Like most fans, I tuned into season 4 of COMMUNITY with trepidation. The first line of the post-Dan Harmon season was appropriate: "Does something feel different?" It was important to me that they acknowledge Harmon's firing. The show had cultivated a relationship with its cult following, and if they wanted to put us at ease that the heart would be intact, they had to acknowledge it in even a brief, metatextual way.

But we're 5 episodes in now, and the feeling that this is not the same show, and never will be, is starting to creep over every laughless half hour. It's not that the show is bad, or even unfunny. It's just no longer a great show, one that I would be eager to show to strangers or recommend to my friends. In their right-headed move to retain their fanbase, they've simultaneously made it a show that's just for us.