Community Renewed by NBC

Cult-favorite Community has been renewed for a fifth season, TV Line reports. The series, which has been ratings challenged almost from the word go, lost its showrunner at the end of last year and star Chevy Chase in the middle of this season, although he had already filmed his parts for every episode except one at the time. From that point on, though, I started telling my friends that renewal was a safe bet and never wavered, even as the series hit record lows in the ratings and received poorer than usual reviews from fans and critics. Why? Because Chase had consistently maintained that he didn't like the show, but was hanging around for the paycheck. The idea of storming off with an episode left seemed odd. However, if the cast knew something the rest of us didn't about the series's renewal prospects, perhaps it was no longer worth tolerating what he considered a bad situation if he thought it was going to be another year or more. Conventional wisdom right now is that the pickup will be for thirteen episodes, and that it may be announced soon as the show's final season. If NBC and Sony Pictures Television could find a way to make it work for at least another year after that, though, the "Six Seasons and a Movie" campaign that fans have mounted each of the last couple of years when it looked like the show was doomed could turn out to be a bit more prescient than anyone could have guessed.