10 Insane Ways TV Shows Trolled Fans
3. Retconning The Worst Season As The Result Of A "Gas Leak" - Community
Community's fourth season is infamous among fans for its notable decline in quality and uptick in offputtingly outlandish storylines, generally attributed to the departure of showrunner Dan Harmon due to conflicts between him and Sony executives.
However, Harmon was reinstated for the fifth season, and in an attempt to address fans' concerns about the disappointing prior season, he decided to work a most hilariously outlandish explanation into the plot.
In the first episode of season five, Annie (Alison Brie) mentions that there was a gas leak the year before, effectively hand-waving all of the creative issues, ridiculous plots, and out-of-character moments from the last season.
While many shows couldn't get away with such a brazen admission of a dud season, Community has always proudly flaunted its meta tendencies, and so confronting the iffy fourth season in such an absurd-yet-weirdly-plausible way ultimately worked.
Though season four absolutely has its defenders, and it'd be unfair to call the entire season bad, this was a neat way to sweep its sloppiness under the carpet and basically try to make fans shut up about it.
Thankfully season five was a serious return to form, so that helped too.