After series creator Dan Harmon was fired from “Community” at the end of Season 3, the show continued with a Season 4 but failed to emulate Harmon’s unique comedic style.

Many fans refer to Season 4 as the “gas leak year” due to how bizarre it got, and when Harmon was rehired for Season 5, he and the writers needed to explain last season’s oddness.

Harmon shared, “We talked about everything, no matter how absurd,” including having Danny Pudi exit the Dreamatorium — a sort of cardboard holodeck — and say, “That was weird.”

He continued, “I mean, insane things like just finding out that the Greendale that we had seen for that year was actually some strange underground test facility.”

After two days of discussion, Harmon asked the writers, “Okay, so we know every single possibility. So what do we think we really need to do? What is really our job?”

Harmon shared that the writers agreed the show needed a kind of new pilot “about the protagonist returning to his alma mater with whom he had a complex emotional relationship.”

Season 5’s opener, “Repilot,” saw Jeff returning to Greendale to teach law, but Harmon explained there was an alternate idea involving the Dean and a fake particle accelerator.

However, Harmon abandoned this idea in favor of reestablishing Greendale as a place for broken people and giving Jeff the power to determine the wacky community college’s fate.