Has Dan Harmon Brought Back the Old 'Community' Magic?

When it was announced last spring that NBC had picked up Community for a fifth season, fans were torn over the news. It was great that Community lived on, but after a fourth season that never felt like Community, should the show live on? It was bad enough that NBC had allowed one season with show creator Dan Harmon at the helm. Did we really need more?

Then NBC did something amazing. They brought back Harmon as showrunner. And based on what we're seeing and hearing about the upcoming season of Community, we're lucky that NBC renewed the show. On the heels of the trailer that we got earlier this week, NBC released a promo video for Community Season 5, with several cast members talking about the new round of episodes.

Everyone in the video seems really excited about the new season. Joel McHale, Yvette Nicole Brown, Gillian Jacobs and Ken Jeong seem to be saying all the rights things, talking about the quality of the scripts and referring to the season premiere as a "re-pilot." We still don't know how Harmon will undo a lot of Season 4's wrongs, but these are all good signs.

In addition to the new video, HitFix TV critic Alan Sepinwall posted on Twitter Tuesday, "Oh, the new Community episodes are so good. Show feels like itself again." TV critics were not kind to the pretender season of Community. If they're already back on board, we should be in good shape.