In taking stock of Community Season 4 as a whole, I noticed several fans saying that moving forward into Season 5, the show should focus less on its “theme” or “homage” episodes and take a more low-key approach closer in line to Season 1 than any subsequent seasons.  Much of this was said before it was announced that Dan Harmon would be returning, so fans were concerned that the show was still going to be run by showrunners who did not seem as capable of successfully pulling off the ambitious outings that had worked under Harmon’s initial tenure.  But! – fans declared, the show could still be good even if it backed off the theme episodes.  Then Dan was re-hired, and he too has talked about “re-grounding” the characters, seemingly implying that there indeed will be a decreased reliance on theme episodes.  It is funny to hear all this, in a way, though, considering that the most well-received Season 4 episode by fans and critics alike was “Basic Human Anatomy” – the homage to body-swap movies.  And one of the other consensus stronger Season 4 outings, “Herstory of Dance,” though not a full-on theme episode, did feature an homage to the classic “two dates in one night” sitcom trope in one of its subplots.

The point is, I don’t think Community can, or should, completely abandon its homage elements.  This is a show that began with its characters meeting each other as an homage to The Breakfast Club.  With a character like Abed Nadir, who views his life and the lives of his friends as movies and TV shows, such homages are practically inescapable.  They were present at the show’s beginning, and it would be inorganic for them to disappear.  True, even Abed did speak (in “Herstory”) of “making a conscious effort to get away from filtering everything through TV.”  But he was not necessarily talking about abandoning those references, but rather, expanding his reference points (to include in this case, the entertainment of ancient Rome).

Thus, I would like Community to expand its reference points, hopefully in line with its characters expanding their reference points, just as any good show should mature and expand as its gets older and its characters get older and mature and expand.  Harmon just revealed at Comic-Con plans for an all-animated episode and a second Dungeons & Dragons episode, serving as a counterpoint to his desire for re-grounding.  It sounds like the homages are not going away.  My hope is that they remain as organic as the best ones have been thus far and that they do not swallow up genuine characterization.  That appears to be what Harmon wants as well.  Here is word from one fan saying that it sounds like he has the right attitude.