Reed Hastings’s streaming giant gained a lot of respect among TV fans when it brought back another cult comedy – Fox’s Arrested Development – for a fourth season, seven years after Fox canceled it. That miraculous resuscitation got a lot of people thinking. If Netflix heard those fans crying out loudly for more adventures with the Bluth family and actually did something about it, what was to stop other fans from asking Netflix to grant their favorite shows new leases on life?
Obviously, Netflix doesn’t have the godly ability to save every show that has landed on the chopping block at another network. ABC’s late, lamented Happy Endings comes most to mind as a show that got a lot of people talking after its early demise but never managed a resurrection, and Fox’s Terra Nova and ABC’s Pan Am were also the centers of short-lived, fruitless fan campaigns.
What Community has that those shows didn’t, however, is a clear end goal. Six seasons and a movie has long been the dream of fans, and now that the show has been cut down after just five years, one major aspect of continuing the show that Netflix should take into account is that most viewers only really want one more season (and a TV movie, if possible). The streaming giant wouldn’t be committing to continuing the show indefinitely.
