NBC’s ‘Community’ season 5 finale review: Did Jeff and Britta get married, and is Greendale back?

“Community” wrapped up season 5 on Thursday night in a way that they have wrapped up many seasons: With a combination of epic storytelling, humor, but also a generous dose of sweetness and love that you don’t often find in some midseason episodes. As edgy as the show can sometimes be, it doesn’t want you walking away feeling sad about what you just saw.

“Basic Sandwich” was not a revolutionary episode of the show that we’ll go back and watch a dozen times, but it was still an enjoyable romp. The Save Greendale Committee ended up doing just that, and it’s all courtesy of saving a man from his locked-away computer lab who just so happened to be the school’s first founder. There were great jokes about modern conveniences and the conquest of the world by stupid people, and internet comment threads were of course brought up here.

Also … Jeff and Britta did not get married. Of course they didn’t! These two only wanted to get together in the end for the sake of having something to cling to, and it had nothing to do with being so in love that they wanted to be with each other. This whole story would’ve been better had their not already been a “let’s get married” moment back in season 3. This produced a good Annie / Jeff moment still before the truth came out, and also a surprising Abed / Annie moment that brought back the two-part end to season 2 where Annie fell for Abed’s Harrison Ford impression.

There were good NBC and renewal jokes throughout, and the entire end tag for this hour (featuring cameos from B.J. Novak and others) was probably the most fourth wall-breaking thing that the show has done to date. “Community” is great thanks to the little things; from the individual moments to the characters to the theme episodes, you know that the people working on the show genuinely care about the product, and also what you think about it. There are not many other times out there where you can genuinely say that about a comedy in its fifth season, where the fumes start to sputter. And while “Basic Sandwich” wasn’t perfect and was a little similar to past finales, we still enjoyed it enough that we’re left chanting “six seasons and a movie” all over again. Grade: A-.

If you want to look at the future of the show, we wrote up a piece earlier regarding its season 6 renewal chances at the link here. Also, you can sign up to get further TV updates sent right to your email inbox.

Photo: NBC