10 Unforgivable Mistakes That Ruined Great 2013 TV Shows

7. Community Relied Too Much On The Past

The behind-the-scenes drama for NBC's Community is no secret: after season 3, NBC executives fired Dan Harmon, the show's creator and showrunner, and the result was a writing staff with no clear direction on where to take the show. Harmon had established Community as a show that took creative risks and pushed the viewers in different directions. The Harmon version of Community produced witty spoof episodes that also blended the show's emotional core. In seasons 1-3, the show felt authentic; it felt like it was alive and it was evolving. Following Harmon's departure, the show felt like it was only a shell of its former self. Many of its jokes were merely reiterations of or callbacks to previous occurrences on the show, and no joke proved this more than the "Troy and Abed in the morning" joke which, funny in season 1-3, became cringe-worthy by the end of season 4. Furthermore, the show accepted the more emotional aspects of previous seasons without pushing the characters' feelings in new directions. For example, it featured the underlying sexual tension between Jeff and Annie in several episodes without saying anything new about the characters or the nature of the relationship; it just reiterated that there is an uncomfortable, borderline-inappropriate tension between the two. Whereas above, Homeland tried to change itself too many times, Community didn't change at all. It no longer felt fresh and exciting. I stopped getting excited to see where the show would bring me each week. Luckily, after the disastrous season 4, NBC rehired Dan Harmon, and season 5 has, thus far, been a marked improvement.