Back in June, when all seemed lost for Community, the show that has more lives than Ken Jeong’s Senor Chang, Yahoo! and its on-demand streaming service Yahoo! Screen helped eradicate the possibility of a Darkest Timeline by picking up the cancelled NBC show.
Now Yahoo! Screen is offering a morsel to remind fans of the beloved cult series that more episodes are in the works with its unveiling of a trailer for the 13-episode season 6. Sorta.
The trailer mostly collects a series of clips from seasons 1 through 5, with a booming voiceover telling the tale of the Little Show That Could, as well as documenting how Yahoo! swept in to save the series from a cruel death. It was originally shown during a Community panel at Comic Con last month and was just released online for public consumption.
Of note is that the trailer contained only one clip from season 4, which is the only season that did not include showrunner Dan Harmon. No comment.
While we don’t have any details about season 6, since, as of this publication, the first script has yet to be written, we do know that actors Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Alison Brie, Yvette Nicole Brown, Jim Rash, and Ken Jeong will return in their roles as members of the Greendale Community College campus. With John Oliver now hosting HBO’s Last Week Tonight, it’s unclear whether he will return as Professor Ian Duncan (throw all the money you can at him, Yahoo! Screen!). Dan Harmon will once again act as showrunner.
In case you forgot that Yahoo! was the patron saint of Community, the god from on-high that saved the show, the trailer does its best to remind you that #sixseasonsandamovie would not be possible without the site swooping in to save the day, much like G.I. Jeff from season 5.
And while the repeated allusions to Yahoo! acting as Community’s savior seem a bit heavy-handed, I think that it’s completely warranted and worthy of being boastful. The show was on the brink of cancellation entirely. Hopes that Hulu or Netflix would option the series were dashed. In fact, it wasn’t until June 30th, the day the actors’ contracts would expire, that Yahoo! announced its intention to air the sitcom on Yahoo! Screen. That’s an extraordinarily close 11th hour play, but a welcome one.
The sixth season of Yahoo! Screen’s “bigger, faster, stronger” Community premieres… sometime in the near future. You can also see the cast talking about what they expect from the next season at Greendale in the video below: