Community: The 10 Most Hated Episodes
9. History 101 (Season 4, Episode 1)
As long-time fans will know, Sony Pictures Television made
the ludicrous decision to boot Dan Harmon out of the Community showrunner’s
chair after season three and bring on two virtual unknowns, David Guarascio and
Moses Port, to replace him. Naturally, the show’s quality took a major hit, and
the decline is evident from the very first episode of the fourth season.
Beginning with Abed reimagining the show inside his head as “Abed’s Happy Community College Show”, the botched attempts to reverse engineer that winning Harmon formula only get worse from there. The Dean decides to hand out seats in a ‘History of Ice Cream’ class by hosting ‘The Hunger Deans’ in the cafeteria, a reference which was barely on the pulse in 2013 and has aged horribly upon rewatch.
What can be said is that the core cast are still on top form here, delivering the hollow dialogue with as much commitment as can possibly be mustered. But even their best efforts can’t help season four be anything more than a pale imitation of everything that came before it.