Killing 'Community': Why Season 4 Needs to Be the Show's Final Semester

Let’s begin with this crucial piece of information: I love Community. Most weeks, Community is the reason I even turn on a TV set. No one supports Community more than me … well, except maybe Dan Harmon before he was let go. Despite my love for the show, when the upcoming fourth season is done, I want Community to end. 

TV shows, much like college (or even high school), are great for only a short time. The Office peaked by its fourth season, and then took a dramatic dive off the quality cliff. Community is a weird animal that needs to end after its fourth season. I enjoyed my time in college, but I couldn’t wait to graduate. The parties are only awesome for so long. The food the cafeteria serves sucks. The people you associate with in college are good, but you want real friends eventually. You need to leave college, just like Community needs to leave our TV screens.

With Season 4, we'll have our first casualty: Pierce Hawthorne. While we don't know the fate of Pierce on Community, we do know that Chevy Chase left the program. Community will probably be able to get by without Pierce, but if the show is extended beyond its fourth year, many of Community's key plots and characters will become conflicted.

Joel McHale's Jeff Winger is the keystone character in this ensemble cast. Winger’s only reason to be at Greendale was to get his bachelor’s degree so he could return to being a lawyer. Apparently Columbia the university and Columbia the South American nation aren't quite the same thing. His self-centered ways and deductive reasoning make him an ideal lawyer but also a douche who doesn’t want to waste his life at community college when he can return to some form of his past life. 

Alison Brie's Annie Edison is trapped at Greendale only because an overdose on medication cost her a big college scholarship (and gave her the nickname Annie Adderall). After Community's writers already had Annie almost leave Greendale once, her story has been clouded. The character's driven and goal-orientated personality would insinuate that Annie would be a failure if she didn’t graduate from Greendale her senior year. From that point on, she should be filling her life with her post-college goals. Getting a real apartment (one that's preferably not over a store called Dildopolis), a great job and maybe taking some graduate courses at an esteemed school would be Annie's life after Season 4.

Those two characters alone help drive the main stories of this unlikely team of study groupers. Yvette Nicole Brown's Shirley is only taking classes to begin a business. Once she has the knowledge she needs, Shirley won't have to spend more time at a community college. Danny Pudi's Abed Nadir should be exploring film schools or festivals, all the while working at a video store.

The only people who you could see staying at Community past their fourth year would Donald Glover's Troy Barnes and Gillian Jacobs' Britta Perry.

Despite his sweet and sensitive nature, Troy is not very bright. When he entered Greendale, Troy was still trying to live the life of a high school quarterback, but eventually learned that he's quite gifted when it comes to air conditioner repair. Even though Troy has passed up a spot in Greendale's illustrious Air Conditioning Repair School, Troy could take his four-year community college degree and find a job that would lead to a career.

Britta, who according to the show is "the worst," would be the most likely candidate to replace Pierce as a lifelong student (see Cheers, Diane Chambers). With her constant flip-flopping of majors and inability to settle on a lifestyle choice (remember, she quit high school to impress Radiohead), Britta could be that person in her 40s still trying to get her degree.

The whole point of their study group was to make friendships and achieve their goals. As the past three seasons have progressed, lasting friendships were built and furthermore, the characters were developed beyond the archetypes of Season 1. For the characters to be successful and accomplish the goals they entered Greendale with, they need to pass their classes and graduate from college. Spending more time at community college would not only undermine the characters but also us, the viewers.

I love Community, but if NBC extends the show for a fifth season, I will be subscribing to the philosophy of too much of a good thing. I want to see this show close out on a high note, but once the last episode of this season airs, much like the lyrics of a Third Eye Blind song, Community shouldn't leave its characters asking, "Can I graduate?"