Why Community Was Canceled

The college world is a strange place where people from wildly different generations and walks of life can form quasi-familial groups before going their separate ways, never to meet again. It’s only with hindsight that you realize just how unusual the experience is, at least if you came into it as an 18-year-old suddenly thrust into the swimming pool that is adulthood and desperate to keep your head above the water. Dan Harmon’s “Community” isn’t the most realistic comedy show about college on the surface — in fact, the further along it went, the more untethered and cartoonish it became — but it is one of the most honest ones. It knows what it feels like to be in that world, and its potpourri of loving pop culture parodies, satirical jabs at community college politics, and earnest character work served to capture the experience of aspiring to mature as a person in an environment where arrested development abounds.

15 years after the show debuted on NBC on September 17, 2009, “Community” has carved out a lasting legacy for itself thanks to people either revisiting it or checking it out for the first time on syndication and streaming. During its initial run, however, the series struggled mightily to remain afloat. It was constantly on the cusp of being axed due to low ratings before the Sword of Damocles fell for real after season 5, only for Yahoo! Screen (who? Don’t worry, we’ll get into that soon enough) to revive the show for a sixth and final outing. Therein lies the contradiction at the core of “Community”: The incredible specificity of its nerdy homages and observations of human nature lend the series a certain degree of universal appeal, yet its esoteric sensibilities (itself a reflection of Harmon, a celebrated yet undeniably problematic writer) also prevented it from achieving more than cult success during its lifetime.

In short? “Community” was ultimately canceled because it no longer made business sense to keep it going — as the show’s own cast and crew would tell you.

Wild as it sounds now, Chevy Chase was easily the most well-known name in the “Community” cast when the series premiered. By the time he left after season 4, though, his primary costars had all become major players. Sidestepping the behind-the-scenes drama that led to the actor’s departure (which is a conversation unto itself), Chase’s absence, coupled with Harmon’s return as showrunner after being fired at the end of season 3, actually proved to be a creative boon to the show. Sadly, however, that was not the case when Chase’s fellow student Donald Glover also departed halfway through season 5, nor when Yvette Nicole Brown graduated for real at the end of that season.

Still, with an ensemble that included Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Alison Brie, Danny Pudi, Jim Rash, and Ken Jeong (plus new additions Keith David and Paget Brewster), “Community” had plenty of star power in season 6 … which was also the problem. Speaking to Metro Weekly after the show ended in 2015, McHale explained that it just wouldn’t have been feasible to keep the antics at Greendale Community College going (something Harmon and his writers were clearly aware of — hence the season 6 finale playing like a series finale):

“All of our contracts were up after six years. All the actors on the show, almost without exception — their stock has risen significantly, and it’s out of the pay rate that is affordable to make the show. So you’re not going to be able to get Alison Brie or Gillian Jacobs at a normal television salary anymore. There is just not enough money to be able to pay for the show.”

Combine the ever-rising costs with the show’s cult fanbase and it’s no shock that “Community” proved to be the downfall of Yahoo! Screen rather than its savior. Much as that media hosting service had ambitions of becoming the next big thing by producing “Community” season 6, it instead wound up taking a whopping $42 million write-down on that and other projects in 2015 (via Variety) before dissolving altogether four years later. As for whether “Community” will ever fulfill its promise of “Six seasons and a movie” (a rallying cry that originated with a one-off joke in season 2)? Unlikely comebacks are pretty much the Greendale study group’s thing at this stage, and they’re closer than ever to making another one.