The offscreen saga of Community has been almost as interesting as the NBC comedy's onscreen narrative. The series' show runner Dan Harmon was removed after the third season, resulting in an uneven and sometimes unclear fourth season last year. Star Chevy Chase recently exited and Donald Glover will follow after a few episodes this year. But now, at the behest of stars Joel McHale and Jim Rash, Harmon is back at the helm of the fifth season, premiering tonight. McHale has been an outspoken proponent of Harmon's work and was instrumental in his return. There's a sense of renewed invigoration in the premiere, aptly named "Repilot," and McHale is adamant that the upcoming 13 episodes are some of the best the show has ever seen.

The actor, who also hosts The Soup on E! and has several films in the works, called Esquire.com on his day off to discuss the upcoming episodes, his character Jeff Winger, and Harmon's return. You might expect McHale to phone in from his trailer between shooting his numerous projects, but he had a much better venue for the interview.

ESQUIRE.COM: Hey, Joel.

JOEL MCHALE: Please forgive my delay. I have a great excuse.

ESQ: Let's hear it.

JM: I donated a kidney to my friend. Pretty good! No, actually, we're heading back to Seattle tomorrow for the holidays and there was a moment this morning where my wife was like "I don't think I'm going to get everything done by the time I go to this playdate with the kids." So I said, "I'll do the playdate!" like a hero and now I'm here on the kids' playdate. That's the truth. And I killed a guy and had to hide the body.

ESQ: So you're doing this interview from a playdate?

JM: Yes. It's a lot of goalkeeping, in that you keep your kids from jumping off of balconies. You could in theory say this is my first full day off from filming all year.

ESQ: Yet here you are doing press.

JM: Well, we have a pretty strange airdate so I am doing everything I can — and the cast is, too — to get the word out about the show. It's pretty difficult to promote something the week after Christmas and the week before New Year's.

ESQ: What has been your best reason for people to tune in on January 2?

JM: "Are you lying in an airport waiting to go home, doing nothing? Well, talk to airport administration and get them to change the channel from headline news and watch Community as you're about to board a flight to Cleveland." Or, "Hungover? Don't want to drink or move? Well, you're in luck because now you can recuperate and convalesce in front of your television at 8 p.m. for a solid hour of Community, returning January 2." Or, "Crushing holiday depression hasn't driven you to suicide? Great! Why not add on to that good feeling by watching Community?" I can keep going!

ESQ: You can stop there. How much of a time jump is this new season from last season's finale?

JM: The great Dan Harmon is back and he decided it would have been easy for him to come back and say the fourth season was all a dream but instead, because he's awesome, he's incorporating everything that happened. He's calling the first episode "Repilot" and it picks up with the characters a full year after they've left the school. Jeff has been practicing as a lawyer for a year. I love the challenge of an entire year has gone by and how has that affected the character you're playing. When you've had a year to fill something up with backstory, which Dan does brilliantly, you can do anything.

ESQ: If everyone is out of school now, what unites the study group?

JM: The school is falling apart and is in danger of being shut down. It's actual financial, it's not some wild shenanigan, which again shows you why Dan is so awesome. Basically we form a committee called the "Save Greendale Committee."

ESQ: So something real is at stake.

JM: There's always been something real at stake. And not only is there something real, but every time the school is in trouble or the dean is in trouble Dan goes to Shakespearean lengths for it to be at stake. He's just shifting the bar. He found a really good reason for the school to be threatened and I'm sure next year there will be a dragon living under the school threatening to kill everybody with its fire-breathing. Basically what Dan is doing is re-grounding the characters, who last year kind of got out of hand. I've said this about the series, that it's like an Edgar Wright movie in a way. All the characters in Shaun of the Dead were very grounded and normal, no one was a caricature of anything. But there's a zombie apocalypse happening outside. That's how I see Community — we have to deal with real stuff, like the loss of Pierce, in a bizarre world.

ESQ: Will the loss of Pierce be explained?

JM: Episode two! You won't believe, in the second episode, how it goes down. I'm going to say "unprecedented."

ESQ: Is Jeff still the same person he's been over the past four seasons now that he's graduated from Greendale?

JM: No. He thought he would graduate and become a lawyer for good and do good and that did not work. Nobody wants a lawyer who is there do to good, because it turns out people are selfish. He stuck to his guns for a year and went broke. He's a man who has been beaten this year and he's realized how close he's become to those strangers he first was trying to manipulate and use.

