I had never watched a full episode of Community before coming to college last year. I had heard of it, sure. I mean, Entertainment Weekly and TV Guide praised its freshman year. During its second season, I switched the channel from an episode of The Big Bang Theory to Community. I got a glimpse of a group of people playing Dungeons and Dragons before my family demanded I switch back. Upon arriving in Ames, I took the time to marathon all 49 episodes of the first two seasons.

It was the greatest decision of my life.

I watched the season three live, helped introduce a few friends to it, and lamented over the long hiatus with my, well, community. We knew season three might be the end of the show, judging by the way NBC shuffled the show around the schedule and the publicized reports between creator and show runner Dan Harmon having disputes with Chevy Chase and the network, both of whom were asking for a little more conventional humor as opposed to Harmon’s out-of-the-box conceptual episodes. In case of cancellation, the writers of Community planned the third season finale to serve the purpose of a series finale if NBC chose not to renew it for the following year.

The episode, fittingly titled “Introduction To Finality,” managed to tie up the emotional loose ends of all the characters we’d grown to love over the course 71 episodes. The end of the episode included a nice montage to show us the future, and shoved the fan’s battle cry of loyalty, #sixseasonsandamovie,” at the end as a way to show us that even if the show didn’t return, it would still live on in our hearts. As the credits rolled, I was satisfied. If NBC cancelled the series, I would be ok. The characters would be ok.

However, this was all for naught; the show was renewed for a fourth season. New show runners David Guarascio and Moses Port took over, bringing in a new writing staff. When the fourth season premiered in February (after being pushed back from original premiere date in October) it was a shell of its former self. The same actors were playing the same parts in the same setting, but the magic wasn’t there.

Community tried to be as conceptual as ever in the fourth season premiere, trying to juggle a Hunger Games spoof with Abed, the pop culture obsessed member of the group, attempting to deal with the fact that the group was graduating and moving on from community college by creating different television show scenarios inside his head. It was as if the new show runners were trying to force the idea into the fans’ minds that this was the same show it had been for the past three years, however it just fell short of the conceptual episodes of the Harmon era, like season three’s Law and Order spoof, Basic Lupine Urology.

By the finale, Community was back on the bubble, unsure if it would be coming back for another season. The writers prepared for the worst by functioning the season finale to work as a series finale again. This episode, titled “Advanced Introduction to Finality,” would have been satisfactory as a series finale if it needed to be. Jeff Winger finally graduated from college, a goal set forth in the pilot. The rest of the episode felt like the writers were trying too hard to get a final use out of Harmon’s well-executed ideas, such as paintball and the darkest timeline, without making them their own.

Community managed to squeak out a renewal, something I hoped for, but didn’t in my wildest dreams see coming true. After all, the show has been lucky to draw in over three million viewers on Thursday nights, but NBC axed most of its comedy lineup, with Whitney, Guys With Kids, and, sadly, Go On, among the casualties.

One of my wishes for next season is that Guarascio and Port stop trying to conform to what Harmon created, and instead take the show in the way they seem fit. It’s then when that happens that the show doesn’t seem so forced.

My other wishes include Jeff and Annie finally getting together and for Matthew Perry to join the study group to fill the void left by Chevy Chase, who finally was able to leave the show after phoning it in for the past two seasons.