,” the actor also cameos as a hologram in the Season 5 premiere, “Repilot,” and had an entire episode dedicated to his character’s off-screen death (“Cooperative Polygraphy”).
Dan Harmon Gets Rehired For Season 5
After yet another brush with cancellation, Community found itself still breathing in May 2013, NBC committing to another round of episodes from the sitcom, but that wasn’t the only amazing news that month brought for fans. A few weeks after the renewal announcement, buzz started to spread around Hollywood that Sony was considering bringing back Dan Harmon as showrunner – with the buzz seeming very plausible thanks to the fact that Chevy Chase wouldn’t be coming back as a series regular. It was only a few days after those rumor reports that Harmon personally confirmed that he was returning to his old job, and the network made it official a few weeks after that.
Neither NBC nor Sony ever issued any kind of explanatory official statement regarding why they rehired Dan Harmon following his termination, but fans at the time weren’t exactly begging for one; we were simply happy that Season 5 would see the original creator back at the helm of the ship and return it to its former glory. At the very least, we do know that Harmon attributes his comeback to efforts made by star Joel McHale.
Prior to being reinstated in his original job, the Harmon said that he hadn’t watched Season 4, but that changed by June 2013 (at the very least he needed to see what stories were told, what had been added to the continuity, and how the characters changed). He revealed his thoughts on the content saying he felt that the episodes were an “unflattering impression.” One would be challenged to find many Community fans who would disagree.
Donald Glover Leaves The Show In The Early Episodes Of Season 5
June 2013 was a blissful month for Community fans. For four-plus weeks, we got to live with the knowledge that A) Season 5 was on the way, B) Dan Harmon was coming back, and C) the most toxic element of the cast was gone. It was a nice bubble to live in for a while… but it popped on July 8. That was the day it was announced that Donald Glover would not be appearing in the entirety of the new season and would be making his departure from the show after the first few episodes – allowing his character to get a proper sendoff.
The news was devastating for fans. Troy Barnes was loved as a part of Community because of his remarkable chemistry with Danny Pudi’s Abed Nadir, but he was also arguably the heart of the show and the most consistently hilarious character. The actor made the decision to leave because he wanted to have more time to focus on his music, and in retrospect, it’s damn impossible to blame him given that he has won five Grammy Awards in the time since.
Unfortunately, Donald Glover’s absence from the series created a hole that could never be filled; Dan Harmon admitted years later, after Community had ended, that the show, for all intents and purposes, “died” when he left.
Community Moves From NBC To Yahoo! Screen
If you are wondering at this point if Community went on to become the first show to wait until its fifth season to become a smash hit, I have some disappointing news to drop on you: it didn’t. The show had already established a pattern of its ratings slipping more and more each year, and Season 5 proved to be a nadir despite the fact that Dan Harmon was back as showrunner. As a result, NBC made the decision to swing the axe and cancel the series. The dream of #SixSeasonsAndAMovie was swiftly killed… or at least that’s how it seemed at first.
The network announced Community’s cancellation in early May 2014, but not only did fans not give up on the show, Sony decided not to throw in the towel either. At first, things looked pretty dire, as both Netflix and Hulu opted to pass on Community Season 6, and Dan Harmon was expressing a bit of indifference. On the last day of June 2014, however, the series pulled off a Frankenstein act by inking a deal with the newly-formed Yahoo! Screen. Thirteen more episodes were ordered, with the door kept open for more pending great success on the young streaming service.
Yvette Nicole Brown Is Unable To Return For Season 6
Getting a sixth season and one step closer to the goal of #SixSeasonsAndAMovie was huge for Community fans, but a few months after the Yahoo! Screen contract was closed, there were reports that yet another member of the Study Group/Save Greendale Committee/OG Greendale 7 would not be able to return. Prior to the start of production, Yvette Nicole Brown requested that she be released from her contract, as her father was sick and she wanted to be able to spend time with him – something she couldn’t do with a five month production schedule made up of 16-hour work days. The actress continued to work during that time, taking a role in the short-lived reboot of The Odd Couple, but that was doable because the experience filming a four-camera sitcom is much more streamlined than a single-camera show like Community.
Yvette Nicole Brown’s last performance as a lead on the show is in the Season 5 finale “Basic Sandwich,” but that isn’t the final appearance of Shirley Bennett. The character appears in the Season 6 premiere, “Ladders,” to establish that she has moved to Atlanta, Georgia to take care of her father and took a job as a private chef for a private investigator named Mr. Butcher (played by Steven Weber). She also has a brief cameo in the series finale – and to borrow a phrase from Shirley, it’s really nice.
After Six Seasons, Community Comes To An End
Looking back, it’s pretty amazing that Community lasted as long as it did. Its ability to continue was almost entirely perpetuated by the general weakness of the NBC lineup (the fact that there weren’t any new shows demonstrating potential kept the network renewing the Dan Harmon-created series because it already had an established fanbase). It had even managed to survive its first cancellation. Sadly, when the second cancellation announcement came down from above, it proved to be the true nail in the coffin for the show.
There never existed a great deal of potential for a Season 7 anyway, but the writing on the wall became much clearer in October 2015 when the biggest advocate for the show left Yahoo! Screen for another studio gig. It was ultimately shown that Yahoo! Screen was a failed effort, and it eventually shut down, but at the very least everyone who loves Community will always have a special place for it in their heart... and it's not the end of the story.
The Community Movie Gets A Green Light From Peacock
As fans will remember, the dream of #SixSeasonsAndAMovie began with the Season 2 episode "Paradigms of Human Memory" – with Abed loudly proclaiming during one of the many flashbacks that the new NBC series The Cape would experience a run of that specific length. As it turns out, The Cape only lasted one season, but Community fans took to seeing that prediction as the ideal totality for Dan Harmon's show. Now, that hope is set to become a reality.
In September 2022, it was officially announced that a deal had been signed for Community: The Movie to be made as an original feature for the streaming series Peacock. Dan Harmon was confirmed to be co-writing the script with Andrew Guest (a Community writer from the first two seasons of the show), and the press release confirmed Joel McHale, Danny Pudi, Alison Brie, Gillian Jacobs, Jim Rash and Ken Jeong would all return to play their original roles.
Joel McHale Confirms Donald Glover Will Return As Troy Barnes In Community: The Movie
Looking at the list of cast members announced as part of Community: The Movie in the original press release, it's hard not to notice a couple of names missing. It's not surprising that Chevy Chase won't be back as Pierce Hawthorne (the character is dead, after all), but there was no mention of either Yvette Nicole Brown or Donald Glover. In January 2024, the former confirmed the return of Shirley Bennett during a guest spot on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and in June 2023, Joel McHale confirmed Troy Barnes will be back.
The actor known for playing the role of Jeff Winger confirmed Donald Glover's involvement in Community: The Movie as a guest on Kelly Ripa's podcast. And while we know nothing yet about what we will see from Troy following his trip around the world with LeVar Burton, we are beyond excited to see his reunion with Abed.
The future of Community remains open for now, and we’ll continue to update this feature as the Community movie moves further through development (you can be sure that we’ll add new sections about the start of production and news regarding other actors who will be joining in on the fun beyond the original cast. Be sure to keep tabs on this feature, and be on the lookout here on CinemaBlend for all of the latest big news about this beloved NBC sitcom.
