There are few TV shows in pop culture whose existences seem to serve the catchphrase created within them. Such is the case with Community, though, which has conquered all odds and made it through the first half of its “Six Seasons and a Movie” goal. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the show is going to get that movie into production, and all hope for a Season 7 possibly just walked right out the door. Literally.
Because Yahoo’s chief marketing officer Kathy Savitt recently left the company in order to take on duties as president of digital at STX Entertainment, Community creator Dan Harmon seems convinced that the show’s future on Yahoo Stream is nonexistent. After all, she was the exec who pushed to get the show on the service for Season 6 in the first place, and now that she’s gone, there apparently aren’t very many people championing Greendale.
Here’s how Harmon put it to THR.
I, of course, as a narcissist and self-loathing person, when I read that [she was leaving Yahoo], I blamed myself. Like, I only knew one thing that she did, and I think she got fired for it – which was hire me. That changing is a little bit of a dent in the optimism – I’m trying to find a better way [to say it[. That makes it look a little more bleak just because before she was gone, she was the person that could pick up the phone and say, ‘Let make this Community thing happen,’ whatever it was, and she’s the reason it would get done.
That’s certainly a bummer to anyone who followed the show during its up-and-down run – and let’s be clear, the downtime was definitely when Harmon had left the show – but as Harmon also said, the fact that Community made it to Yahoo in the first place is a sign that almost nothing is impossible in the current TV and streaming landscape. So while it’s not altogether likely that Yahoo will bring the show back for Season 7, they haven’t officially made that announcement yet, so let’s keep our Human Being optimism strong.
Joel McHale said recently that the show was almost definitely over due to the show’s cast members all becoming more popular and getting jobs elsewhere, which means it would be hard for Yahoo or anyone else to justify the money needed. But still, though Season 6 was missing some of the cast members of earlier seasons, Keith David and Criminal Minds’ Paget Brewster joined the cast, which had to be a sizeable portion of the budget, so Yahoo knew what it was doing there. Now I guess we restart the petition to get Netflix to reach into its deep pockets to bring this beloved show back to its fans.
It's unfortunate that Community was cancelled. However, if you are looking to add the series to your dvd or blu-ray collection, you can check that out here.