ESQ: What do you find compelling about Jeff as a character?

JM: He ultimately started as a big huge egomaniac liar and thought he was pretty much the greatest. His whole life was filled with him finding shortcuts around what people usually do to earn their spot in their life and job. When all that came crashing down he had to deal with a bunch of stuff and that was very interesting to me. Someone who is having to face a lot of their deficiencies. He's a guy who never allows himself to be close to people and is a user of women. I think all that stuff was wildly interesting. So many people have gone "Isn't this character just basically you?" And it's like, "Well, that would mean that I'm a lawyer." I've been married for 17 years and I have two children and Winger has none of those things.

ESQ: Now that you've played him for five years do you find yourself prone to giving long speeches in your own life?

JM: I gave speeches in real life anyway. On The Soup I'm constantly lecturing people.

ESQ: Where were you when you found out that Dan was returning to Community?

JM: I was in a number of meetings where I was trying to get Dan back. I actually think I read it on Deadline. Jim Rash and I had started those conversations with Sony and NBC months before he was hired.

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ESQ: Why do you feel so strongly about Dan as a show runner?

JM: Much like Mitch Hurwitz of Arrested Development or Vince Gilligan of Breaking Bad or the creator of Teen Wolf on MTV, the show lives in their brain. The show is the show because it came out of their head. Some comedies, and they work very well, you can be the overseer or the director and you can give an episode to a writer to do their version. That doesn't work with Dan. Every word has to come out of their brain. That single vision is very important to Community.

ESQ: Were your efforts integral to getting Dan back?

JM: Well, I know they didn't hurt! Dan talks about it a lot and you can read about it in his interviews.

ESQ: When you all came back to shoot season five, what was the feeling on set?

JM: Euphoric. We were all thrilled. This is what we had all wanted. The cast was very happy to have Dan and many other people back. A lot of our crew had gone over to another show because of loyalties to some other producers and that show was canceled so they all came back. It was like a 13-week family reunion.

ESQ: If someone gave up on Community last season, what should bring them back now?

JM: The great thing about our fans is a lot hung in there. We got good ratings last year. In fact we got the same ratings we got the year before so I actually don't think we've lost that many. Most of our viewers came from online and my only wish involves how they measure the way our show is watched. They always go, "You're ratings-challenged," and I say, "No, we're timeslot-challenged." I wish people would measure the online views as well as the Nielsen views. Those are becoming a way of the past because young people watch TV when they want to, unless it's something live like a football game. That's an off-topic rant, but you're assuming we've lost people and I don't know if that's true. So I'm just going to say you should watch because these are some of the funniest episodes of Community you'll ever see.

ESQ: In opposition to Community, when you work on The Soup do you ever get really concerned for our culture seeing all those ridiculous clips?

JM: I think we are as screwed as a culture as we are saved as a culture. Five-hundred years ago people were saying in manuscripts, "Can you believe these kids today?" They were saying that same phrase everyone says now. No one can believe the youth and what they're doing and how culture is going and how it might fall apart. And it very well may, but it's always been that way and on The Soup we always say 90 percent of all art is crap and 10 percent has never been better. Just like you can make an argument that television has never been worse. People have always said since TV was invented what a cultural wasteland it is but I think it is the worst and the best. It is the golden age of television.

ESQ: What are some of the shows — besides Community of course — that reflect that?

JM: If you had said that a show about a guy with cancer who becomes a meth dealer with the dad from Malcolm in the Middle would be the best show on television I don't think anyone would believe. You couldn't have made that ten years ago. You couldn't have made Mad Men the way it's made now ten years ago. Some of the risks being taken on television now are greater than film because you have more time to tell those stories and get into it. With the advent of cable and so many channels came way more crap, but also way more gold. Community couldn't have existed before.

ESQ: How's that playdate going?

JM: At first it was very quiet and I was worried because that meant they were probably trying to set a fire. Now there's a lot of noise. You can't hear it, but they're upstairs and there's a lot of pounding all over the place.

ESQ: Are you actually supervising or are you just hoping nothing goes wrong?

JM: They're old enough now that they don't need supervision unless blood is drawn or they've gotten into the kitchen knives and are going at each other.

ESQ: Does that happen a lot?

JM: Yeah, but usually they run out to the barn and get large farming equipment to use against each other. They just get jars full of gasoline and start throwing them at each other.

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Emily Zemler Emily Zemler is a freelance writer based in London.

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