As anyone who has watched NBC in the past few weeks probably knows, their hit show Community is back for its 5^th season. There are many shows coming back this month but this one is a little more significant considering the show was originally scheduled to have only 3 seasons, two of the main characters are leaving, and, most importantly, the original creator is back to take control after an odd year of absence. Not to mention it’s one of the funniest shows currently on air.

If you’ve never watched the show, it’s about students at a community college who all ended up there for different reasons but all come together to form a study group that evolves into a lot more. The college is filled with all sorts of interesting characters who get into odd situations such as a paint ball tournament that turns into an apocalyptic war or saving a life through a ridiculously intense game of Dungeons and Dragons.

The group consists of 7 characters. Their leader Jeff Winger,a former egotistical lawyer who was caught without a degree and is just there to get his old life back but also becomes a better person through his new friends, portrayed by Joel McHale.

Britta Perry; a high school dropout who attends Greendale to get an easy G.E.D., she is often the butt of the group’s jokes because of her misinformed political interests and tendency to make a fool of herself, portrayed by Gillian Jacobs.

Abed Nadir; an emotionally-reserved film major whose obsession with American pop-culture controls his life, portrayed by Danny Pudi.

Troy Barnes; a ditzy star football player in high school who purposely lost his scholarship to a real college, portrayed by Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino aka a god among men.

Annie Edison; an innocent, typical school girl who is obsessed with being the perfect student, portrayed by Alison Brie.

Shirley Bennett; a single mother and sweet Christian woman who also has a sassy side when provoked, portrayed by Yvette Nicole Brown, commonly known as Helen from Drake & Josh.

Finally, Pierce Hawthorne, a bigoted old man that enrolled to Greendale expecting to gain popularity back in 1999 and is also the butt of many of the group’s jokes along with serving as fuel for their anger at times, portrayed by the infamous Chevy Chase.

Also, before he became known from The Hangover, Ken Jeong plays a crazy Spanish teacher who half the time is desperate to join the group and the other half makes their lives a living hell.

This season starts out after the group has all graduated and gone their separate ways, only to be brought back to their study room by Jeff who tries to convince them all to sue Greendale for making their lives worse, but after his millionth change of heart throughout the series, they all end up reapplying instead, except for Jeff who is forced into teaching. This creates a somewhat similar situation as the last season of Scrubs(which is joked about within the first episode) in which the main character becomes a teacher and some main characters leave to make room for new ones. Let’s hope this turns out better than that awful end to a great series.

The first character that leaves is Pierce who only appears in the first episode as a hologram explaining that he has been banned from Greendale, this change has been rumored to be because of a new spin-off series of Chevy Chase’s vacation movies.

The next character to leave will be Troy who shows up for the first 5 episodes or so. Considering he came out with his newest album, Because the Internet a little while ago and is now on tour, it can be assumed that Donald Glover’s reasons for leaving was to focus more on his growingly successful music career. It should be interesting to see how his leaving affects the show since Troy and Abed’s ridiculously close and childish relationship was many people’s favorite aspect of the series and, for some, was the reason to continue watching through the odd 4th season.

Along with these disappointing leavings, comes back the genius creator of the series, Dan Harmon. This was very surprising for him to come back after one odd season of absence that may have been still worth watching but not quite as satisfying as the first 3. Hopefully he will be able to bring back the original charm and hilarity into the 5th.

I would suggest anyone who enjoys Batman jokes and a good band-of-misfits story watch this show immediately. You can watch the entire series on Hulu, including the new episodes.