NBC’s ‘Community’ season 5 spoilers: Pierce’s chair will not be empty for long…

Did you really think that Dan Harmon was going to let Pierce Hawthorn get the best of him on “Community” this season?

According to TVLine, it is not going to take very long at all for the show to find a new member of the study group to go in Pierce Hawthorne’s seat. As a matter of fact, someone will occupy it by the end of the second episode. Who are the possibilities? Chang obviously seems like the logical choice given that Ken Jeong is a series regular, and he seems to be on good standing once again with the rest of the study group after that whole “Kevin” experiment (which was one of our personal highlights from that mediocre season 4).

But, there are other candidates. Maybe Dean Pelton decides to stop running the school and starts attending it; or, maybe John Oliver or Jonathan Banks starts to get themselves involved. Leonard would fill the old man role, or they could go in the direction of one of the show’s main recurring players. The only person that we’d be somewhat against having a larger role is Magnitude, mostly because we don’t want anything to take away from the specialness of him saying “pop pop.” It’s like superheroes on TV in that you don’t want to see too many people with superpowers. Then, it suddenly seems less exciting.

As for when Donald Glover leaves, the plan isn’t so much to “replace” him (since no one can do that in Abed’s heart), but to instead use a variety of different actors to tell some fun stories.

After watching the incredible trailer put together by the folks over at Sony TV yesterday, we’re more excited for season 5 than we have been for any other show all year long. There haven’t been many great comedies in 2013 save for maybe “Girls” (which we know is controversial this season), “Parks and Recreation,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” so we need this show to bring back all of its joyful weirdness.

Photo: NBC