The Cult of Community: Why the Show Should've Been Canceled Sooner

There was a time when I watched Community and thought, "Hey, this could go somewhere." But then, the show took a nosedive into something unrecognizable. What began as a quirky, slice-of-life comedy about a group of misfits in community college quickly mutated into a chaotic, self-absorbed satire that lost any shred of emotional core it once had.

And you know what? I never found Dan Harmon funny or brilliant. Not once.

Let’s not sugarcoat this: the show became cringe. A Frankenstein of genre parodies, meta commentary, and smug inside jokes that catered more to internet forums than actual human viewers. The writing leaned so hard into clever-for-clever's-sake that it forgot to be relatable or, frankly, entertaining.

Fans often defend Community with lines like "It was ahead of its time!" or "It was a masterpiece of meta-comedy!" But let’s be real—most episodes in the later seasons were so far up their own creative backsides, they forgot the point of television: to connect with people.

Ratings? Dead. The audience? Bleeding. The tone? All over the place. Yet somehow, it dragged on. NBC should have pulled the plug, and fast.

The reason it didn’t? Loud internet fandoms and the "six seasons and a movie" meme. It became a brand, not a story. A movement, not a meaningful series. And Harmon? He shouldn't have been anywhere near a writer's room. His drinking, missed deadlines, and reputation for toxic behavior are well-documented. Yet studios gave him a free pass in the name of "creative genius."

But I never saw that genius. I saw a showrunner who cared more about flexing his ego than developing characters. I saw a show that abandoned its soul in favor of gimmicks. And I saw fans latch onto it not because it was good, but because it felt different—and different, unfortunately, got confused for deep.

This wasn’t a slice-of-life series. It wasn’t a coming-of-age story. It was a parody of itself, trapped in a loop of diminishing returns.

Community should have been canceled. Not out of spite, but mercy. A once-promising premise buried under layers of noise, chaos, and self-indulgence. Some call it a cult classic. I call it a cautionary tale.

Lock it up. Shelf it for good. And next time, let’s make sure the emperor’s actually wearing clothes before we hand him six seasons and a movie.