NBC’s ‘Community’ season 5 video: Another new trailer, and this one’s animated!

Could “Community” find a way to become even more epic when it comes to some of the promotional material that they are putting out there for season 5?

The latest trailer below is animated, and it really has nothing to do at all with what you are going to expect from the actual episodes ahead. Instead, it’s more of a prequel that shows Jeff Winger at Christmastime, alone and away from the study group. He’s visited then by Dean Pelton and Chang, who bring him most of his old friends (sans Pierce Hawthorne) to deliver some Christmas cheer. There are some great meta lines in here, as Annie talks about the show’s schedule this year (interrupted only by the Olympics), and Troy is used in an interesting way that did not require Donald Glover to do any real voice work at all. (He may have already left the show at the time in which this was made.)

More than just hilarious promos, what all of these trailers and clips really show to us more than anything else is that NBC is fully committed to making this into the comedy that they want to get behind. They probably realize now that with the ratings for their other comedies down the toilet, and with “Parks and Recreation” losing some of its old stars, they need to find a way to get viewers watching something. “Community’ has the potential to at least draw okay ratings with Dan Harmon around; we personally remember just how much glee there was at that one point in season 3 when the show actually drew above a 2.0 in the demo.