It's the most cynical but the most likely reason for Community's eleventh-hour renewal for season 5: NBC wanted to have enough episodes of their show that they'd make a tidy profit from selling the back catalogue of episodes to other networks, something they'd already done with Comedy Central and Hulu. Traditionally, a show is seen as most viable for syndication once it has around 100 episodes, as they can then be rerun back-to-back for a significant length of time by a channel which puts their own advertising in the breaks and tries to make a profit from their investment. It's maddening to think that a network would simply keep such a creative and well-loved show going just to line their pockets a little more, but the numbers don't lie: including season 5, the number of Community episodes that have been aired total 97. Close enough that NBC could close the casket and finally be rid of their freakish baby without losing out on too much money, right?
