Community is one of the greatest comedy shows of the 21st Century. Showrunner Dan Harmon crafted a unique vision of college life with the idiosyncratic community college Greendale, and over the course of six seasons produced many fun experimental episodes. One of the most forward-thinking, optimistic modern sitcoms, Community was whip smart with its constant pop culture references, homages to other media, and Harmon’s famous “story circle” structure.

Disgraced lawyer Jeff Winger (Joel McHale), free-spirited activist Britta Perry (Gillian Jacobs), idiosyncratic film buff Abed Nadir (Dani Pudi), kindly Christian Shirley Bennett (Yvette Nicole Brown), comically innocent Annie Edison (Alison Brie), loveable goofball Troy Barnes (Donald Glover), temperamental senior Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase), and their beloved Dean Craig Pelton (Jim Rash) made up Community’s ensemble.

Despite its sunny premise, the series featured no shortage of controversy. Chase famously left the production after a series of on-set tension, and Harmon was briefly ejected as showrunner ahead of the show’s fourth season. As other original stars departed and new characters were introduced, the ensemble was constantly in flux, resulting in an uneven level of quality. Here are all six seasons of Community, ranked worst to best.

6. Season Six

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Image via Yahoo! Screen

Although many fans would cite the “gas leak” year as the low point of the series, the show’s final season dramatically changed the ensemble ahead of the conclusion. The concept of a study group forced to work together had been shattered, and season six refocused the central narrative on a “Save Greendale” story arc that followed the campus’s daily operations. New characters Frankie (Paget Brewster) and Elroy (Keith David) were awkwardly inserted, and Yvette Nicole Brown left the series in the early run of episodes.

The recurring gags had finally grown tired, and even the paintball-centric episode “Modern Espionage” felt like a pale shadow of the show’s former glory. While Abed’s feature filmmaking attempts in “Intro to Recycled Cinema” and the homage to disaster movies in “Ladders” hinted at the innovation the series once boasted, the concepts were less refined. Switching distribution methods to the Yahoo! Screen streaming service, Community’s sixth season would have played like complete fan fiction if not for its surprisingly earnest finale in “Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television.”

5. Season Four

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Image via NBC

The season fans (and the show itself) would refer to as the “gas leak” year, Community’s fourth season was produced without the presence of showrunner Dan Harmon. His absence was immediately felt; the characters grew closer to sitcom archetypes, and a misguided romance between Troy and Britta did neither character justice. Tensions with Chase reached a breaking point, and while he was absent from the season’s final two episodes, Chase’s lack of enthusiasm put a damper on a group dynamic that was already growing stale.

In its best years, Community found clever ways to subvert episodic formula, but the fourth season felt closer to a string of gimmicks. There was a The Muppet Show-themed episode with "Intro to Felt Surrogacy," but it was really just an excuse to have puppet versions of the characters; the Thanksgiving episode “Cooperative Escapism in Familial Relations” doesn’t do much more than reference The Shawshank Redemption a few times. In particular, the explanation of the group’s secret history together in “Heroic Origins” leaned into the exact generic worldbuilding Community had always pushed against.

4. Season Five

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Image via NBC

Season Five is half of a great season, and the demarcation line is obvious. Donald Glover left the show, and while his absence the energy slipped nearly instantly, the season’s first half retained the spirit of the initial run with Harmon restored as showrunner. Jeff’s transition to becoming a professor was naturally integrated, and Chase’s departure pushed the season in a more optimistic, openly goofy direction.

Season Five features some of the show’s best episodes. The reading of Pierce’s will in "Cooperative Polygraphy" is a brilliant chamber piece (that was lovingly recreated as a quarantine live reading with guest star Pedro Pascal) that gives the character a more earnest exit than perhaps he deserved. The Mad Max-style “floor is lava” action epic “Geothermal Escapism” featured some of the show’s most elaborate set pieces, but tied into Troy’s own anxieties about leaving his friends behind.

RELATED: Dan Harmon Still Actively Thinking About Making a ‘Community’ Movie Despite Its Primary Challenges

3. Season Three

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Image via NBC

The first three seasons of Community stand far and above its latter half, and it's a matter of splitting hairs determining which is slightly stronger. If it comes down to nitpicking, Season Three is more evidently serialized than the show had ever been, with former Spanish professor Chang (Ken Jeong) becoming the series antagonist. Chang becomes the chief Security Officer and threatens to expel the group, and a recurring appearance by John Goodman as the Vice Dean Robert Laybourne that lures Troy to his air-conditioning academy unfortunately doesn’t really go anywhere.

Chang’s rise to power is well-integrated and produced a great showdown in “The First Chang Dynasty,” but adhering to the season’s story arc so closely felt like a slight shift from the more chaotic first two seasons. However, the season wasn’t without its amusing one-offs, and the two-part “pillow and blanket fort” storyline in "Digital Exploration of Interior Design" and "Pillows and Blankets" that lampooned Ken Burns documentaries is among the show’s most inventive. Season Three also boasts the show’s single most meticulous (and perhaps best) episode in “Remedial Chaos Theory,” where the gang’s nighttime gathering is presented as six alternate realities.

2. Season One

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Image via NBC

Community immediately announced itself as an earnest, clever alternative to NBC’s lineup at the time, and it's remarkable how quickly the show grew and developed its group dynamic. Beloved shows like The Office or Parks and Recreation took time to refine their characterizations, but Community’s pilot set an immediate template for the rest of its run. Assembling under chaotic circumstances, the Spanish study group is bound by an earnest (yet slightly deceptive) inspirational speech by Jeff that would be the first of many.

Season One introduced many of the recurring storylines that would be deepened later on. The first paintball war in “Modern Warfare” teased at least one of the unique action epics each subsequent season, and the parody of Goodfellas in "Contemporary American Poultry" showed the cinematic parodies that would become common. If there’s any real dragging point, Jeff’s early flirtations with Britta felt closer to generic sitcom territory, but thankfully these interactions are worked through quickly as his more complex relationship with Annie began.

1. Season Two

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Image via NBC

Season Two was the peak of Community’s creativity. With a firmly established ensemble, the 24 episodes pushed the capacities of Greendale’s campus in new directions while also refining the core themes of the first season. The two-part finale “A Fistfull of Paintballs” and “For A Few Paintballs More” perfected the precedent set in “Modern Warfare,” and what begins as a Pulp Fiction homage in “Critical Film Studies” transforms into a tribute to My Dinner With Andre.

Although the first season had memorable Halloween and Christmas episodes, Season Two surpassed them. The ABBA-scored zombie outbreak invasion episode "Epidemiology" is among the show’s most relentlessly paced, and the stop-motion “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas” is a bonafide holiday classic worth revisiting each December. An episode like "Paradigms of Human Memory" encapsulates what makes the show so special; it teases the larger mythology of Greendale without burdening it with mythology, and hints at the characters’ existential anxieties without forcing an uncomfortable conclusion.

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