How Community's Writers Tried To Fill The Void Left By Donald Glover
The characters that formed the central study group in the NBC comedy series "Community" became truly beloved by fans, and sometimes watching the series can feel like spending time with the best college friends you never had. So when someone left the study group for whatever reason, it could be brutal to both the remaining cast and the fans. The departure of Chevy Chase, who played the dumpster fire of a human being known as Pierce Hawthorne, was sad but expected given his clashes with showrunner Dan Harmon. The next departure, however, left a much bigger hole in the series. Star Donald Glover decided to leave "Community" in order to pursue his musical career (you might know him as Childish Gambino), and so his character Troy left Greendale to sail the world with LeVar Burton in order to fulfill the conditions of Pierce's will. Troy was an essential part of the fabric of the study group and provided a perfect balance to his best friend Abed (Danny Pudi), so it was tough to imagine the show without him.
In an interview with Uproxx back in 2014, Harmon explained that they really had to work hard in order to fill in the gap left by Troy at the study table and that there was simply no replacing the character or Glover. Instead, they had to tackle things a bit differently, changing the study group's composition while staying true to its roots.
An amicable but difficult departure
When asked about Donald Glover leaving the show during the earliest part of season 5, Dan Harmon told Uproxx that he's not sure he would have come back himself if he had known that he was going to have to figure out how to adjust the series with Glover's absence. (Harmon was fired at the end of season 3, which led to the shortened, messy fourth season, aka "the gas-leak year.") There was no bad blood between Harmon and Glover and the series' creator apparently "begged" Glover to reconsider and stick it out, but Glover simply had other plans. He's currently halfway to an EGOT, but he's allegedly going to come back for the "Community" movie that will happen ... eventually.
Removing Troy from the study group switches up the chemistry quite a bit, and it wouldn't be easy to find something as compelling. Curmudgeonly old white guy Pierce was somewhat replaced by curmudgeonly old white guy (and criminology professor) Buzz Hickey (Jonathan Banks), but there just was no replacing Troy. When asked by Uproxx if it was just a matter of "attack[ing] the problem with numbers," Harmon said that it was a little more complicated than that. Instead of trying to fill the void left by Troy with numerous characters, the idea was more to see what clicked naturally:
" ... we just thought, 'Let's not make people feel like they need to compare anyone to Donald. Let's just give them more treats and more ways to love 'Community.' And maybe one of those will sprout.'"
In addition to Hickey, season 5 saw characters Ben Chang (Ken Jeong), Dean Pelton (Jim Rash), and Professor Ian Duncan (John Oliver) all get much larger roles, and it led to some great character interactions that hadn't been possible before.
Playing with character dynamics
Dan Harmon went on to explain that his greatest hope was to give John Oliver more to do because he felt that the friendship between Duncan and Jeff (Joel McHale) hadn't been meaningfully explored, and there was a need for a new friendly duo with Troy and Abed's cute shenanigans gone:
"My biggest hope was that we could have made John Oliver into more of a constant presence and really paired him with Jeff so that you would lose that beloved, almost adolescent Troy and Abed, 'Calvin and Hobbes' innocence, but in its place would grow this different but equally powerful older adult male friendship — drinking buddies whose friendship is the only one that actually predates the origin of the whole series."
Harmon goes on to compare their friendship to Harold Ramis and Bill Murray in "Stripes," where they are competitive with one another but still have a lot of earnest love. Oliver had other commitments, however, and couldn't do all 13 episodes of the season, so Harmon and the writers filled in the missing moments with Hickey, Chang, and the Dean. It ended up working out pretty well, and while season 5 may miss some of the charm of the earlier seasons, it's still makes for fantastic television with some truly lovable characters. Hopefully, everyone can make it back for the movie (including Yvette Nicole Brown as Shirley!) and we can see them all be total messes together.