The Most Meta Sitcom’s Final Season Filmed Entirely In A Basement

Alison Brie, who played Annie in the show, made this revelation during an appearance on Dax Shepard’s podcast. NBC had canceled Community after Season 5, but Yahoo! picked up the show for another season, leading to a studio change. Now at CBS Radford Studios, the show was shot in a studio basement, directly below the set of Parks and Recreation.

The basement came with large pillars that would be impossible to remove from scenes, so the writers had to get creative in order to explain why the school looked different. They came up with a storyline that sees the school under construction, and the reason behind it is absolutely hilarious. 

Community Season 6 starts off as usual, with the dean welcoming students back to Greendale over the loudspeaker. While we see The Greendale Seven making their way back to classes, two students are seen in the background throwing a frisbee. At the same time, Annie enters the study room and notices that the group forgot to complete one very important task last year from the Save Greendale Committee’s to-do board.

As Annie pulls off the task card that reads “rooftop frisbees,” the frisbee-throwing student accidentally tosses the disk onto the rooftop, which we see is littered with thousands of frisbees. The addition of one more frisbee is just enough to make the roof collapse in on the cafeteria, at thereafter we officially have our “Greendale Under Construction” storyline.

The roof-collapsing Community scene ends with Garrett being swept out of the cafeteria destruction, only to be greeted by Leonard, the school’s oldest and longest student, who finds an old frisbee in the pile with his name on it. Cue Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion,” and the cold open ends with Leonard enjoying a flashback to the 1970s when he first came to Greendale, throwing the very first frisbee on the roof.

The final season of Community was met with mixed reviews. In fact, many fans and site rankings rate it as the worst season, even before the dreaded Season 4 aka the Gas Leak season. But in reality, Season 6 had some great episodes, and some of the most memorable moments. 

“Intro to Recycled Cinema” was a great Chang-centric episode in which Ken Jeong’s character finds stardom and moves to Hollywood. This episode gave us the memorable “ham girl” line from Chang. 

Community Season 6 even gave fans the long-awaited paintball episode. Though not as great as the first two, the scene in which the dean recreates the famous Captain America elevator sequence from The Winter Soldier was brilliant.

It may not have been the best of Community, but the cast and crew did what they could with what they were given, including a basement. And thanks to Yahoo for picking up the show for one final season, #sixseasonsandamovie is finally coming true, and the Community movie is set to begin filming sometime in 2025.